Best part about them is that some people love them, others hate them, nothing like bringing perfect balance to a creative life force! Thanks so much for having me on man, so cool to share this space with yourself and everybody else on here!
I'm a big fan Mark. Have enjoyed your advice on vintage glass. I collect and use FD SSCs a lot. Glad to see you guys colaborating supporting one another. Anthony Rodriguez...thanks for having Mark on. Great video.
Thank you Anthony for including me in this pannel of fine gentlemen, Vintage and Weird lenses are a fantastic way to experiment with your photography or cinematography.
shooting vintage makes me feel “alive” … but when I saw Joel’s anamorphic shot with that waterfall bokeh, I basically died and went to heaven. magnificent.
I got a Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f2.8 for 30 dollars on a flea market and it's been one of my absolute favorite lenses ever on both my Nikon d500 and my Fujifilm x-t5!
Its funny that the first interview talks so much about imperfections being human because i have astigmatism and because of that i had a natural preference to that look because its literally how i perceive the world so a lens that doesn't flare doesn't caputure what i see, i made me both appreciate my deviant vision and lens flares more.
i use vintage nikkors with my A7siii and ii -- 135mm, 300mm, 28mm, 50mm. Especially the 135mm, it gives me a cool vintage look, kind of '70s...I'd love to have a Pancro...
I started with vintage lenses to save some money. Turned out I had spent way more than I ever thought I would. But it has been a rewarding journey. Took many interesting photos I would never had been able to with me lenses, and met many interesting people buying and selling or even just chatting about vintage lenses.
Same thing happened with me, i started just trying to test focal lengths i liked, affordably, but the character of the lens earned themselves a place in my collection for them to stay.
I started in photography 20 years ago as i finished school. My first camera was a canon ae1 with a 50mm f2.8. I learned photography on this camera and one lens. In the years since i of course went digital and expanded my photography to a professional level. In the last three years I've fallen back in love with vintage lenses. I love the process. There's more work involved it feels more indepth. More of an art form. I now have 22 vintage lenses. All primes offering me a huge array of focal lengths with unique looks and tone. Its about feeling and being tactile. I love the look of vintage lenses. And of course the price. My advice is to anyone starting out in photography buy one prime vintage manual lens. It will only improve your skill. APSC or cropped sensor get 28mm way cheaper than a 24. On full frame get a 35/40 or 50mm.
Came here via Mark Holze, anyway I have a small RUclips channel, mostly around cars and other mechanics, not at all vintage lens related, I mostly use my Sony RX100. But I sometimes blend in shots from my Sony A7II, often with deliberate "flaws" like light streaks, low contrast blooms from lights etc. And those are the times when people ask what camera I use, when the imageries are "flawed" in a sense, or maybe more human 👍
Great video! I can't agree more with the comments. Shooting vintage lenses was my main reason for switching to a mirrorless camera & it has reignited my passion for photography. There is so much to love about the character of vintage lenses & discovering how to best use each vintage lens is part of this fantastic process.
I stumbled across a used classic Nikkor 55mm macro lens and it was my first macro lens. Once I got used to the manual focusing, I fell in love with te quality of the images! Thanks for this video
@MarkHoltze sent me as a subscribed to his channel. Thanks for this video and exposing me to other great creators. I’ve been buying a few vintage lenses as I plan to launch a new channel and I’m excited to use just vintage lenses for many of the reasons everyone shared.
Happy to have you here! Good luck on the RUclips journey, it’s a fun one 👏🏼🙌🏼
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Great content Anthony! That is very informative and relevant 20 min. I'm a vingage lens shooter as well (Canon FDs, Olympus Zuikos, Helios 44, etc.) and in addition to all the aspects and reasons that have been explained, I would say that using vintage lenses is good to understand how well made items were built in the past, especially lenses with metal. Nowadays, it's plastic everywhere and electronic parts that can't be repaired. Lenghten the life of an item is always a good thing.
Excellent. I shoot vintage 99.9% of the time. Locally, near me, no one used vintage but I always share to the local groups and give them the lens name I used. Which means nothing to them... yet. For me, manual focus and manual aperture control are now second nature and to be honest, I cannot imagine not having real-time DOF, like I get with all of my manual lenses. And why would I want to turn a aperture dial on the camera body anyway? For me, a lens without vintage bokeh is not an option. And I never see that kind of bokeh on modern lens photos. Thanks for sharing.
My first real camera was a Canon A-1 in 1983. Though I enjoyed having all its automatic modes, I shot most often in full manual mode. Now, in my 60s, I've become enamored with vintage and other manual lenses (also vintage road bikes and loudspeakers). The more automatic and electronically-controlled, the less attractive to me. I like that I have to understand what a manual lens is really doing, to actually engage with it. Of course I like digital cameras (I own six), but all save one are at least 10 years old, and I use (and build) up-to-date computers. I use modern lenses as well, but it's been many years since I bought any camera or lens that wasn't already owned -- and perhaps loved -- by someone else.
Maybe one day I will get into videography, I am sure it will happen soon. With that said I love vintage lenses I didn't get into vintage lenses because of the affordability. I got into them because of my love of infrared photography with the mirrorless camera bodies. I'm telling you using these old lenses brought me back in time when I fell in love with photography. After comparing vintage lenses against modern lenses I really like the rendering of the old lenses. They have better color saturation and 3D pop. The modern lenses have flatter colors and are clinically sharp edge to edge with a contrasty look. Some of the older low element lenses have outstanding micro contrast. I still have 2 modern lenses they have their place mainly for their auto focusing. Thank you for posting a great video. I will close in saying everything is a tradeoff and do be afraid to keep an open mind. You just might find something amazing.
Excellent video. New sub. Got sent here from Marks YT channel. Will definitely be checking out the other creators here. As for why I shoot vintage glass for photography. They’re beautifully imperfect. They force me to consider every second of every moment I’m looking through the viewfinder. I love how they look, and feel. Their build quality. I love thinking about all the images they’ve captured over the decades they’ve been around. And, I absolutely love the images. I simply cannot get enough. I’ve got a (for me) complete Contax Zeiss set and a almost full FD set. A few random Minolta lenses. There are so many more I want to get. Probably going to look into Helios lenses next. Thanks so much for the video and enjoy your baby moon!! And, congrats on the baby!!
