Treasure Hunting

So, I went to a garage sale at a used photography store in Indianapolis.  It was pretty fun! They had lots of things that I am not well educated on, and lots of things I did not recognize.  Lots of old film cameras. I regret not picking one of those up just to try out.  But at least if I have the need to use film, I have my Diana F Lomography camera.  Ooo, maybe I will use that soon and blog about it! Anyhow, I did pick up a couple of old lenses.  The first one is a Hanimex 28mm f2.8 lens.  It is not a fancy lens.  In fact, it is credited with being the worst lens ever! Hanimex was an Australian distributor that produced several lens mounts to many different camera systems around the 60’s or 70’s.  (The time was a tough one to find so take that with a grain of salt.) But I wanted something that I could freelens with that would be super cheap. I have found that when you close down the aperture you get a really fun hexagonal lens flare! It’s a manual lens which is good, so that I don’t have to tape open the shutter when freelensing.  (Which you have to with Nikon lenses as the shutter is usually automatically closed on an automatic lens.)  So worst lens ever? Meh! I like it to get me out of a creative slump.  Sometimes just trying something new can help me get into a more creative mind set. 

I also got a Vivitar Series 1 28-90mm Macro lens. It is also known as the “stovepipe” due to its long profile with a wide front end.  Makes perfect sense.  It really does look like a stovepipe, and it is heavy!
This one is kind of in rough shape.  The aperture gets stuck, and I end up having to completely guess on my exposure.  I might have to take it apart and see if I can repair it.  It was not costly, so it is very low risk working on it. It also has a fun lens flare.  You can see in my photos that there are several little orbs.  So, this was a fun experiment as well!   

These two lenses are very different from what I have! I just thought I would share some of my fun experimentation’s with them.  Do you have any vintage lenses? Feel free to share some photos with me if you do!  

Thanks for reading.  

One of my Favorite Lenses- Lensbaby Twist 60

The twist 60 is part of the Lensbaby series. Their website says: True to an 1840 design by Joseph Petzval, this lens reveals striking separation between subject and background. Twist 60 is a metal-bodied, non-tilting lens that mounts directly to your camera.

My Lensbaby Twist 60 is one of my favorite lenses to get me out of a creative slump.  It is a 60mm f/2.5 manual focus lens.  This is the most unique lens in my camera bag! It gives a twisty swirl around the edges of photographs.  It naturally gives a vignette when shooting with a wide-open aperture.  So, to me, the photograph has a very vintage feel when used. 

This lens utilizes a central focus. The swirl will be very prominent at wider apertures, but when you close down it is not nearly as noticeable.  It is best to use on a full frame camera, as the central focus point might be too wide on a crop sensor camera.

I love the lens flare that you can get with the twist 60.  It handles light so differently from my other lenses.  Sometimes you can get nice light leaks, or even a full ring of light flare.  

This lens is not equipped with auto focus, so you must manually set your aperture and focus. It is kind of difficult to use the manual focus. But it helps me to use my sensor in the camera to let me know when I have achieved focus.  This appears as a small dot in the bottom left hand corner of my viewfinder.  So, with some patience, perfect focus is achievable!  With quick moving kids it is really hard! I have to keep reminding my kiddos to SLOW DOWN! (extra bribery is always required, but always worth it, ha!!)         

Buy your own: here! And start creating beautiful and unique photos of your own!    

Thanks for reading!