Old Lenses

[dragosb]

Hi!

A friend of mine has a zenit-e with these lenses:
- Mir-1 2.8/37
- Jupiter 3.5/135

Does it worth to buy it and a M42 adapter or my oly e-520? Will these lenses work on digital?
Has anyone had any experience with them?

Thanks

[inkista]

I don't have experience with them (or with M42 lenses), but I've adapted OM, Contax/Yashica, and Leica-R glass to my Canon dSLRs. And whether you'll like using manual focus glass depends on your definition of worth it, and the price of the adapter. The Fotodiox or an eBay M42->4/3 adapter, say, is a lot cheaper than a Novoflex ring.

Chances are good those lenses will work, as long as they still work on the Zenit-E (i.e., you can stop them down and work the focus, no fungus, no sticky old grease, etc.)

The main thing to know when adapting manual focus lenses to a dSLR is that you lose autofocus, the ability to control the aperture from the body, and all electronic communication between the lens and the body. The practical upshot of which is that you can only shoot in full Manual or Aperture priority, and you won't have wide-open metering unless you set the lens aperture to be wide open, and your EXIF is going to have holes in the information. And the lens must have an aperture ring so you can control the aperture (not a problem with M42 lenses, more of a problem with adapting current lenses where aperture rings have been removed. Canon EOS and Nikon G, for instance).

I will also add, I've never met a 135mm I didn't like. It's very tough for anybody to make a bad 135mm lens, so I'd be willing to bet the Jupiter is certainly worth it. You might want to try doing a search on Flickr for those lenses, just making sure you'll looking at M42 versions. Also, the M42 group and the 4/3 adapting group on Flickr have a lot of knowledgeable folks.

[dragosb]

Originally Posted by inkista

Chances are good those lenses will work, as long as they still work on the Zenit-E (i.e., you can stop them down and work the focus, no fungus, no sticky old grease, etc.)

The lenses are in perfect condition

Originally Posted by inkista

The main thing to know when adapting manual focus lenses to a dSLR is that you lose autofocus, the ability to control the aperture from the body, and all electronic communication between the lens and the body. The practical upshot of which is that you can only shoot in full Manual or Aperture priority, and you won't have wide-open metering unless you set the lens aperture to be wide open, and your EXIF is going to have holes in the information. And the lens must have an aperture ring so you can control the aperture (not a problem with M42 lenses, more of a problem with adapting current lenses where aperture rings have been removed. Canon EOS and Nikon G, for instance).

I know all this but I heard that due to some lack of coating it will produce ugly flares and generally low quality images on digital sensor compared to analog film.

Originally Posted by inkista

I will also add, I've never met a 135mm I didn't like. It's very tough for anybody to make a bad 135mm lens, so I'd be willing to bet the Jupiter is certainly worth it.

I'll take it even just to use it with a macro coupler. I was amazed how close I could get

[inkista]

Originally Posted by dragosb

...I know all this but I heard that due to some lack of coating it will produce ugly flares and generally low quality images on digital sensor compared to analog film.

Well, flare will do that on any lens. And the digital vs. film thing tends to be simply because when you look at a photo at 100% crop (i.e., one pixel on the image is a pixel on the screen), you're magnifying it a whole helluva lot higher than you would be looking at a film negative. Ever.

Make a cardboard hood for the 135, shade the 35 with a hand when you need to, and chances are good you can avoid the worst of flare. For the price, you can put up with more from an old lens.

Honestly, with vintage lenses (as I've started thinking about my manual focus babies), one man's dross is another man's gold. Different people tend to like different makes of lenses for different reasons. There are some who swear by Pentax Takumars. There are those who love only the Leica "glow", and others who prefer just the Zeiss "pop", or the Oly OM--well, everything. They all give distinctly different "flavors" of looks. But better or worse really depends on what you personally prize in an image. Some folks like their bokeh busy, some like it smooth. Lens image quality is far more subjective than people realize. I think that's why sharpness gets overemphasized--it's something that can be quantified. A lot of whether a lens is good or bad to you can be a qualitative thing, if you're not shooting test charts all the time.

To put the coatings thing in perspective, Voigtlander makes M-mount lenses. One of their lenses, the Nokton 40mm f/1.4 (which is fast becoming a favorite of micro four-thirds shooters) comes in two varieties: multi-coated and (limited edition) single-coated. And they cost the same. Some folks really do prefer fewer coatings on their lenses.

I'd say, ask your friend if you can have a trial period with the lenses before buying them (assuming it's not an outright gift). That way, you can try it and see. If it's not your cup of tea, you're just out $40 for an adapter ring, that you could use again if you ran across an M42 lens you did like, or sell on to someone else who wants to try adapting manual lenses.

[dragosb]

Ok, I get it

The 135 has it's own hood, lucky me.

The "collection" also includes a 2x converter. Combined with the 37 2.8 I think will make a nice portrait lens.

The worst part is that I fell in love with the zenit's huge viewfinder...

[inkista]

...and that's why we all want full-frame dSLRs.