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…" »

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

I suspect that many photographer wrinkles on the nose when I tell of my Helios-lens, manufactured in BeLOMO, Minsk in the early 80’s 90’s. Surely it can’t be any good?

Helios 44-3 front

The states of former Soviet union actually made a lot of good camera equipment, and what I’m going to write about now is a copy from a Carl Zeiss-factory that ended up in the Eastern block after the war and “moved” to russia. Helios is a Carl Zeiss Biotar-copy. Lets see how it handles…
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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…
Read the full article "Review of Pentacon Auto 29mm…" »