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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Yesterday I took my old Pentacon 50mm/1.8 and pointed it to the sun. Behind the leafs I could control the visual effects a bit. I wanted to do something different then all the pictures of autumnleafs I do every year.

This is a plant which is eatable, not only to humans obviously but to bugs too ;) The image was made woth Pentacon 50mm/1.8 m42 lens with zebra-look on a Canon EOS 350D.

Bug eating plant

This Pentacon 50/1.8 lens my wife brought home from the fleemarket is growing on me. It cost very little together with the Praktica-camera, and was a bit smashed in the filterthreads (I fixed this brutally by forcing a broken filters ring on the front on the lens = new filterthreads). Maybe you saw the bokeh-shots? Well, here’s a tulip I shot at my wifes exhibition.

Pentacon tulip

I really like the bokeh of many manual lenses. I gave this Pentacon (previous Meyer) a try, and loved it too. These f1.7-f2 lenses are easier to use then the f1.4 I think… it is easier to get the smooth feeling I want.

Soft thorns

Fungus wideopen

I got this from my wife, a Praktica LTL with the Pentacon 50mm/1.8 which she found in the fleemarket. Thanks, Sara :)

Praktica LTL with Pentacon 50mm/1.8

Unfortunately the filtererings on the lens was bad, dented. I fixed it by smashing a greenfilter and attached to the lens. Not great for collectors probably, but I like to use this m42 lens… with filters and hood :)

Amateur or professional alike – naturephotographers sometimes need to make choices like “it’s the image worth the risk“. Well, yesterday I had a really nice image in view… all I needed to do was to take an extra step out on the ice of the rapid/creek…

Cold water

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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.

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This was my first manual focus lens. It might not be the greatest, but it is my eyeopener to old gear.

Pentacon 29mm with camera Praktica EE2

My purchase
I bought this lens attached to a camera on Tradera (swedish ebay). It was about 20$, with the camera. A lot of old stuff is cheaper in Sweden then on international ebay, there are not so many buyers. Did I make a bargain? Well, lets find out…
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