Using that "Other" Lens

One main advantage of SLR cameras is the ability to change lenses, something that has been done for years since the 35mm film days to now in our digital era. There are two types of lenses: primes and zooms, and both offer their advantages. Prime lenses are more simple in design and are fixed at a certain focal length - meaning they do not have the ability to "zoom" closer or further which would be feature offered by the zoom lenses.

Primes can be built more simply and cheaply compared to zoom lenses and this offer some advantages. With a more simple design, there are less elements in these lenses which means less distortions and also less weight. Generally a prime lens will offer better quality than an equivalent zoom lens and also offer a wider aperture meaning it will allow more light through the lens or is "faster". With a "faster" lens, you will be able to take images in darker areas and shoot with a faster shutter speed, this is probably where the "faster" term comes from.

Most people in the old days used primarily prime lenses because zoom lenses were just too expensive and cost of image quality was not worth the extra money, but today the quality differences have become more narrow and cost has been driven down a bit. I've been making a lot of comparisons with the past because the featured lens of this blog is an old 50mm lens from the 80s that has been used before by my father with his old 35mm.

Even though the lens may have a canon lens cap on it, it is not a canon lens - it's actually an old Pentax-M 50mm f/1.4 from my dad's old Pentax Super ME 35mm camera. I did a little research on this particular lens and found out it was actually a decent lens (quality wise) and had potential uses. Although it was not going to be super sharp or quick to focus compared to modern day lenses, it has a super smooth manual focus ring that I admired. Being a Canon user, the lens could not normally fit onto my SLR body without the aid of an inexpensive PK to EOS (pentax-k to EOS) adapter from our friends in the far east. The reason for the Canon lens cap was because I did not have any 49mm filters around so I decided to upsize it to 52mm in order to use the filter I had and also look for that nice vintage lens cap as you see on the photo. I had the lens also cleaned because there were signs of moss inside the lens as well as dust - it cost me about $35 and that's where i spent another $5 on the rubber lens hood as pictured.

After all the extra money spent on this lens, it is time to talk about my experience with it; I had very mixed feelings about it at first, but eventually I found myself learning more from this lens because of all the manual work. Since i'm a beginner, I can't say my judgements on this lens are final because I find myself more open about this lens the more I use it. One thing for sure is that the auto focusing is a luxury I miss from the other lenses i've owned. It was frustrating to see the results in the beginning because I could not get very sharp images with it wide open - it was always very soft and didn't meet my standards or the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 MKii in comparison. Although it might not be as sharp as the prime i've used in the past, it does offer that smooth bokeh or background blur that some people such as myself begin to adore. People often called it the "dreamy" lens and I can see why; the images taken through this lens come out soft and easily blurred at the larger apertures. Sharpness can be obtained at the f/8 and smaller apertures but anything larger will tend to get softer around the subject. Also the problem with manual lenses, there will be no way to get the aperture information within the file and it will not be able to record the focal length of the lens used. This can be a pain when trying to review the lens for the first time and understanding how to use the lens optimally.

I have had a few good shots with this lens, despite all the complaints I made. After taking a photo like the one above, I began realizing how nice a bokeh could be and how to start using it more in the photos I take in the future. Capturing a nice background blur that is related to the subject in the photo illustrates a lot to the person viewing it and also to the person who took it. The photo of the flower was probably the one that really impressed me - since it does show the sharpness of the lens and also the awesome use of its blur ability. Overall, I can say this is a good lens but with a high learning curve - I will probably not invest into anymore manual focus lenses in the future knowing all this. Definitely I had fun with this lens and will learn more from it later.

If you have an old lens and a Canon SLR, i would recommend investing in that adapter because you might learn more from operating in manual and also because you will have another lens in your collection for the price of an adapter.