Actually, this is anything but new. This is a Pentacon 135mm f/2.8 prime (i.e. no zoom) lens made in the early 70s in the GDR (German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany). That makes it a good few years older than I am!
This is the first camera equipment purchase I've made that has been entirely funded by sales of my photos!
This lens is often referred to online as the 'Bokeh Monster', due to the 15 blade iris which produces beautiful out of focus detail -- modern lenses typically have between 5 and 9 blades.
I've been hunting for one of these on eBay for the best part of a year, but they usually go for more than I want to pay, or are in very poor condition. This one had little description but seemed in good condition, and went for a reasonable price. On receiving it, it is in superb mechanical condition.
This is a totally manual lens -- not only is it manual focus, but also manual aperture -- a second ring allows you smoothly adjust the aperture between f/2.8 and f/32. This lens also has a preset aperture function, where you can limit the maximum aperture. This lets you compose and focus the image with the lens wide open, and be able to stop it down to your preferred setting by turning the aperture ring until it stops, without having to look at it.
The focus ring has a fantastic weighty feel, with about 350 degrees of rotation to go from infinity to MFD (about 5 feet). Clearly this lens wasn't designed for action photography, but this range of movement allows for extremely precise adjustments to be made. This, along with the smooth aperture adjustment, would also make it an excellent lens for video work.
It's also remarkably small -- despite the relatively long focal length and wide aperture, it manages to be shorter than my 17-85mm lens at its shortest, and narrower than my 50mm f/1.8. It just goes to show how much space the electronics to perform automatic focus and aperture control take up. Despite its small size, it is weighty and immaculately built -- every part of it is either metal or glass, and there's not a micron of play in it.
Sadly I can't actually take any photos with it yet, as I'm still waiting for the adapter to fit it to my camera to arrive from Hong Kong, but I'm excited to see if it performs as well as it looks!
Taken with the 50mm f/1.8 lens and two off-camera flashes, one to camera left to light up the lens interior, and one to the top right of the lens to provide some detail in the metal knurled controls. I also allowed some ambient light from the window to provide some soft fill.
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
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Very cool purchase! I have an old Pentacon Practika with a 50mm/1.8 and find this to be a great sturdy camera and lens. The manual aperture and focus rings are a lot of fun too! Looking forward to seeing what you produce with this lens, it sounds superb!
@trbo It's an M42 screw mount, so can be adapted to fit Canon cameras with a simple metal plate ($3 delivered). There's no corrective glass required to allow focusing to infinity (unlike, I think, when fitting an M42 lens to a Nikon) so the quality should be just as good as if it had a Canon mount.
I'm not expecting miracles -- this is, after all, from the 1970s, and while the actual design for a 135mm prime has changed little in that time, this lens has no multi-coated surfaces or fancy glass elements designed to correct for aberration. However, it should produce very nice out-of-focus highlights.
The M42 mount was extremely popular so there are a huge variety of lenses out there. Zoom lens technology has moved on dramatically so generally zoom lenses are considered to be best avoided, but for cheap prime lenses, there is a huge choice. eBay is the place to go if you have a specific lens in mind, like I did, but for true bargains try car boot sales, yard sales or flea markets, as people regularly report picking up lenses for as little as $5!
Great to know, Alexis. I have been looking into playing with the older glass and have been trying to figure out what mount to start out with. Sounds like the M42 is the way to go with quite a few options including Zeiss.
Any other mounts you would recommend as a fellow Canon user?
@trbo I think Pentax K is another commonly converted type of lens. Because Canon's EOS mount lens-to-sensor (or film, originally) distance is one of the shortest around, you can adapt quite a large range of lenses to fit without requiring corrective optics. The most comprehensive list I'm aware of is here, although I'm not sure if all of the theoretically possible adapters are actually available: http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/eosfaq/manual_focus_EOS.html
Slight care needs to be taken to ensure that any lens you buy has a manual aperture ring, as there aren't any adapters that I'm aware of that will convert the Canon interface into another camera's interface. Without manual aperture control you will only be able to use the lens wide open. The only exception I'm aware of is this Nikon adapter, which allows you to control the aperture on modern Nikon lenses: http://www.16-9.net/nikon_g/
I'm not expecting miracles -- this is, after all, from the 1970s, and while the actual design for a 135mm prime has changed little in that time, this lens has no multi-coated surfaces or fancy glass elements designed to correct for aberration. However, it should produce very nice out-of-focus highlights.
The M42 mount was extremely popular so there are a huge variety of lenses out there. Zoom lens technology has moved on dramatically so generally zoom lenses are considered to be best avoided, but for cheap prime lenses, there is a huge choice. eBay is the place to go if you have a specific lens in mind, like I did, but for true bargains try car boot sales, yard sales or flea markets, as people regularly report picking up lenses for as little as $5!
Any other mounts you would recommend as a fellow Canon user?
http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/eosfaq/manual_focus_EOS.html
Slight care needs to be taken to ensure that any lens you buy has a manual aperture ring, as there aren't any adapters that I'm aware of that will convert the Canon interface into another camera's interface. Without manual aperture control you will only be able to use the lens wide open. The only exception I'm aware of is this Nikon adapter, which allows you to control the aperture on modern Nikon lenses: http://www.16-9.net/nikon_g/
What an exciting treasure to find ;-)