11 years ago, i switch all my modern EF lens for vintage new-fd lenses and E-mount. for many reason, but first reason was mechanical focusing critical work. Second reason was for "less contrast, equal resolution". I love my vintage set for that. But...."adapter" become THE "bad" : wiggle, time to switch lenses, and no weather sealing ( i shot horses only) . today i use only EF camera, so no more FD until next hybrid ou short flange camera... my simple 50mm new-fd miss me so much today. Switch to "all EF" since 3 weeks. don't thinks about vintage : TRY it , if your camera mount is ok : JUST TRY and keep or not. there is many reasons for use them and some to keep them away. today i shots horses in any condition, no need autofocus anymore. just practice.
What a fun video! I very much enjoyed this. Also, I blame most of theses guys as well as a couple others, for my addiction to vintage lenses. Without their videos I wouldn't have known about a lot of the lenses I know own. Takumars, Pentax, Nikkors, Konicas (especially Konica!), Petri, Minolta, Helios and a few oddball lenses. I've even bought entire rangefinder cameras in bad shape just to remove and adapt the lens to use on my camera! I have also learned how to disassemble these lenses, clean and repair them. I love to find lenses that need a lot of help. Stuck apertures, focus rings, oil, fungus, dented filter threads or just dust. Its not hard to learn how to repair them. In most cases, there's a video someone made about how to disassemble, clean and repair the lens. I really enjoy the hunt to find these lenses, then buying them, fixing them, mounting them on the camera and then discovering their strengths and weaknesses. They all have something very special about them. Some are just straight trash and shouldn't be bothered with. But every once in a while you stumble into something that is an oddball, super unique and amazing! Such is the case with my Kuribayashi K.C. Petri ORIKKOR 105mm F3.5. If you can find one, snap it up. You won't be disappointed! Its a Triplet, bokeh monster. It looks funky on a modern camera, with its thin body and zebra polished features, but boy does it deliver the goods. And its wickedly sharp for a lens made in 1959-60. I've only ever seen one in person (mine) and one other for sale on eBay. It was snapped up super fast. A hard one to find. My lens collection is now fairly large and I feel bad when I don't use a lens for a long time. I like them all, friends of sorts. I own a bunch of AF lenses, but to be honest, they mostly sit in a Pelican case and I just don't use them much these days. And I'm not entirely sure I remember how to make them work as I only use my manual focus/aperture lenses anymore. The funny part is, the AF system on my current camera is probably the best system I have ever owned and here I am not even using it. Oh well, I'm enjoying what I'm doing. And that's the point, right?
I use vintage lenses (generally M42 mount; Japanese and Soviet) not because they produce a flawed or imperfect image but because they produce a beautiful image.
I've definitely gotten bitten by the vintage lens bug and mostly shoot with them these days. I just returned from a trip to Bryce Canyon & Zion National Parks in Utah where I only shot with my various Pentax Super Takumar lenses. They're absolutely fantastic. The best part about them is they're so much lighter to carry around than the RF lenses that I own. Granted, there are still moments where I will grab my RF lenses, but those are fewer these days.
Indeed. Human are analogues in nature. This trend of embracing vintage lenses is akin to the love of vintage audio equipment and vinyl and tape. Soothing on eyes and ears to us. Lol.
When I bought my first now vintage lenses, they were not vintage at all but just quality 2nd hand, and I had no reason to replace them, talking about 1980ies primes. (Standard) zooms have replaced several times, though. The amazing part of low element primes is the clarity of the light that comes in, the more glass, for example in high element zooms or also 'modern' overcorrected primes, the flater gets the image and all 'pop' gets lost; many vintage lenses have this pop build-in what one has to simulate in post production when using fat modern lenses.
I recently discovered that "pop" factor myself! I mistakenly bought the "low end" 135 2.8 series E instead of a Nikkor version. Well, I fell in love with it's charm and background blur, I just HAD to "upgrade" this lens to the "real" version Nikkor (5 in 4 groups vs the less glass w/ 4 in 4 of the E) and wouldn't you know, ALL through the full aperture range, my E mopped the floor with the Nikkor AI! I thought, well this can't be right. So I'll try an even higher priced AIS copy, well the Nikkor was STILL "muddy" compared to the E with less glass! Exactly like you say, it "pops" it's brighter and far more 3D look to it... NOTHING that can be fixed to make it look like the 3d of the E in post. It's just flat and muddy compared. You'd never know if you didn't have a "budget" consumer grade E to compare it with. There's no way too many people know this. The BETTER lens sells for FAR less. It's build quality is still better than modern Nikkors hahaha. Modern nikkors would be like E minus lenses compared to it. So it's not it's build quality is low. Well, needless to say, I sold BOTH Nikkor 135 2.8's and bought a second E in even better shape! Pixle peeping, I can see it's even sharper than the first copy. It looks just like no one ever used it. I suspect it's new old stock and I got even cheaper than my first copy! hahaha I decided to collect all 5 E primes.... but I can say, they're not all the level of the 135 by any means however the 100mm 2.8 E is JUST slightly behind it! So close, that in normal photo shoots, you'd never guess which lens took the shot. Looking side by side, you can see the 135 takes the win at lower apertures but then by 5.6 or 8 it's right on par. The 28 is "neat" but nothing to wright home about. The 50 is on it's way and I'm expecting similar results as will I be, when I find a good copy of the 35. I suspect these 3 will be more for collecting than using, unlike the 100/135 which are super charmers!
Congratulations to you and your wife! 🎉 I wish you a great time together! :) I have Helios-44M, and I love it! It really looks very stylish by itself, and photos are awesome too. Its bokeh is interesting, I don't like perfectly plain bokeh on modern glasses, it looks boring for me...And colors on f2.0 are wonderful too!
