Vintage camera reviews, repairs and photography blog
The Soligor 200mm f/3.5 lens which is the subject for this post is quite an easy lens to pick up in a variety of different camera mounts at a low price – the example I have cost me £3.20 + £6.00 for post. Images of the Soligor 200mm f/3.5 telephoto lens Soligor 200mm f/3.5 Lens Description At f/3.5 maximum aperture this is quite a fast lens for a 200mm focal length which increases it’s usefulness by allowing you to reduce […]
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I bought my Sony Nex 6 mirrorless camera about a year ago now and it’s given me some great service in that time having been my main camera on trips out and holidays, as well as providing a great platform for testing vintage manual focus lenses. Because it is so adaptable I’ve been able to throw just about any lens on it and get some great results. However, in that time I’ve also discovered a few flaws which I didn’t […]
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This is a picture of my daughter Emma which I took during a recent trip to York Minster. I had been taking some pictures of the rail that she is posing next to using a Takumar 55mm f/1.8 lens fitted on my Camdiox focal reducer and Sony Nex 6 when she jokingly tried to get into the picture by jumping up into shot. I asked her to stay there for a minute and took the picture to the left which […]
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Today we decided to take a trip to Bennington Lordship to see the Snowdrops. It wasn’t a planned trip – we just looked on the website to see when it was open and discovered that today was one of the days when it was open so we decided to go over and see what the snowdrops were like. It’s only about 3 miles away from our house and only takes about 10 minutes to get there, so once we knew […]
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I while ago I wrote a post about the low noise performance of the Pentax K-5 when used an high ISO and I thought it would be interesting to also look at the performance of my Sony Nex 6 when used in high ISO. It’s particularly interesting at the moment since this is the time of year when most days are murky and it’s quite common to be taking pictures using the high ISO setting on the camera. All the […]
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I went over to St Nicholas church in Stevenage today to take some pictures with one of my Miranda 35mm film cameras, the Miranda Fv, and I also took along my Sony Nex to take some control pictures. Because the film I used in the Miranda was black & white, I’ve converted a number of these pictures to black & white as well to get a better comparison of the pictures which I develop from the film. All these pictures […]
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It’s been a hot day here today and I’ve been out with my macro lens trying to get some interesting insect pictures. Although it is hot, almost as soon as I got to Priors wood (where I usually go to get insect pictures) the sun went in and the light levels dropped quite a lot. Although that didn’t make it in anyway impossible to take pictures, it meant about 3 stops less light, so most of these were taken at […]
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This is a short post showing the macro performance of a Takumar 55mm f/1.8 m42 lens when a 16mm extension tube is mounted behind the m42 to nex adapter. With this combination I was able to focus down to about 4 inches away from the objects shown in the pictures which I found around the house and garden. The majority of these shots were taken at F/1.8 to emphasise the shallow depth of field and I carried out my normal […]
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This is a post about a classic lens which I bought this week for use on my Pentax and Sony cameras – the Takumar 28mm f/3.5 wide angle M42 mount. Takumar 28mm f/3.5 Images As I hinted in my last post I bought this lens on eBay last Sunday evening for £34 plus £4 postage. I was amazed that I won the auction for only £34 because I’ve seen these lenses on ebay ‘buy it now’ offers for up to £70. […]
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I was out again yesterday with my Nex-6 and Pentax smc 50mm f/1.7 prime lens and noticed the buttercups making a carpet of yellow under the trees next to the main route to Hertford, I thought is made a nice contrast to see the flowers slowly growing next to the busy main road so I got down low and took these shots with the cars an out of focus blur. I had to use the back panel lcd on these […]
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This post tells the story of how I discovered that vintage lenses, designed for rangefinder cameras in the 1960s, can be put to renewed use with some of the modern mirror-less cameras. In this particular case the lens in question is the Industar 61 which was supplied as a standard lens on some models of Fed camera. First some pictures of the lens itself. Industar 61 general Images Industar 61 Description The recent acquisition of a Sony NEX 6 has […]
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