Lenses with interesting effects

[Arno Nel]

Hi All

Are there any cheap/vintage lenses that do some effect really well?

I love the idea of Lensbaby, eg: the Velvet lenses, but hate the price.

Have seen some great threads recommending lenses with great Bokeh.

What other lenses create a unique effect?

 

[Sepeteus]

I can recommend Super-Multi-Coated Takumar/6x7 1:4.5/75 lens with adapted to full frame camera. I use Canon EOS 1Ds. Full frame camera uses only portion of 6x7 lenses image circle, so no vignetting and it is sharp corner to corner. I use it full open. The effect: very appealing bokeh behind the sharp subject. Sharpness causes excellent 3D to the main subject. Interesting bokeh orbs when shot backlit. With these abilities it is extremely useful for stitched panoramas. 9mm extension tube used.

Four landscape orientated pic panorama

Cropped from four pic panorama

Three pic panorama

Single shot

 

[widgetbox]

OP - what camera ?

You could try the Fotasy 35mm f1.7 CCTV lens

Interesting in that the centre is generally in focus but elsewhere is somewhat variable. Great for a certain type of shot and usually less than $30. I'm probably not selling it well but it's a fun bargain lens.

Sony A6000 / Fotasy 35mm f1.7



--
Richard

 

[Zonyman]

Mir-1B (35mm f/2.8) can create spectacular lens flares, which you could use for artistic effect. It's also a very usable general-purpose lens, for situations where you don't have the Sun in frame or just outside the frame.

See this article (also, the video linked from the article) for examples:

4 Lenses for Amazing Camera Lens Flares | VashiVisuals Blog

Love them or hate them…lens flares have been trending non-stop over the last several years. You can find them in every J.J. Abrams movie, car commercial, wedding video, print ad or recent independent film. Lens flares are caused by the scattering of light and the reflection/refraction of light...

vashivisuals.com

 

[Laagwater]

I think that my Mini Cyclop is my strangest lens .

It's a lens from a russian T3C-2 night vision scope. It has no apurture ring and it's about a 100mm f2 lens. It has the strangest field curvature i have seen from a lens and it acts like a tele lensbaby or so. It has a M42 mount.

Here are some examples:

Great Topic!

Edwin

 

[ProfHankD]

Are there any cheap/vintage lenses that do some effect really well?

Yes; nearly all of them do... and if they don't, they are easily modified to.

I love the idea of Lensbaby, eg: the Velvet lenses, but hate the price.

The Velvet 56mm f/1.6 gives very nice bokeh, but perhaps 1/3 of the old fast 50s out there are competitive with it or better. I would say that the Velvet tries to render somewhat like the famous, old, and pricey Rokkor 58mm f/1.2, which it sort-of does. Just considering bokeh, the M42 Takumar 50mm f/1.4 is easily smoother.

Have seen some great threads recommending lenses with great Bokeh.

Yup. At the top of my list: Sony/Minolta 135mm STF, Laowa 105mm STF, Samyang 85mm f/1.4, M42 Takumar 50mm f/1.4, Tamron SP 90mm f/2.5 macro, .... Note that 3 of those are still available new.

What other lenses create a unique effect?

There is no gimmick that makes great photos; think about what effect you need to make your photos look as you envision they should, then look for ways to create that effect.

If you like really smooth bokeh, you can make yourself an apodizing filter (a filter that is clear in the middle and has dark edges, which is a bit trickier to make than it sounds) and can get STF-quality bokeh out of most lenses. Actually, there are a lot of things you can do with homemade apodizing filters of various shapes that you can just stick in front of most lenses. If you like shallow depth of field (DoF), you can also play with lens tilt. Like different and extreme perspectives? Think about fisheye or even bird's eye lenses. Like horrific field curvature, glow from spherical aberration, or other optical defects? Pretty easy to mess-up an old manual lens by removing or flipping an element or two....

Basically, the key is not to find a lens that does something odd and then shoot lots of photos with it, but to determine what kind of effect you'd like to see and then look for lenses (or mods) to help create that effect. Between minor lens mods and postprocessing, almost any effect you can think of is possible....

 

[adrian1988]

Are there any cheap/vintage lenses that do some effect really well?

Yes; nearly all of them do... and if they don't, they are easily modified to.

I love the idea of Lensbaby, eg: the Velvet lenses, but hate the price.

The Velvet 56mm f/1.6 gives very nice bokeh, but perhaps 1/3 of the old fast 50s out there are competitive with it or better. I would say that the Velvet tries to render somewhat like the famous, old, and pricey Rokkor 58mm f/1.2, which it sort-of does. Just considering bokeh, the M42 Takumar 50mm f/1.4 is easily smoother.

Have seen some great threads recommending lenses with great Bokeh.

Yup. At the top of my list: Sony/Minolta 135mm STF, Laowa 105mm STF, Samyang 85mm f/1.4, M42 Takumar 50mm f/1.4, Tamron SP 90mm f/2.5 macro, .... Note that 3 of those are still available new.

What other lenses create a unique effect?

There is no gimmick that makes great photos; think about what effect you need to make your photos look as you envision they should, then look for ways to create that effect.