Babymoon loved it but its more like baby BOOM hahahah Loved the vintage lenses vid and the vintage lenses it self you missed on the Nikkors they are awesome and yeah I missed on the Zeiss buy some and try them always Love take care
I wouldn't recommend vintage lens to anyone starting out. Most people that used vintage lenses is usually personal use or if project calls for it. Best example I can give someone think about anamorphic lenses and it's unique flares, looks great on fast action films. Now think about those flares in Killers of a Flower Moon it would of looked off IMO. But in a movie like Creator it works. More often then not Jobs require a clean look vs stylized look. And the same for not liking clinical sharp lenses I would tell everyone to get clinically sharp lenses first. Videos can always been soften in post without loss of quality but but sharpening can add unwanted artifacts to an image. YT seems to always push a soft cinematic look that only exists in YT and social media circles. also music videos and product commercials that's meant to grab your attention. But in the movie industry it's more about being as clean as possible. Even in the Batman movie where the Helios lens was used, Greg Frasier doesn't use this lens for all his movies. he literally used it only in Batman. he wanted that look specifically for that movie but not all movies. If your a solo shooter starting out you would greatly benefit from a clinically sharp zoom vs vintage prime. When working on a set you want as many focal lens and angles as possible then less so customer has plenty of options to choose from. Once you get a name for yourself is when you should experiment and people will allow for your own creative choices. With all that said, I own Helios, Canon FDs and Carl Zeiss I use for personal and creative projects. But for paid projects it's all rentals and what the budget allows, unless it's low budget commercials then just Gmasters.
Thank you for this video. You just increased prices on the market. Fortunately my own collection also jumped up in value.😂 You should talk how bad vintage lenses are. Hm .. to late afraid.
would have been amazing to see - inserted visuals side by each expert ... the passion was beautiful ... with inserted visuals.. a cherry .. would be been lovely .. x
@@AnthonyRodriguezz I have a set of minolta lenses. They have not all the same serial number but look great. I used the set for our new shortfilm, which I just uploaded :)
I have a Canon FD 85mm 1.2 L that I found for a really affordable price via a broken AE-1 and its my prized photography posession. I’ve gotten some of my best images from that lens. I recently came across a Yashica 55mm 1.2 and I want to try it out but I need an adapter for my A7III so I can use it.
Thanks bro! I actually had it made w/ Queensboro. Best embroidery/printing service out there! Also, I’ll be coming out with some more vintage content in the future 😎🫣
When it comes to vintage lenses, I sometimes wonder if it matters whether we talk about video or photography. I focus on food photography and street photography. I have a sizeable collection of vintage lenses: pentax takumars, contax zeisses, multiple fast standard primes, and by far and away I will rely on the zeiss lenses, the sharpest among the vintage lenses, for stuff I end up using. Older lenses that are really imperfect or characterful end up feeling too limiting or gimicky for stills I think. I still ended up purchasing a modern lens for my most commonly used focal range.
@@AnthonyRodriguezz Ok ok, I see that now haha. How much do you think I need for ultra wide or a good fisheye? ... What is the difference between wide and ultra-wide?
All the old lenses I have were really cheap. In fact i only eber bought a single modern lens. And that cost more than all my other lenses combined. Half of my old glass is in really bad shape tho, and the most restoration I ever did was adding some oil to focus easier. Yet, 95% of the photos I take come with the one lens that I got for free when I bought my first digital camera used. The size of the lens makes more places accessible and therefore enable my photography.
Modern lenses take the fun out of photography and can be so expensive, but vintage glass has no electronics to stuff up are tougher and more reliable. For example Nikon 1 lenses stuff up the apature iris will stick and are next to useless, so by using adapters and vintage glass you no longer have to throw away your perfectly good Nikon 1 camera bodies. The Nikon J5 has a working light meter but the Nikon 1 V1 does not, so this will teach you how to use an external light meter and teach you how to bracket and with time you wont even need your light meter for most of your photography. But i still advise to have a camera with dedicated lenses as well. This is only my opinion. I now have bought myself a Nikon Zfc and have ordered its first adapter PK to Z mount, i will buy more adapters as required, cant wait to put some vintage glass on it.
Nice video, why does it look like there is an overlay or mostly transparent text from a youtube page or something like that in the upper left of your video?
Hmm looking at it now and not seeing what I saw earlier... Looks like different lines of text. Maybe it is a weird burn in from a previous screen I was displaying on my high (Low) quality monitor? If thats it, I hope I didn't cause too much of alarm...
@@AnthonyRodriguezz I have a few Asahi Pentax in my arsenal and a Helios. Nothing too exotic though. They are super fun to use. Hoping they'll release on of those "auto focus for manual lenses" systems for Sony someday. That would help a lot with doing video with them =)
Why does everyone say think vintage lenses are soft? Many of them are, especially wide open but many are very sharp. I have some Contax Zeiss lenses which you mention and those are not my sharpest vintage lenses. I have a few lenses as far back as the 1950s which are sharper.
@@AnthonyRodriguezz Some of the old Takumars are pretty sharp. My favourites are the really old ones from the 1950s. The presets and autos. I have a Takumar 55mm for the 1970s but I prefer the old ones. The Takumar Auto 55cm f2 is one of my favourites. I have almost all the autos and presets from this era. Takumar set out to compete with Leica and it shows in these early lenses. The masterpiece from the 1950s preset line is the 200mm f3.5 Preset. That one loses a bit of sharpness wide open but is sharp enough. However, that lens has 19 aperture blades and has the most beautiful depth and bokeh of almost any lens I own. It's still available cheap as well. Where old lenses do lose sharpness is in wide angle. There are a few at 35mm which are good but below that they fall down. Newer wide angles are definitely sharper. One really sharp one is the early radioactive version Zeiss Jena Pancolar. The problem with that lens is discoloration due to the thorium but it's very sharp. I have not so old lenses like Nikons etc which are great but I love these really old Takumars. Superb build quality as well.
