I promised to get back with more “exotic” stories from the Pentax film world, and here I am! I’d like to share my experience with the Voigtlander 40mm lens in Pentax K mount. Most of the time I’ll be talking about shooting it on film, but there will be a few bonus frames shot with the Fuji GFX medium format digital body at the end.
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.
A 30-year-old, hand-me-down Nikon lens recently bit the dust and I decided to replace it. Surprisingly, the exact model I was replacing is still available today. Try doing that with a computer component or a phone charger. But Nikon’s F mount is classic and virtually all the manual focus lenses manufactured by the company today are still AI-S lenses – a standard that first hit the market in the early 1980s. (The exceptions are a few specialty lenses.)
This article is mainly a review of an unusual lens – Minolta AF Reflex 500 – one of the few Autofocusing Catadioptric lenses to be made. I also have a Korean-made manual focus ‘Cat’ that I will use for some comparisons. Mine is badged as a Vivitar. The same lens has been produced in recent times with a Samyang or Rokinon branding.
There’s a certain joy that comes from handling vintage lenses. Whether it’s the well-defined movement of the focus ring, or the generally rugged build, or even the well-defined clicks of a physical aperture ring – there’s almost a sense of romanticism between a photographer and their gear.
