Old Manual Focus Prime Lens

Challenge #5 in the Technology Enabling Art series. Hosted by ProfHankD.

Challenge has finished

Over the last 30 years, photographers have become used to a variety of convenience features such as wide-open auto exposure, auto focus, and zoom lenses. Unfortunately, these features cost us depth-of-focus preview, precision and robustness of physical construction, and the superior IQ of prime lenses. This challenge is for photos created combining the best of both worlds: modern digital image capture and processing with an old, high-quality, manual-focus, prime lens.

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Announced:

Thursday, 22nd October, 2009 (GMT)

Submissions:

Thursday, 29th October, 2009 – Wednesday, 4th November, 2009 (GMT)

Voting:

Thursday, 5th November, 2009 – Wednesday, 11th November, 2009 (GMT)

Processing rules:

This is NOT a challenge for "old looking" or "lomo-like" images of deliberately low technical quality; take advantage of the high quality of the old optics used

Capture date rules:

No restrictions.

Additional rules:

Lens used should be at least 25 years old, fixed focal length, and should not support auto focus (a "focus confirm" adapter is ok)
Try to avoid the "elite" $1000+ lenses for this challenge; there are plenty of great 30-year-old lenses under $200
NO FILM CAMERAS: you can use any modern electronic capture device that can mount an old lens, including true DSLRs, finderless micro4/3, C-mount sensors, custom-modified webcams, etc.

Maximum number of entries per user:

Maximum number of entries in challenge:

200

submission
phase has

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198 entries

voting
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ended

3849 votes