If you like really smooth bokeh, you can make yourself an apodizing filter (a filter that is clear in the middle and has dark edges, which is a bit trickier to make than it sounds) and can get STF-quality bokeh out of most lenses. Actually, there are a lot of things you can do with homemade apodizing filters of various shapes that you can just stick in front of most lenses. If you like shallow depth of field (DoF), you can also play with lens tilt. Like different and extreme perspectives? Think about fisheye or even bird's eye lenses. Like horrific field curvature, glow from spherical aberration, or other optical defects? Pretty easy to mess-up an old manual lens by removing or flipping an element or two....

Basically, the key is not to find a lens that does something odd and then shoot lots of photos with it, but to determine what kind of effect you'd like to see and then look for lenses (or mods) to help create that effect. Between minor lens mods and postprocessing, almost any effect you can think of is possible....

The review from lenstip on the laowa 105 stf may give you a bit of thought.

Venus Optics LAOWA STF 105 mm f/2 (T3.2) review - Introduction - LensTip.com

Best digital cameras and lens reviews. If you are looking for the information about digital cameras and lenses you are in a right place. We have many professional tests of digital photography equipment.

www.lenstip.com

 

[ProfHankD]

Have seen some great threads recommending lenses with great Bokeh.

Yup. At the top of my list: Sony/Minolta 135mm STF, Laowa 105mm STF, Samyang 85mm f/1.4, M42 Takumar 50mm f/1.4, Tamron SP 90mm f/2.5 macro, .... Note that 3 of those are still available new.

The review from lenstip on the laowa 105 stf may give you a bit of thought.

http://www.lenstip.com/index.php?test=obiektywu&test_ob=480

No, despite some issues, it still looks right behind the Minolta/Sony STF lens in the quality of it's apodization... which oddly enough isn't a major topic of that review! Frankly, the entire point of that lens is the apodization.

BTW, there are ways to fake apodization using multiple exposures varying aperture or to make your own apodization filters (which tend to show some texture unless you're very careful).

 

[Lightshow]

By far the cheapest and most common lens is the Helios 44-2, it's cousin, the Helios 40 is based off the Zeiss 75/1.5, as is the Cyclop and the mini Cyclop posted above, and my Meopta 70/1.4 projector lens, it's smaller than all of these, but it too has no iris, which makes it less useful for some situations, but other than that, love it for the character it can bring to a shot.

Many want the soap bubble effect, there are a number of lenses that are cheaper than the 100mm Trioplan that started the craze, 50mm Trioplan, & Fujunon 50/2.2 for example.

 

[UGFujiKon]

Helios 44-2 58mm f2 for swirly bokeh.

And there are some enlarger lens that has various colour filters.

 

[tonybelding]

That's a cool page, and the MIR 1B 37mm was already on my shopping list, so that just cements it. I need one of those!

My favorite lens for great flare right now is my Vivitar 19mm F3.5 in Pentax-K mount. I used it with great success on a film SLR with Kodak Ektar 100. The ultra-wide perspective, geometric distortion, soft edges and corners, pentagonal lens flare, and slightly wacky Ektar colors all combined to make some dramatic shots. (It's a much less interesting lens on APS-C, though. It crops out the most funky parts.)

 

[tonybelding]

Many want the soap bubble effect, there are a number of lenses that are cheaper than the 100mm Trioplan that started the craze, 50mm Trioplan, & Fujunon 50/2.2 for example.

I discovered I can get the soap bubble effect out of my Tokina 28-70mm F3.5-4.5 Macro, which I previously had considered fairly worthless. It's probably better on APS-C, then the bubbles are bigger!

 

[Tom Caldwell]

Reminds me of the Sigma f4.5mm f2.8 DC EX which gives a complete circular image. Made for APS-C sensor it works well (AF etc) on M4/3 through a Metabones EF-M4/3 smart adapter with square format.

It provides quite interesting images as the centre frame has little distortion but this increases exponentially towards the edges. In other words you can take an (almost) normal picture of your subject and surround this with a circle halo of the subject's setting and surroundings. Like all such extreme imaging lenses it is quite easy to include the photographer's feet in the image.

It does lend itself to a style genre of its own and I see it as more than a crazy toy. Sigma is proud enough of it to give it their "EX" classification.

Heh! ... and users of the M4/3 mount complain that there are no really wide lenses avaiable (grin).

 

[jacketpotato]

Many want the soap bubble effect, there are a number of lenses that are cheaper than the 100mm Trioplan that started the craze, 50mm Trioplan, & Fujunon 50/2.2 for example.

I discovered I can get the soap bubble effect out of my Tokina 28-70mm F3.5-4.5 Macro

Similarly Minolta MD 35-70 Macro 1:4 F3.5, Domiplan, Oreston.

 

[ProfHankD]

Are there any cheap/vintage lenses that do some effect really well?

Unlike J. J. Abrams , I really don't like lens flare. A lot of the old Canon FD/FDn lenses have more than their fair share, but my Mir 20 will occasionally make a ring of rainbow colors that is worse than all the rest. Let's just call this "Reflections":

Mir 20 at its funkiest, on LM-EA7 and A7II

BTW, the Mir 20 is normally a pretty good old ultrawide (20mm). It is sharp even wide open, can focus very close, and only has some seriously dark far corners on FF. This flare behavior doesn't happen often, but when it does, it is usually that severe.

 

[Focus Breather]

I don‚t know witch camera do you have and witch lens mount you prefer, but you can get adapter like this one for cheap and play around.

You can also reverse front first glass element of Helios-44x and get some crazy results. Check tutorial here from valuable member of this forum.

Some interesting effects can be achieved with shapes in front of the lens, like theses here . You can make them your self