M42 Lenses

Fujifilm X-E1 and Carl Zeiss Jena 50mm M42 screw-thread standard lens.

I bought a Zenit-E to get the Helios-44 lens which was with it. This is the original lens that the Soviets copied from the Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar 58mm f/2. It's a pre-set lens and takes a bit of getting used to. Received wisdom is to shoot it wide open at f/2 for the distinctive bokeh, but the contrast suffers when you do this. At f/5.6 it becomes a nicer lens to use. The Helios-44 was on a Fujifilm X-E1 camera set at 3200 ISO and 1/160th shutter. The lens was set at f/5.6.

I bought a Zenit-E to get the Helios-44 lens which was with it. This is the original lens that the Soviets copied from the Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar 58mm f/2. It's a pre-set lens and takes a bit of getting used to. Received wisdom is to shoot it wide open at f/2 for the distinctive bokeh, but the contrast suffers when you do this. At f/5.6 it becomes a nicer lens to use. The Prayer Book is Victorian, although the year of printing is not given by Cambridge University Press. Nor is the typeface. I should have liked to know both, but for £2 secondhand I can't really complain.

A heavily processed photograph made at Lacock Abbey on a misty winter morning. I used a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f/2.8 lens on a Canon EOS 20D. The lens was £12 on eBay sometime in 2013. The perspicacious Ken Rockwell observed some years ago that “when you use a $30 adapter to use an $8 lens on a $2,000 camera, you wind up with an $8 camera.” Vividly he made the point that buying a modern decent lens will produce better quality photographs, all other things being equal. The Tessar lens is an old and simple optical design. Even when the Practika MTL 5 camera was being sold new around 1976, the East German Tessar was the cheaper option to the Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 lens, which many will claim to be the superior choice. I have used the Pentacon, and enjoyed it, but repeatedly I have returned to the Tessar. I'm really not sure why. There’s more to it than simply being a cheapskate. And Ken Rockwell’s assertion is right, if your objective is to make perfect pictures. But I don’t think that actually is my objective, certainly not in all cases.