M42 Lenses

Lens: Chinon 55mm f/1.4. Camera: Camera: Fujifilm X-E1.

Lens: Chinon 55mm f/1.4, originally coupled with a Chinon CX SLR of the 1970s where it was a £10 upgrade to the usual f/1.7 lens. This picture was made with the addition of a Minolta Close-Up Lens No.1 to the lens filter mount.

Carl Zeiss Tessar 50mm f/2.8. I dare say pretty much any standard 50mm lens could have provided this result, yet I think it is a triumph for an old simple Tessar. Another oddity is that the Tessar - at least this particular version - feels like a perfect marriage with a Canon EOS 30D.

Carl Zeiss Tessar 50mm f/2.8.

Photographed with a Carl Zeiss Jena 50mm f/2.8 Tessar lens. The sun streaming through the window collided with the glass in a picture frame and reflected the decorative reeds underneath. The Tessar lens loves that kind of challenge. (Forgive the anthropomorphism. It just seemed so appropriate for the *Italo-Byzantine Whatever the Third Word is This Week Group.)

Lens: Chinon 55mm f/1.4. Camera: Canon EOS 30D. The lens is an asymmetrical double-Gauss design. (It is similar to the Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 from 1961). It was the creation of Johannes Berger of Zeiss in 1957 and was later licensed to other manufacturers. Amongst these was Tomioka, a Japanese glass manufacturer. Chinon, who made cameras but not lenses, went to Tomioka for a standard fast lens. They decided on this 55mm f/1.4 which initially was engraved with the Tomioka name. Later in the production run the Tomioka name was removed for reasons to do with a change of ownership. But the lens lacking the name is indisputably of Tomioka manufacture, being identical in all other respects and of a distinctive and unusual appearance. There is a bit of a cult around this lens; versions with the Tomioka name are appreciably more expensive to buy secondhand. The double Gauss was maybe the most intensively studied lens formula of the twentieth century producing dozens of major variants, scores of minor variants, hundreds of marketed lenses and tens of millions of unit sales.

Digital photography is liberating. You are freed from waiting, you learn quickly from mistakes and get the chance to correct them. You can process pictures to suit your taste without having to build your own darkroom. And although the speed of development has slowed, digital equipment gets better and better, So why use some old screw thread manual focus lens designed in the age of the slide rule which has a tendency to flare (though this one is quite remarkable in other respects) knowing that it introduces the distinct possibility of failure into your photography? Why bother with adapters and zooming with your feet when even the cheapest kit lens provides more certainty in your picture-taking?

Photographed using a Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens fitted via an EOS-M42 adapter to a Canon EOS 30D camera.

The photographer was photographed with a Tomioka-built Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens mounted via an M42 - EOS adapter on a Canon EOS 30D digital SLR camera dating from 2006. The lens is probably from the mid 1970s.

Lens: Carl Zeiss Jena 50mm f/2.8.

Canon EOS 30D and Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens.

Camera: Canon EOS 30D Lens: Chinon 55mm f/1.4 Supplementary Lens: Minolta Close-Up No. 1

The setting sun sending fat shafts of bright light through the kitchen window illuminating the semi-saintly stainless steel teapot and kettle as they bask in the success of their day's work. Photographed with an old screw-thread Cosina Cosinon 135mm f/2.8 lens on a Fuji X-E1. The lens was £10 on eBay. Something to celebrate every time I use it.

Fujifilm X-E1 with a 28mm Soligor C/D Wide-Auto f/2.8 lens.

This pear had interesting pattern and texture and made me think of a Fabergé egg. Unfortunately, it was not good eating, but you can't have everything. I photographed it using a Fujifilm X-E1 camera with a Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens attached via an M42 - Fuji X adapter and with a Minolta Close-Up No. 1 supplementary lens in the filter mount of the Chinon lens. Then I cropped it and processed it in Lightroom to highlight the pear and eliminate its less interesting companions.

Photographed using a Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens on a Fuji camera via an adapter. This lens was an alternative to the more usual 55mm f/1.8 when Dixons were selling Chinon cameras during the early 1970s. They aren't that plentiful on the second-hand market so I guess not many customers paid the extra. After all, this was the budget-conscious end of the market. There is nothing wrong with the f/1.8 version, but the f/1.4 was definitely worth the extra.

Carl Zeiss Jena 50mm f/2.8 Tessar lens coupled via an adapter to a Canon EOS 20D, all bought secondhand a couple of months before this picture was taken. The processing conceals a misty December day in Lacock.

I bought a Praktica MTL 5 chiefly for the Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 lens it had screwed into it. I've used that lens on a couple of digital cameras, sometimes, but not always, with a happy outcome. I often miss focussing, and (less critically) exposure. But because of misjudgment of exposure, I will occasionally end up with a photograph that I would never have made with a modern lens. This is an example of that.