The issue with modern lenses is that to combat problems like aberrations for example, they add more elements. I just found out that stabilisation adds elements as well. This tends to kill 3D pop. If you try a Voigtländer lens for example, those are new made manual lenses that are a lot more like old lenses. They aren't cheap but they have fantastic 3D depth. Once you see this kind of thing, you can't unsee it. Of course in certain situations modern lenses with autofocus are a must but you can get pretty good at manual focus with some practice.
The problem is vintage STILL lenses are still quite flat compared to vintage CINEMA lenses. Compare a Cooke Kinetal to a, say, Helios 44-5 or whatever they are called. One feels rounded the other feels flat as a pancake
Ridiculous. I’m really not sure what each person thinks they mean by a vintage lens. Cooke panchros? Or maybe the new Cooke panchros? This entire video seems to completely misunderstand the optical quality of lenses lighting and cinematography in general let alone understand the nature of imperfection for the sake of it. There is nothing more human than being able to see the detail in a human face or hand. This should be a conversation about contrast coatings flare distortion chromatic aberration micro contrast and a million one other things that make any lens old or new look the way it does. Shoot through a net or a piece of glass filter or lens wack but this conversation is pretty repetitive and cliched stuff without getting to the nuts and bolts of what a k35 is really doing. Btw I have many of the lenses sighted here leica r Helios mamiya Zeiss and of course they have a look. But I do not consider the super speeds a particular vintage look and lump them in with Cooke panchros just because of their age. They have very specific looks that are to do with design not age. There are countless modern lenses that have character and I’m not totally sure that anyone of these contributors would kick a master prime out of bed to accommodate their Helios. The idea that these lenses add character is a short cut for interest. Ask Roger deakins what lenses he would choose to shoot on or go down to a local kit house and actually try some quality cinema lenses. This doesn’t even touch the sides of anamorphic lenses or film emulations or actually using a film camera let alone understand the true nature of how we actually see and interpret light. Vaseline any modern lens and it’s look light The Batman. Sorry boys but there really is a lot more too it than lumping the catch all vintage infront of almost any lens. Why not use cinematic instead. I’m not sure what other cliches are out there that say so little and that are so over used.
Yeah. Buy a broken camera :)) that will have character :)) You re just bored and u wanna be special. In 30 years u ll use 2023 lenses because they will be vintage by then
No - you're right. We're all wrong. We shouldn't ever try to use unique lenses to capture images. We should all shoot on a Sony A7sIII with G Master lenses. Gosh, where were you six years ago? You could have saved my career.
Best part about them is that some people love them, others hate them, nothing like bringing perfect balance to a creative life force! Thanks so much for having me on man, so cool to share this space with yourself and everybody else on here!
You’re the man Mark! It was a pleasure having you on the channel 💪🏼
I'm a big fan Mark. Have enjoyed your advice on vintage glass. I collect and use FD SSCs a lot. Glad to see you guys colaborating supporting one another. Anthony Rodriguez...thanks for having Mark on. Great video.
Thank you Anthony for including me in this pannel of fine gentlemen, Vintage and Weird lenses are a fantastic way to experiment with your photography or cinematography.
It was a pleasure having you Mathieu!
Great channel Mathieu but the Canon FD 35mm f2 Concave cost me buddy. I fully blame you 🤣
shooting vintage makes me feel “alive” … but when I saw Joel’s anamorphic shot with that waterfall bokeh, I basically died and went to heaven. magnificent.
Bahahahaha that’s amazing!
Gotta love anamorphic adapters! I geeked out a little bit too while editing it 😏
I got a Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f2.8 for 30 dollars on a flea market and it's been one of my absolute favorite lenses ever on both my Nikon d500 and my Fujifilm x-t5!
Its funny that the first interview talks so much about imperfections being human because i have astigmatism and because of that i had a natural preference to that look because its literally how i perceive the world so a lens that doesn't flare doesn't caputure what i see, i made me both appreciate my deviant vision and lens flares more.
Interesting perspective!
I love how you frame your a-roll with plants and your b-cam has the parallax with more greenery. Makes the the video feel better
Thanks for noticing :)
i use vintage nikkors with my A7siii and ii -- 135mm, 300mm, 28mm, 50mm. Especially the 135mm, it gives me a cool vintage look, kind of '70s...I'd love to have a Pancro...
😎🙏🏼
Yeah the Nikkors...oh man the 50mm 1.4 its just outta this world
I started with vintage lenses to save some money. Turned out I had spent way more than I ever thought I would. But it has been a rewarding journey. Took many interesting photos I would never had been able to with me lenses, and met many interesting people buying and selling or even just chatting about vintage lenses.
Exactly! Well put, rewarding is a solid word to describe using vintage lenses 👌🏼
Same thing happened with me, i started just trying to test focal lengths i liked, affordably, but the character of the lens earned themselves a place in my collection for them to stay.
I started in photography 20 years ago as i finished school. My first camera was a canon ae1 with a 50mm f2.8. I learned photography on this camera and one lens. In the years since i of course went digital and expanded my photography to a professional level. In the last three years I've fallen back in love with vintage lenses. I love the process. There's more work involved it feels more indepth. More of an art form. I now have 22 vintage lenses. All primes offering me a huge array of focal lengths with unique looks and tone. Its about feeling and being tactile. I love the look of vintage lenses. And of course the price. My advice is to anyone starting out in photography buy one prime vintage manual lens. It will only improve your skill.
APSC or cropped sensor get 28mm way cheaper than a 24. On full frame get a 35/40 or 50mm.
Completely agree! Thanks for sharing
Came here via Mark Holze, anyway I have a small RUclips channel, mostly around cars and other mechanics, not at all vintage lens related, I mostly use my Sony RX100.
But I sometimes blend in shots from my Sony A7II, often with deliberate "flaws" like light streaks, low contrast blooms from lights etc.
And those are the times when people ask what camera I use, when the imageries are "flawed" in a sense, or maybe more human 👍
Welcome to the channel!
I completely agree!
Great video! I can't agree more with the comments.
