Yes, sorry, it’s another vintage lens obsession, this time it’s the humble standard lens. In the olden days a 50mm lens was what you got with nearly every camera, they were cheap and usually pretty good!
Above it’s a Nikon E Series (black) on a Nikon D3x, these usually came on the front of a Nikon EM or FG camera, they were single coated cheap lenses. They made other focal lengths in the E series, see another journal upload here for another E series lens that I own. If you look at the image below the (black) 50mm E Series is bottom right and the next lens (L to R 2nd one front row) is a black and silver one, yes I’ve two, don’t worry I’ve more than one of some of the other lenses here (pretty sad, right!).
Next lens (front row 3rd from left) it’s an Industar 50mm f3.5 with a Nikon infinity adaptor with another Industar lens (middle row 1st from left) for more info on how these are set up to work with a Nikon F mount camera see another journal upload here. Nikkor 50mm f2 (1st lens from the right) is from 1977, this is the slowest version of the 50mm lenses at the time, a f1.4, f1.8 and this one a f2 were the versions available at the time and apparently the f2 is the best of the three.
Then the next two (middle 2nd row is a Carl Zeiss 50mm f 2.8 lens thats a M42 screw fit, usually used for video on a Sony camera, I’ve two of these and can be converted of sorts to work with Nikon cameras see journal upload here along with info about the next lens (middle row 1st from the right) a Helios 58mm f2 lens. The last two lenses are attached to two cameras, on the left is a modern 50mm f1.4 af G lens on a Nikon D3x and on the Nikon F90x there’s a Nikon 50mm f1.8 pancake lens from the 1980’s which is probably the sharpest lens in the group.
So, why so many? Well they all behave differently. The modern G lens is really sharp and can auto focus well, it has a barrel distortion issue but can be corrected easily in Lightroom. The Nikon 50mm on the D90x is just fantastic, really super sharp and a joy to use. Both E series lenses (along with the other focal lengths in the E series line up) are single coated lenses, they look good on video and they take very little room up in a camera bag. If I’m out shooting street type images I’ll take two cameras, one with a 35mm and another with a 100mm then put a 50mm in my pocket and I’m usually covered for every eventuallity! The remaining lenses if you’ve looked at the links to other journal uploads have more info and are self explanitory.
I hope you’ve enjoyed another look into the past, (well sort of) maybe golf’s cheaper!
