Lenses

Photography lens reviews – In this section of the website, you will find reviews of lenses for all sorts of different mounts. It is often the case that lenses can only easily be used on the cameras they were designed for, so whilst reading through the reviews here, it is worth making sure any lens you might like the look of is compatible with your camera.

That being said, this is not always the case, and in sometimes lenses can be adapted or even hacked to fit on different cameras. This has become increasingly popular in recent years with some digital cameras offering a great platform for adapting some of the lenses listed below.

You can read more about lens adapting and modifications here

As with all the content on this website, if you find something of interest, you can find more similar products by clicking on the tags you will find at the bottom of the reviews.

Chroma Double Glass Lens – My First Shots – by Sonny Rosenberg

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I first heard of the Chroma Double Glass lens in a post here on 35mmc. A new 24mm extremely compact and inexpensive fixed focus, fixed aperture lens for Leica screw mount definitely piqued my interest!

One of my very favorite cameras is my 1949 Leica Ic, it’s essentially a cut down (hot rodded in my mind) IIIc without the whole rangefinder/viewfinder assembly and without the slow speeds. I guess that makes it more of a cut down IIc. In any case, I love its compactness and straightforwardness of purpose. Since I mostly use wide to very wide lenses and zone or hyperlfocal focusing, and since you need an external viewfinder for the lenses I prefer anyway, a more full featured camera seems like unnecessary excess.

W-Nikkor 3.5cm f/1.8 LTM mounted on a Leica M Monochrom typ 246

Nikon (Nippon Kogaku) W-Nikkor 3.5cm f/1.8 LTM Review – a GAS killer – By Agata Urbaniak

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Nowadays, f/1.8 seems synonymous with entry-level. It’s often a compromise between speed, size/weight, and affordability draped in plastic and aimed at budding photographers looking for their first prime or those wanting something light and inexpensive but still faster than a zoom. Mostly associated with the nifty fifty but also often found in 35mm lenses, either those for crop sensors serving as normal lenses or moderate wide angle for full frame. The Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX used to be a very popular lens back in my DSLR days and you could get a used one for around a hundred quid. I briefly had one. I remember there being a slightly newer full frame version as well. Then I totally lost touch with lenses made in this century.

Pentax 50mm f/1.2 SMC lens on Film with a Pentax LX – by Aivaras

By / / Lenses, SLRs / 13 Comments

This wouldn’t be review of camera body or lens, there are plenty written. What I’ll share is my personal story of how I come to this set. One more aspect why I’m writing this is that when I was considering the Pentax 50mm f/1.2 lens I found there to be a lack of proper film photos within shared results. So what to expect from it? For those who will be exploring the idea of buying this same glass, hopefully, this piece of writing might be useful.

I just had to come to this particular “corner“; a combination of lens and camera body, that most of film Pentaxians should confess they think about.

Skopagon lens on an Ultramatic camera

Voigtänder Skopagon 40mm f2 – a Vintage Lens with Modern Performance – By Oliver Toth

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For most people, the choice of lens comes down to a choice between vintage and modern. Modern lenses with aspherical elements and modern coating tend to produce very sharp images without failures and aberrations, which is, however, perceived by many people as a too “sterile” and “clinical” rendering. Vintage lenses, by contrast, tend to have less perfect rendering, which most people find aesthetically pleasing; these lenses are said to have “character”. In this review, I am going to talk about a lens that unites the best of both worlds: it renders perfectly like a modern lens, but without the clinical and sterile look associated with lenses that have aspherical elements. Let me introduce the Voigtänder Skopagon 40mm f2 lens from 1961!

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