Shooting vintage lenses was my main reason for switching to a mirrorless camera & it has reignited my passion for photography. There is so much to love about the character of vintage lenses & discovering how to best use each vintage lens is part of this fantastic process.
Being inspired is more than half the battle as a creative!
Thanks for the input! 🙌🏼
Thank You too much for sharing this very clever approach. Greetings greetings from Belgium.
Thanks brother!
What a great inspiring video I just watched!!😍😍 Thanks so much Anthony for inviting them all and for creating this amazing & full of knowledge video!
Thank you!!
I stumbled across a used classic Nikkor 55mm macro lens and it was my first macro lens. Once I got used to the manual focusing, I fell in love with te quality of the images! Thanks for this video
Thanks for watching brotha!
@MarkHoltze sent me as a subscribed to his channel.
Thanks for this video and exposing me to other great creators.
I’ve been buying a few vintage lenses as I plan to launch a new channel and I’m excited to use just vintage lenses for many of the reasons everyone shared.
Happy to have you here!
Good luck on the RUclips journey, it’s a fun one 👏🏼🙌🏼
Great content Anthony! That is very informative and relevant 20 min. I'm a vingage lens shooter as well (Canon FDs, Olympus Zuikos, Helios 44, etc.) and in addition to all the aspects and reasons that have been explained, I would say that using vintage lenses is good to understand how well made items were built in the past, especially lenses with metal. Nowadays, it's plastic everywhere and electronic parts that can't be repaired. Lenghten the life of an item is always a good thing.
Appreciate the feedback and your input! 🙌🏼
Excellent. I shoot vintage 99.9% of the time. Locally, near me, no one used vintage but I always share to the local groups and give them the lens name I used. Which means nothing to them... yet. For me, manual focus and manual aperture control are now second nature and to be honest, I cannot imagine not having real-time DOF, like I get with all of my manual lenses. And why would I want to turn a aperture dial on the camera body anyway? For me, a lens without vintage bokeh is not an option. And I never see that kind of bokeh on modern lens photos. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing Kevin! 👌🏼
For me It begun as a way of buying lenses for my analogue pentax AND my gh4 and i just love them now
🙌🏼 they hook ya!
Awesome that you got them all to be part of your video, I especially liked the part of Edmund
Glad you enjoyed the video!
My first real camera was a Canon A-1 in 1983. Though I enjoyed having all its automatic modes, I shot most often in full manual mode. Now, in my 60s, I've become enamored with vintage and other manual lenses (also vintage road bikes and loudspeakers). The more automatic and electronically-controlled, the less attractive to me. I like that I have to understand what a manual lens is really doing, to actually engage with it. Of course I like digital cameras (I own six), but all save one are at least 10 years old, and I use (and build) up-to-date computers. I use modern lenses as well, but it's been many years since I bought any camera or lens that wasn't already owned -- and perhaps loved -- by someone else.
I'm born with vintage lenses in 1962, I have used them during 40 years and i'have no reason to change my addict to them
That’s amazing!
Maybe one day I will get into videography, I am sure it will happen soon. With that said I love vintage lenses I didn't get into vintage lenses because of the affordability. I got into them because of my love of infrared photography with the mirrorless camera bodies. I'm telling you using these old lenses brought me back in time when I fell in love with photography. After comparing vintage lenses against modern lenses I really like the rendering of the old lenses. They have better color saturation and 3D pop. The modern lenses have flatter colors and are clinically sharp edge to edge with a contrasty look. Some of the older low element lenses have outstanding micro contrast. I still have 2 modern lenses they have their place mainly for their auto focusing. Thank you for posting a great video. I will close in saying everything is a tradeoff and do be afraid to keep an open mind. You just might find something amazing.
Another great RUclips channel for vintage lens fans is Zenography.
Thanks for the Rec 💪🏼
Excellent video. New sub. Got sent here from Marks YT channel. Will definitely be checking out the other creators here.
As for why I shoot vintage glass for photography. They’re beautifully imperfect. They force me to consider every second of every moment I’m looking through the viewfinder. I love how they look, and feel. Their build quality. I love thinking about all the images they’ve captured over the decades they’ve been around. And, I absolutely love the images. I simply cannot get enough. I’ve got a (for me) complete Contax Zeiss set and a almost full FD set. A few random Minolta lenses. There are so many more I want to get. Probably going to look into Helios lenses next.
Thanks so much for the video and enjoy your baby moon!! And, congrats on the baby!!
Thanks a lot man!
Also, I appreciate the input and passion on your end 💪🏼
11 years ago, i switch all my modern EF lens for vintage new-fd lenses and E-mount. for many reason, but first reason was mechanical focusing critical work. Second reason was for "less contrast, equal resolution". I love my vintage set for that. But...."adapter" become THE "bad" : wiggle, time to switch lenses, and no weather sealing ( i shot horses only) . today i use only EF camera, so no more FD until next hybrid ou short flange camera... my simple 50mm new-fd miss me so much today. Switch to "all EF" since 3 weeks. don't thinks about vintage : TRY it , if your camera mount is ok : JUST TRY and keep or not. there is many reasons for use them and some to keep them away. today i shots horses in any condition, no need autofocus anymore. just practice.
What a fun video! I very much enjoyed this.
Also, I blame most of theses guys as well as a couple others, for my addiction to vintage lenses. Without their videos I wouldn't have known about a lot of the lenses I know own.
Takumars, Pentax, Nikkors, Konicas (especially Konica!), Petri, Minolta, Helios and a few oddball lenses. I've even bought entire rangefinder cameras in bad shape just to remove and adapt the lens to use on my camera!
