The Best CHEAP Vintage Lenses, From £20 - £40! 

In the age of the manual focus film SLR camera , they all came with a 50mm (or thereabouts) lens, and I am convinced that these lenses were so good because that is what was on the front when Amateur Photographer and Practical Photography etc obtained cameras to test. If the results looked good then people would be encouraged to go out and buy into that system. I don't think I have come across a standard 50, 55 or 58mm lens that didn't impress. I just bought a Vivitar 28mm 2.8 for my Canon A-1 and impressions from my first roll are that it gives good looking photos, though I'm sure some lens forum member would point out the corners aren't very sharp. I tend to avoid putting important stuff in the corners of my shots anyway. Great review! Keith

The Hanimex 135mm f2.8 is indeed fantastic. Color fringing is strong but easy to correct. I got mine for 30 bucks. What a bargain.

Great video Nigel. I think thay the Takumar f2 is the pick of that bunch.

These days people tend to think that Tessar's can't be good because they have only a few elements, typically 4. However I started my career before multicoating, and back then we regarded smaller element counts to be advantageous because it usually meant higher contrast. I have an Ektar Tessar on my old Speed Graphic from 1962. An unsung lens but is one of the best Tessars I have used is the lens in the Kodak Pocket Instamatic 50 and 60 from 1972. Because the 110 format was so small Kodak spared no expense with their top tier 110 camera to eek the most possible sharpness out of the small format. They called it a fast f2.7 coupled rangefinder Ektar on the 60, and same lens, but without the rangefinder on the 50, and while Kodak refused to confirm or deny, the lenses are generally believed to be made for Kodak by Rodenstock in Germany because Rodenstock usually made the best Kodak lenses. Sometimes good things come in unexpected places. Another great Tessar is the f2.8 lens on the Sony X3000 action camera where the tiny sensor size demands a high resolving power lens. While these lenses are not interchangeable lenses, they do demonstrate that Tessar's are capable of extraordinary resolving power, and should never be looked down upon because of small element counts. Tessar can be a brilliant lens design.

Oreston became the Pentacon*, not Practika. I have the Zeiss and it's beautiful. If you're at closest focus you get tons of blur at 2.8

Enjoyed that. Big fan of the Industars. I've never heard you mention the Industar 69 28mm f2.8. It does need some minor adjustment to focus to infinity, but that's easily done. It's an absolute pancake, and needing only an M39 mount adapter lends itself very well for use as an in the pocket walk around lens with a compact camera like the Sony A5000 or 6000.

The Helios 44 can be a great lens, but it suffers from inconsistent QC as under the Soviet economic model, quantity produced trumped quality. It was also made in different locations over the years and the quality varied significantly between different factories.

Miranda lenses were most likely made by Soligor. The ones I have are extremely good.

Hey Nigel, I've recently got into vintage lenses and enjoyed quite a few videos. You often mention distinct colour profiles of certain lens manufacturers (like the blueish colours of Konica or "Pentax colours") and there are also well known optical profiles like the famous "Zeiss 3D pop". I couldn't really find an overview or comparison of different colour/optical profiles and lack the collection to compare them myself. Would you mind doing one?

My two cents on Tessars, unless you really like the look and feel of one, I think there's little reason to get one for any SLR system, where the double Gauss 58-50mm F/2-1.4 lenses are so abundant, provide a faster aperture/thinner depth of field if needed, and better resolution. Tessars are a great choice when you want to deliver good to very good image quality for a low cost, there's a reason why they're one of the most successful lens types ever made, but for regular photographic use on interchangeable lens cameras there almost always are better options out there that often cost the same or less. Definitely a +1 from me on the Takumar lenses, they are most beautifully made. If you are looking to buy a camera with a fixed lens Tessar type, try to get an F/3.5. From what I understand, the F/2.8 Tessars that became dominant in the second half of the last century are a bit overstretched and hail from a time where more weight was put on a bright aperture rather than image quality, for 1) marketing reasons, 2) having a brighter viewfinder before the advent of autofocus and bright, laser-etched screens, and 3) making use of the slow speed film available. There also are F/3.5 Tessars for M42, but these are earlier than the F/2.8 variants, and I'm not sure if the image improvement gained from the slower F-stop isn't outpaced by improvements in lens design, glass types and coatings you see in the later F/2.8 Tessars.

Nice video review... I've the Takumar 50mmf1.4 and it's gorgeous.. obviously I want more lenses like some Voiglander..but Do you know what?? .. Vintage lenses can cure GAS

always looking for new lenses to try, thank you for the video

The SLR, both m39 and m42, version of the Jupiter 11 will focus down to 1.4m ☝🏻

9:02 -- _"Oh ... v-twin."_ Hahaha! Thank you for these cheap lenses! I love cheap lenses very much. That was informative and interesting. Thank you!

nice video mate.. just exactly what im looking for.. will they fit on fuji x lens

Love my Soligor 28/2.8. Of course, Soligor didn’t actually manufacture it. In fact several different companies made this lens over the years. Mine is a 1973 version, manufactured by Tokina. Also have a lovely Hanimex 35/2.8, which, like all Hanimex lenses, is a rebadged lens made by an actual Japanese manufacturer. In fact I have a Denubigon 35/2.8 (I know, I had never heard of them before I saw the lens on eBay) which is exactly the same as the Hanimex. Both the Soli and Hani render beautifully on my Nikon Z7ii

Hi ! Really enjoy your videos, going to London next week, is there a market to go and maybe find som lenses ? All the best , Goran from Sweden

Prices are up because certain RU-vidrs are always going on about how great they are! 😂

Great video as always but why does everyone have an obsession with sharpness? All lenses are sharp - you just need to understand their limits and know how to use them.

just ordered an Industar 61, coming from Ukraine

How can you tell if a lens is a Tessar design if it's not a Carl Zeiss and therefore not named as such?

Are they cheap or are they just affordable.

Miranda lenses are made by its parent company called "Soligor".

🧟