I found this old lens on sale at a local thrift store for $10 (normally $20). I picked it up to see how well it does with my digital Nikon SLR and have fun with it. The lens was in pretty bad shape when purchased. The focus ring wouldn't go past a certain point making it useless unless the subject is at a certain distance and the threaded part of the lens barrel was exposed because it couldn't be screwed in all the way.
After much fiddling, disassembly and reassembly the lens is back to working condition again and this time it does focus to infinity (∞) covering the entire focal range as it should. Below are shots taken at f/4.0 after the repair.
It is difficult to tell from above pictures, however, photos taken with this lens on my Nikon D300 are sharp and like most lenses out there, stepping down a f-stop or two improves performance. Only reason pictures wouldn't come out sharp is because you can't keep the camera steady since when it's mounted on a cropped sensor camera such as D300, the equivalent focal length becomes 203mm. I don't know about you but hand holding at this focal length without good lighting is tough.
I can't say how practical this lens is these days but if you like the feel of old manual focus lens with all metal construction and is capable of giving you sharp pictures with your modern camera, I think it is a bargain at $10 or even at $20.
No comments:
Post a Comment