So there’s my entry for the weekly photo challenge “over the moon”. The light blob on the left side of the photo looks like the moon and it ended up with a dark blue background purely by accident. Think this is a neat photo? I did also. It was taken this afternoon, shooting into the sun in my front yard with my new lens…
I guess let this be another lesson in why gear doesn’t matter that much. I was rummaging through all the crap at the local goodwill and came across an actual nice looking camera lens. (it was at least metal and not plastic.) I figured the worst case scenario is I could disassemble it and make a cool pencil holder or something. Upon further internet investigation I discovered that it was an Albinar “macro” 80-200 F3.9. It was also made to fit a Minolta film camera. Well, you might ask, don’t you have a Sony? That’s right. I do have a Sony A7II. Top of the line, high tech full-frame mirrorless sensor camera…. and I’m going to shove a $7 thrift store lens on the end of it. (with a $13 adapter courtesy of Amazon) Why not?
I took a series of photos around my house and front yard to see what the lens was like. I then took those photos and saved them as they appeared straight out of the camera, and then I edited them the way I usually do to show what they would really look like by the time they hit the blog.
Overall impressions? I expect it will take a little bit to learn how to use this lens. It’s manual focus and zooms with a slider. It’s a very strange lens and I don’t use manual focus on my lenses with much frequency. I found the lens to be rather soft. This is partially user error, but I never saw any shots that were sharp enough to not disappoint. There were also quite a few photos that were hazy and foggy looking. Depending on what you’re shooting, this might not be a bad thing. These vintage film lenses have a different character than my shiny new lenses. Years of engineering and manufacturing improvements have made the new lenses fast, lightweight, sharp, and nearly optically perfect. But have they lost too much character? Interesting debate for sure. The bokeh and flare of this little Albinar lens has a unique look for sure.
So yeah, not too shabby for a $7 lens and 15 minutes of aimless wandering. I have plans to take this thing on an actual photo walk just to see how it does. Stay posted!