I have also learned how to disassemble these lenses, clean and repair them. I love to find lenses that need a lot of help. Stuck apertures, focus rings, oil, fungus, dented filter threads or just dust. Its not hard to learn how to repair them. In most cases, there's a video someone made about how to disassemble, clean and repair the lens. I really enjoy the hunt to find these lenses, then buying them, fixing them, mounting them on the camera and then discovering their strengths and weaknesses. They all have something very special about them. Some are just straight trash and shouldn't be bothered with. But every once in a while you stumble into something that is an oddball, super unique and amazing! Such is the case with my Kuribayashi K.C. Petri ORIKKOR 105mm F3.5. If you can find one, snap it up. You won't be disappointed! Its a Triplet, bokeh monster. It looks funky on a modern camera, with its thin body and zebra polished features, but boy does it deliver the goods. And its wickedly sharp for a lens made in 1959-60. I've only ever seen one in person (mine) and one other for sale on eBay. It was snapped up super fast. A hard one to find.
My lens collection is now fairly large and I feel bad when I don't use a lens for a long time. I like them all, friends of sorts. I own a bunch of AF lenses, but to be honest, they mostly sit in a Pelican case and I just don't use them much these days. And I'm not entirely sure I remember how to make them work as I only use my manual focus/aperture lenses anymore. The funny part is, the AF system on my current camera is probably the best system I have ever owned and here I am not even using it.
Oh well, I'm enjoying what I'm doing. And that's the point, right?
You nailed it!
I use vintage lenses (generally M42 mount; Japanese and Soviet) not because they produce a flawed or imperfect image but because they produce a beautiful image.
Definitely beautiful images!
Absolutely loved this! Great to hear so many peoples perspectives. Love using vintage glass
Thanks man! They’re so fun 🥹
I've definitely gotten bitten by the vintage lens bug and mostly shoot with them these days. I just returned from a trip to Bryce Canyon & Zion National Parks in Utah where I only shot with my various Pentax Super Takumar lenses. They're absolutely fantastic. The best part about them is they're so much lighter to carry around than the RF lenses that I own. Granted, there are still moments where I will grab my RF lenses, but those are fewer these days.
I brought my vintage Nikkor lenses to the National Parks in Utah last summer!
@@EdmundElijah I think I'll be doing vintage Nikkors the next I visit a national park. It's fun to have options to try out!
Indeed.
Human are analogues in nature. This trend of embracing vintage lenses is akin to the love of vintage audio equipment and vinyl and tape. Soothing on eyes and ears to us. Lol.
🥹
When I bought my first now vintage lenses, they were not vintage at all but just quality 2nd hand, and I had no reason to replace them, talking about 1980ies primes.
(Standard) zooms have replaced several times, though.
The amazing part of low element primes is the clarity of the light that comes in, the more glass, for example in high element zooms or also 'modern' overcorrected primes, the flater gets the image and all 'pop' gets lost; many vintage lenses have this pop build-in what one has to simulate in post production when using fat modern lenses.
Love the insight! The way you explained it made a ton of sense
I recently discovered that "pop" factor myself! I mistakenly bought the "low end" 135 2.8 series E instead of a Nikkor version. Well, I fell in love with it's charm and background blur, I just HAD to "upgrade" this lens to the "real" version Nikkor (5 in 4 groups vs the less glass w/ 4 in 4 of the E) and wouldn't you know, ALL through the full aperture range, my E mopped the floor with the Nikkor AI!
I thought, well this can't be right. So I'll try an even higher priced AIS copy, well the Nikkor was STILL "muddy" compared to the E with less glass!
Exactly like you say, it "pops" it's brighter and far more 3D look to it... NOTHING that can be fixed to make it look like the 3d of the E in post. It's just flat and muddy compared. You'd never know if you didn't have a "budget" consumer grade E to compare it with. There's no way too many people know this. The BETTER lens sells for FAR less. It's build quality is still better than modern Nikkors hahaha. Modern nikkors would be like E minus lenses compared to it. So it's not it's build quality is low.
Well, needless to say, I sold BOTH Nikkor 135 2.8's and bought a second E in even better shape! Pixle peeping, I can see it's even sharper than the first copy. It looks just like no one ever used it. I suspect it's new old stock and I got even cheaper than my first copy! hahaha
I decided to collect all 5 E primes.... but I can say, they're not all the level of the 135 by any means however the 100mm 2.8 E is JUST slightly behind it! So close, that in normal photo shoots, you'd never guess which lens took the shot. Looking side by side, you can see the 135 takes the win at lower apertures but then by 5.6 or 8 it's right on par.
The 28 is "neat" but nothing to wright home about. The 50 is on it's way and I'm expecting similar results as will I be, when I find a good copy of the 35. I suspect these 3 will be more for collecting than using, unlike the 100/135 which are super charmers!
Because they are the best and capture the true life, and are a challenge to use which as humans we need the challenge, plus if not broken don't fix it
@EdProsser Hello man! Amazing work! May I ask what lens was used in this frame 11:20? hanks in Advance!
I’m pretty sure it was a Helios 44-2
Congratulations to you and your wife! 🎉 I wish you a great time together! :)
I have Helios-44M, and I love it! It really looks very stylish by itself, and photos are awesome too. Its bokeh is interesting, I don't like perfectly plain bokeh on modern glasses, it looks boring for me...And colors on f2.0 are wonderful too!
Thank you! 🙏🏼
Wow man! Killer swirly bokeh you got there!😍😍 Kindly could you tell us what lens was used in this frame 3:28? Thanks in advance!
Building a Vivitar FD set currently, love them on my XT3
Babymoon loved it but its more like baby BOOM hahahah Loved the vintage lenses vid and the vintage lenses it self you missed on the Nikkors they are awesome and yeah I missed on the Zeiss buy some and try them always Love take care
Vintage lenses price jus shot up after this video 😂 great stuff keep it comin
Hopefully not! 😂
Great video Anthony. Possibly shooting our big documentary on Canon FD's...but then again, might go Tokina Vista. We shall see.
FD’s! FD’s! FD’s! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I have some FD lenses for sale!
Awesome video now I’m inspired to pick up a vintage lens for my LUMIX S5II Mark 2
Do it!
It’s fairly cheap and inspiring 💪🏼
I love Mattieu's videos. He always comes across some wacky stuff
Love the angle he takes!
