Digest 03_February 2021

Testing a vintage lens / Cliff Edge _ Stephens and Stephens Developers Ltd.

< Digested Perspectives >

This is a space where I’ll be posting images that don’t necessarily find a natural home on other areas of my website.

Each professional commission - indeed every day out with a camera in hand - also throws up a series shots without an intended use perhaps, but that bring me some sort of satisfaction that I’d like to share here.

> Cliff Edge - Structural Steel; testing a vintage lens <

I wasn’t sure whether to be sceptical or not on this occasion about what I had read on the internet.

Ordinarily I’m a sceptic in these scenarios, but with some social distancing time on my hand, and for a modest cash outlay of £40, it seemed a good opportunity to do a little experiment.

What I had seen was people extolling the virtues of a relatively versatile vintage lens, that had been manufactured in the early 1980s, and could in many scenarios match the performance of high-tech’ modern lenses at more than ten times the price when adapted to fit a modern digital camera body.

I was in for a pleasant surprise; the basic optics of the lens were superb, producing very sharp images and reinvigorating an enthusiasm for lenses that have to be focused manually.

It also tuned to to be a demonstration of where modern lens technology has charged ahead - mainly in lens coatings to control the natural flaws that any lens will exhibit.