My wife came home from the fleamarket run by the salvation army in Sweden, “Myrornas” (transl. “The ants”). She had found a Praktica LTL with Pentacon Auto 50mm/1.8 attached. There were a few problems, dented filter threads and stiff focus, but otherwise good and all for about $6.

The dented filter threads I solved by smashing an old filter and putting in place (some violence included) and then attaching the generic lens hood on. The close focus limit of this lens is quite amazing, you can get very close without any extra tools. The lubrication in mine doesn’t seem to agree with swedish cold weather, it gets stiff. Optical geeks: the composition is 6 elements in 4 groups

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This is a lens I bought on ebay after hearing good things about it, well at least the small amount of information I could find. The price was $22. I have discovered that Yashica zooms is very hard to find information about, specially now since earlier source of information cdegroot.com is gone. Well, here are my thoughts on this…

The lens
This is a slim little zoom. Filter threads are 52mm. The zoom is wide when you slide it out, tele when you slide it back – quite the opposit(?) to the normal, modern zooms which is tele when extended. The aperture range is from f 3.5 – f 22. My copy of the lens was in very, very good shape. In fact it feels new.

Read the full article "Review of Yashica MC Zoom 35…" »

My friend Daniel insisted I should have one of these, so I went and bought one from UK on ebay. Can you have enough of normal or short tele primes? ;) I started collecting Takumar lenses, so of course I needed the 135mm. Lets see if it’s any good…

Super Takumar 135mm/3.5, angleview

The purchase
As usual with these old manual lenses it wasn’t that much hat I payed, £8.50 + shipping £9.00. Later on I also got a hood from ebay, it need an original hood – makes a lot of difference. The hood was £7.95 + shipping £3. So if you buy a lens like this, get a hood too. Since I bought from a good seller in UK, there was no problem with shipping or the purchase. Avarage price on Pentaxforums.com is set to $38. Read the full article "Review of Asahi Super-Takuma…" »

Takumars are often great wonder of quality, and so are normals like this Asahi S-M-C Takumar 55mm/1.8. My most used lenses are the normal primes (around 50mm) so naturally I wanted a Takumar of some sort in the normal range since I collect them. I managed to find an auction with some great stuff…

S-M-C Takumar 55mm f1.8 M42

The purchase
I got this on swedish ebay in a package with a lot of stuff. There was this Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 55mm/1.8 lens and then:

• Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SLR in great condition
• Tele-Tokina 105mm/f2.8 lens which turned out to be really rare
• Soligor 35mm/3.5 which I sold
• Gossen Sixtar lightmeter
• big Braun 370 BVC flash I can’t get to work (corroded batteries)
• filters and accessories

All for about $40 and then shipping. I think that was a good price. Some of the items are now sold, I keep the ones I use.

Read the full article "Review of Asahi S-M-C Takuma…" »

Maybe a reader could get the impression I like all lenses? ;) Well, I try to see the good and bad in them all, what to use them for, what properties do they have? But some are easier to love then others…

Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8 on Pentax Spotmatic Camera

The purchase
I bought this lens Asahi Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8 from my friend Daniel together with another lens. I guess this was about 800 SEK (approximately 76€, $98, £66 at the moment of writing) of the price, a bargain because I have later seen it on ebay for about $200. This is in good condition, only problem was a little stiff aperture ring but it loosened up with some exercise. Normal wear on hood and mount. A couple of other friends here in Örebro also bought lenses from Daniel at the same time and he shipped them all to me, so we had a little package-opener party.
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Old Yashinon-lenses are not often mentioned in discussions about which M42 SLR-lenses to get. Well, not as often as Takumars and Carl Zeiss anyway. I think this might be bacause they are underrated, or maybe just not as common. Many might associate them with the Contax/Yashica-mount of later Yashica lenses. But there are some great stuff for your M42 camera or adapter if you’ll take a look…

The purchase
I bought a Yashica J-7 here in Sweden with this lens on it. It is the camera I reviewed on YashicaForum and entered in EpicEdits $50-dollar camera challenge. Both the camera and lens are in great shape, no marks and great lenses. It has yellowed a bit but I haven’t noticed any impact on my images.

Yashinon-DX 50mm f1.7 m42

Introduction
As you might now I’m a fan of Yashica cameras and lenses (the reason I started YashicaForum.com offcourse). It all started out with a couple of old rangefinders and reading about the greatness of ML-series of lenses on forum.mflenses.com … at the time I think it was the ML 24mm that was being discussed. I decided to get an adapter for Contax/Yashica and try this manual lenses on my Canon DSLR.

Yashica ML 50mm/2 Front

The purchase
I got this lens from Richard for free – thanks :) I also bought one on swedish ebay Tradera, just because it was so cheap and I didn’t wan’t it to go unsold. They are easy to find, buy one if you can!

Side of the lens Yashica ML 50mm/f2

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When you deal with old lenses, you often get lenses and cameras you know nothing of, as a extra treat when you buying for something else. To be honest, often they are crap – but sometime you get real treasures. Lets find out which category this Tele-Tokina belongs to…

Front of the lens

The purchase
I bought this lens in a package with Pentax Spotmatic camera, Asahi S-M-C 55mm/1.8 lens, Soligor 35mm/3.5 (old preset), flash, bag, pocket tripod and some other stuff – it all went for about £40. The things I was aiming for was the Pantax camera and lens. The package arrived, and believe me, it was felt like christmas to unpack this stuff ;)

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There’s a lot of talk of Takumars and old Pentax-lenses. Old ones can go for quite a lot of money sometimes. So what’s so special about them? I got a 35mm (maybe not the most famous of the Pentax-lenses, but still…), lets find out how they work.

Pentax Super Takumar 35mm/3.5, an m42 lens.

The purchase
I purchased this lens from a friend on the net for 200 swedish kronor (about 20€). He keeps nagging about these Super Takumars, so I wanted to see what all the fuzz was about ;) He said the lens was worn, but it was just some external colour disappeared, everything else feels very good. Most of the time, the Pentax lenses go for some money both in Sweden and on ebay.

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135mm seems to have been a very common focal length of lenses. There are many to choose from. Because there was fierce competition, many of them are of good quality. Let see if this lens is one of the good ones…

Pentacon Electric 135mm/2.8

My purchase
I bought the lens on Tradera (swedish ebay) for SEK 57 (about £5) + shipping, without seeing much of it in the images of the ad. I was lucky, it is in good optical condition and only fault is that it is sometimes a little stuck at the aperture. Good ones is seen on ebay almost every day, so it’s a quite common lens.

Read the full article "Review of Pentacon Electric …" »