I wouldn't recommend vintage lens to anyone starting out. Most people that used vintage lenses is usually personal use or if project calls for it. Best example I can give someone think about anamorphic lenses and it's unique flares, looks great on fast action films. Now think about those flares in Killers of a Flower Moon it would of looked off IMO. But in a movie like Creator it works. More often then not Jobs require a clean look vs stylized look.
And the same for not liking clinical sharp lenses I would tell everyone to get clinically sharp lenses first. Videos can always been soften in post without loss of quality but but sharpening can add unwanted artifacts to an image. YT seems to always push a soft cinematic look that only exists in YT and social media circles. also music videos and product commercials that's meant to grab your attention. But in the movie industry it's more about being as clean as possible. Even in the Batman movie where the Helios lens was used, Greg Frasier doesn't use this lens for all his movies. he literally used it only in Batman. he wanted that look specifically for that movie but not all movies.
If your a solo shooter starting out you would greatly benefit from a clinically sharp zoom vs vintage prime. When working on a set you want as many focal lens and angles as possible then less so customer has plenty of options to choose from. Once you get a name for yourself is when you should experiment and people will allow for your own creative choices.
With all that said, I own Helios, Canon FDs and Carl Zeiss I use for personal and creative projects. But for paid projects it's all rentals and what the budget allows, unless it's low budget commercials then just Gmasters.
Hey, that’s me! 🎉
🫣
been obsessed with vintage lenses for some time, very enjoyable video
Thanks!
Thank you for this video. You just increased prices on the market. Fortunately my own collection also jumped up in value.😂
You should talk how bad vintage lenses are. Hm .. to late afraid.
Lol I might’ve spoke too soon.
Now I’m debating getting a Leica R set
Good job, loved hearing everyone's perspective.
Thanks! Glad it was useful for ya 🙏🏼
would have been amazing to see - inserted visuals side by each expert ... the passion was beautiful ... with inserted visuals.. a cherry .. would be been lovely .. x
For sure! Thanks
Awesome video! I follow most of these guys and love hearing from them
Glad you found value in the video 🙌🏼
Excellent video, thank you!!
Thanks!
Be sure to check out LOMO OKS lenses! Best of both worlds imo
I’ll check them out! Thanks 🙏🏼
@@AnthonyRodriguezz OKS1-50-1 is such a gem... literally a Russian Cooke Panchro: ruclips.net/video/b3G0aGJVYTg/видео.html
Great video! I love my vintage lens set:)
Which set?
@@AnthonyRodriguezz I have a set of minolta lenses. They have not all the same serial number but look great. I used the set for our new shortfilm, which I just uploaded :)
@@omenka I’ll be sure to check it out!
@@AnthonyRodriguezz thanks a lot
I have a Canon FD 85mm 1.2 L that I found for a really affordable price via a broken AE-1 and its my prized photography posession. I’ve gotten some of my best images from that lens. I recently came across a Yashica 55mm 1.2 and I want to try it out but I need an adapter for my A7III so I can use it.
Love that lens!
The timing is perfect as i just started using vintage lenses for photography. BTW that jacket is 🔥where did you get it made?
Thanks bro! I actually had it made w/ Queensboro. Best embroidery/printing service out there!
Also, I’ll be coming out with some more vintage content in the future 😎🫣
@@AnthonyRodriguezz 🔥👌🏾 great taste man. And cool I just subbed
@@lexgraham thanks for that brother!
When it comes to vintage lenses, I sometimes wonder if it matters whether we talk about video or photography. I focus on food photography and street photography. I have a sizeable collection of vintage lenses: pentax takumars, contax zeisses, multiple fast standard primes, and by far and away I will rely on the zeiss lenses, the sharpest among the vintage lenses, for stuff I end up using. Older lenses that are really imperfect or characterful end up feeling too limiting or gimicky for stills I think. I still ended up purchasing a modern lens for my most commonly used focal range.
For photography, most of the time I’d opt for the sharpest lens possible! That’s just me though. Ik plenty using vintage lenses for photo
I have been buying Minolta lens for my A99, I am so happy. However I want a really good Ultra Wide vintage lens below $100. What would you recommend?
Hmmm ultra wide and $100 doesn’t really mesh
@@AnthonyRodriguezz Ok ok, I see that now haha. How much do you think I need for ultra wide or a good fisheye? ... What is the difference between wide and ultra-wide?
All the old lenses I have were really cheap. In fact i only eber bought a single modern lens. And that cost more than all my other lenses combined.
Half of my old glass is in really bad shape tho, and the most restoration I ever did was adding some oil to focus easier.
Yet, 95% of the photos I take come with the one lens that I got for free when I bought my first digital camera used. The size of the lens makes more places accessible and therefore enable my photography.
Love that
Great watch man! Keep it up!
Thanks brother!
Great video, thank you !!
Thank you!
Modern lenses take the fun out of photography and can be so expensive, but vintage glass has no electronics to stuff up are tougher and more reliable. For example Nikon 1 lenses stuff up the apature iris will stick and are next to useless, so by using adapters and vintage glass you no longer have to throw away your perfectly good Nikon 1 camera bodies. The Nikon J5 has a working light meter but the Nikon 1 V1 does not, so this will teach you how to use an external light meter and teach you how to bracket and with time you wont even need your light meter for most of your photography. But i still advise to have a camera with dedicated lenses as well. This is only my opinion. I now have bought myself a Nikon Zfc and have ordered its first adapter PK to Z mount, i will buy more adapters as required, cant wait to put some vintage glass on it.
🙌🏼
"Organic".... The right word to describe the look that these lenses produce is "organic".
That’s one way to say it, yeah!
Great video brother!
Thanks man! 🙏🏼
Love it man!
Thanks brother!
Nice video, why does it look like there is an overlay or mostly transparent text from a youtube page or something like that in the upper left of your video?
Idk! Not sure I see what you’re saying!
I’m curious now!
Hmm looking at it now and not seeing what I saw earlier... Looks like different lines of text. Maybe it is a weird burn in from a previous screen I was displaying on my high (Low) quality monitor? If thats it, I hope I didn't cause too much of alarm...
Nononono! No! Don't buy vintage lenses!
