Using Vintage Lens
I first used a vintage lens on my trusty old D3200 when i wanted a prime f2.8 for photographing the stars. There are a great amount of reasons you can use vintage lens and to be honest, they are fun to use.
Why go for an old Vintage Lens?
Price…
I had picked up a 28mm f2.8 AI Sigma Lens. Prime Lens with Manual Focusing. £7.00 from ebay. It could probably do with a small service now, but it’s a pretty decent lens, especially for under a tenner. The other lens i’m going to work with today is a Vivitar 135mm f2.8. this cost a little more at £65.00, but the condition is almost unused. A quality little lens.
Bokeh…
Older lens sometimes produce different and interesting out of focus areas. Something that can bring a bit more to the photo. This is kind of why i’m looking at some of these lens.
Building your skills…
Since a lot of these lens are going to be manual focussing, it will help bring a bit more appreciation to the art and build your skills.
Video Work…
A cheap simple prime lens is sometimes great for video work. I do quite a bit of my youtube work with vintage lens. I’ll show that, at a later date.
Old Lens Modern Cameras
Unfortunately with Modern Nikon Bodies the attachment flange, along with whatever adapter you are using, usually puts the lens a couple of mm further out than it should be from the sensor. This affects focusing in a huge way. If you want to use it as a macro lens, then your good, but for portraits and anything requiring infinity focus, your going to need to do some modification.
So before i roll out and pickup a Sony, or Canon body which work a lot better with some of the older lens, i thought i’d start with what i did have available to me and my Nikon Bodies.
I have been looking at lens which are basically post AI. So any lens with AI, AI-S, N Series and newer should work with modern full frame bodies. Anything Pre AI will work on some of the lower end bodies like a D3200, but need modification to fit to a modern full frame Nikon. There is a huge amount of research and details online about modifying pre AI lens to work, but it requires taking the lens apart to an extent and grinding away parts of the lens carriage.
Until i pickup something that cost next to nothing, i will wait until i give this a go.
On with the lenses i’ve picked up at the moment (more will be looked at as soon as i find them).
My Vintage Lens Collection
Sigma 28mm f2.8 lens
I was fortunate to get this lens for next to nothing. The main premise for me was having a slightly faster lens for shooting the stars. This was back when i only had an old crop sensored camera. It worked a treat and i have used it on that body a few times now.
The Pinnacle for this focal length lens would be the Nikkor AI equivalent. Apparently one of the sharpest lens made by Nikon, but a bit of a wallet buster for me at the moment.
Vivitar 135mm f2.8 AI (Komine) Portrait Lens.
I had this delivered recently to have a play about with, and here are the results.
This is in no way a complete review of it, but more a quick look at what i have in my collection. Reviews may happen in the future after I have played with the lens’s a bit more.
One of the other lens i have is one of my go to general use lens.
Tokina ATX-Pro I 28-70 f2.6-2.8 Angenieux lens.
These were built in the early 90’s and were are outstandingly well built for the price point. And it’s Auto Focus unlike some of the slightly older ones. Built like a tank it’s a favourite of mine at the moment, and unless i’m stargazing, this lens is on my camera.
I can’t fault mine in the produced images – wide open and shut down a bit it’s pretty sharp and produces lovely images. The only thing that lets it down, is the noise it makes when focussing. A newer lens will be almost silent, but this thing is noticeable to say the least. A small price to pay i say.
The best part was it was £200. Not the £1000+ which is now demanded of a new fast zoom lens.
I am considering picking up a mirrorless or older canon full frame body, so i can take a look at a larger selection of the older lens. More for fun than anything, but if they produce great images, then they will be going in the arsenal for that last shot of the day.
You can see the results of using some of these vintage lens in my other blog posts.
Finally, have fun and stay safe, and enjoy shooting.
Any suggestions for future blog posts, and questions please drop me a comment.
you can see more of my work at
About Me
I’m Gareth, a 38 year old IT contractor, Photographer, Eternal Optimist and Blogger. I have been behind a camera for about 4 years now and love shooting the stars, and anything else for that matter. Learning is the main aim for me.
I am a family man, and strive to be the best i can be in all fields that i put my mind and heart to.