Because that will raise the price for me 👀🤭
😂 buy your vintage lenses now 🤷🏽♂️
@@AnthonyRodriguezz I have a few Asahi Pentax in my arsenal and a Helios. Nothing too exotic though. They are super fun to use. Hoping they'll release on of those "auto focus for manual lenses" systems for Sony someday. That would help a lot with doing video with them =)
SOOOO GOOD BROTHA!
❤️🙌🏼🙏🏼 thanks for the support bro
Great video!
Thanks!
AWESOME!
Thanks!
I just hope they stay a low interest item to keep the prices down so I can diversify my collection of lenses.
Yeah… the prices have for sure neutralized
Man I want set of Leica R 😢
Currently building out a set!
Honestly if you source them well and have the patience, you won’t be spending a fortune
5:58 who is this Guy speaking to?
Joel is simply filming a talking head with a side angle
@@AnthonyRodriguezz That's a little stupid init?
Nope
once you go back, you'll never come back :)
100%
because I'm broke is a perfect answer for me.
😂😂
Why does everyone say think vintage lenses are soft? Many of them are, especially wide open but many are very sharp. I have some Contax Zeiss lenses which you mention and those are not my sharpest vintage lenses. I have a few lenses as far back as the 1950s which are sharper.
Some are definitely sharper than others! For the most part vintage lenses are not as sharp as modern ones, which is what I prefer anyways
@@AnthonyRodriguezz Some of the old Takumars are pretty sharp. My favourites are the really old ones from the 1950s. The presets and autos. I have a Takumar 55mm for the 1970s but I prefer the old ones. The Takumar Auto 55cm f2 is one of my favourites. I have almost all the autos and presets from this era. Takumar set out to compete with Leica and it shows in these early lenses. The masterpiece from the 1950s preset line is the 200mm f3.5 Preset. That one loses a bit of sharpness wide open but is sharp enough. However, that lens has 19 aperture blades and has the most beautiful depth and bokeh of almost any lens I own. It's still available cheap as well.
Where old lenses do lose sharpness is in wide angle. There are a few at 35mm which are good but below that they fall down. Newer wide angles are definitely sharper.
One really sharp one is the early radioactive version Zeiss Jena Pancolar. The problem with that lens is discoloration due to the thorium but it's very sharp. I have not so old lenses like Nikons etc which are great but I love these really old Takumars. Superb build quality as well.
The issue with modern lenses is that to combat problems like aberrations for example, they add more elements. I just found out that stabilisation adds elements as well. This tends to kill 3D pop. If you try a Voigtländer lens for example, those are new made manual lenses that are a lot more like old lenses. They aren't cheap but they have fantastic 3D depth. Once you see this kind of thing, you can't unsee it.
Of course in certain situations modern lenses with autofocus are a must but you can get pretty good at manual focus with some practice.
Vintage is but AF is the future
Not sure what this means?
Congratulations.
Thanks!
On what? 😂😅
The problem is vintage STILL lenses are still quite flat compared to vintage CINEMA lenses. Compare a Cooke Kinetal to a, say, Helios 44-5 or whatever they are called. One feels rounded the other feels flat as a pancake
Depends on the lens. My Leica RS are anything but flat
@@AnthonyRodriguezz Which ones do you own and what camera do you use them on?
You forgot the guys from Zenography and Vintage Optiks.
There are 20 other companies I didn’t mention as well 😉
Vintage lenzize
~ Interesting excellent vintage lenses for less than $1,000, Joel? For less than $100 also, fer Freakin’ sure ~
Music is too loud :(
Through the whole video or just the beginning?
@@AnthonyRodriguezz beginning only. Didn't hear it later. Thanks for answering!
But is it parfocal?
Is what parfocal?
Organic...
Mmm
Why did you delete my post? Not cool man.
Don’t think I deleted your post
You can just buy brand new Chinese lenses if you want low optical quality
Not even close to the same
Ridiculous. I’m really not sure what each person thinks they mean by a vintage lens. Cooke panchros? Or maybe the new Cooke panchros? This entire video seems to completely misunderstand the optical quality of lenses lighting and cinematography in general let alone understand the nature of imperfection for the sake of it. There is nothing more human than being able to see the detail in a human face or hand. This should be a conversation about contrast coatings flare distortion chromatic aberration micro contrast and a million one other things that make any lens old or new look the way it does. Shoot through a net or a piece of glass filter or lens wack but this conversation is pretty repetitive and cliched stuff without getting to the nuts and bolts of what a k35 is really doing. Btw I have many of the lenses sighted here leica r Helios mamiya Zeiss and of course they have a look. But I do not consider the super speeds a particular vintage look and lump them in with Cooke panchros just because of their age. They have very specific looks that are to do with design not age. There are countless modern lenses that have character and I’m not totally sure that anyone of these contributors would kick a master prime out of bed to accommodate their Helios. The idea that these lenses add character is a short cut for interest. Ask Roger deakins what lenses he would choose to shoot on or go down to a local kit house and actually try some quality cinema lenses. This doesn’t even touch the sides of anamorphic lenses or film emulations or actually using a film camera let alone understand the true nature of how we actually see and interpret light. Vaseline any modern lens and it’s look light The Batman. Sorry boys but there really is a lot more too it than lumping the catch all vintage infront of almost any lens. Why not use cinematic instead. I’m not sure what other cliches are out there that say so little and that are so over used.
Lol
😂😂😂😂
Yeah. Buy a broken camera :)) that will have character :))
You re just bored and u wanna be special. In 30 years u ll use 2023 lenses because they will be vintage by then
This is the definition of ignorance brother 😉
No - you're right. We're all wrong. We shouldn't ever try to use unique lenses to capture images. We should all shoot on a Sony A7sIII with G Master lenses. Gosh, where were you six years ago? You could have saved my career.
0at 5.40 guy talks od cheap lenses 100k? -yomel xonrbuors swwm spaced-out. = new analog-look perhaüs ok. back ?
I need a translator!!
great video !
Thank you 💪🏼