Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography
right here on AdoramaTV,
I'm Mark Wallace
in the streets of Bangkok, Thailand
and in today's episode
we're going to do something
that's really, really fun. We’re going to
take some old lenses and put them on
modern-day mirrorless cameras. So why
would you want to do this and why are
people doing this more and more now?
Well there are a few reasons why you might
want to do this. The first reason it's
just a ton of fun, you get this totally
new experience of analog technology,
analog aperture settings, manual focus,
everything slows down. The experience is
totally different and it's a lot of fun.
The second reason is well these older
lenses they have some imperfections
and so a lot of the things that we've
corrected with modern technology
and modern lenses, what we've eliminated
things like chromatic aberration
and vignetting and optic aberration, that kind of
stuff and so a lot of the flavor
of the old lenses has been lost but we can
bring that back. We can add some really
cool effects. The things that we've been
adding with our Instagram filters we can
actually do that in camera, so you get
this really distinctive flavor of the
lens, all these old lenses. When modern
DSLR cameras came out, well the analog
technology wasn't compatible with the
digital technology so these lenses have
been laying around in closets and in old
dark rooms and camera bags for years but
with the mirrorless revolution guess
what? We can now use all of these lenses
and we can mix and match different
brands and so for example on my Leica M10
here, I've got a Nikon 105mm lens
so Nikon with Leica and over here
on a Fuji we have an XT one with an old
Russian Helios lens
and so we can mix and match brands.
You might have an
Olympus lens on a Nikon,
you might have a Fuji with the Helios,
it doesn't matter
you can sort of mix all these things up.
So we're going to talk to you about how to
do all of this stuff what to look for
and how to get your hands on some of
these lenses, so let's start with where
to find these lenses. We’ll do that right
now. How do you find these old lenses?
Well you know the cool thing about
traveling a lot is, if you're in Bangkok
or Hong Kong or Berlin or Prague or only
those really cool cities
in every nook and cranny of this city,
there's a camera Club, a bunch of people
that are buying and trading and selling these old lenses
there's this sort of everywhere.
What if you're not traveling all the time,
most of us don't do that.
Well the cool thing is
that you probably have some of these
old Nikon lenses hanging out in an old
camera bag or an old darkroom that
you're not using anymore.
Maybe your dad or uncle or a friend
has some old lenses
that they're willing to let you borrow
or even sell to you
and if you don't have any of those things
that's okay because Adorama has a complete
department of used lenses and cameras
and you can check those out.
The cool thing is that they are very inexpensive.
You can get these lenses for just a
few hundred dollars so it's going
to save you a lot of money and remember
people are trading these all the time
so make sure you check that out.
Quite often because you can really find
some cool stuff if you're looking frequently.
The experience of shooting with these older
lenses is really wonderful and the
results are very, very pleasing.
Now this is a Fuji film with this old Russian
Helios lens. This actually belongs to RJ
who's holding the camera right now.
He let me borrow this as we walked around and shot this video. I took a
couple of snapshots of him. He was kind
enough to be the model for a second. You
can see the bokeh behind him it's all
swirly and interesting now I didn't have
this long enough to do some good work
with him but RJ sent me some of his
photos and you can see how pleasing this
lens is. Now I also had some fun with
this 105mm lens. This lens is great for
shallow depth of field, for bokeh, for
portraits but it's also really good for
compression and so I was able to stand
on a bridge here in Bangkok and here's
what I got. One of the things I love
about shooting with these old lenses is
that it's all manual and the experience
is totally different. You have to slow
down and be really intentional when
you're shooting and I love that so I
love the compression of this lens so
this is 105mm so I'm going to
shoot this freeway and all the streets
and stuff and I'm just looking through
here taking my time
getting everything measured up
and I'll take a couple of pictures
so we can see what craziness is in Bangkok.
Now that we know how much fun it is to shoot
with older lenses,
let's talk about how we can
mix and match those lenses with
different camera manufacturers.
Now normally you buy an old lens like this
old Voigtlander it's made for Leica you
snap it right on or maybe you buy an old
Nikon lens you put it on your old
Nikon camera that's great, but that's
really not what we're talking about
in this video. We're talking specifically
about using old manual lenses
and then mixing and matching those with different
types of mirrorless cameras.
So why does this work now with mirrorless cameras
and these old lenses didn't work
with DSLR cameras?
Well there are a couple of reasons for that.
The first one is the electronics
and so on modern DSLR
cameras the lens and the camera
communicate via electronics and older
lenses they they just don't have any
electronics there's no electronic
sensors pickups there's no electronic
focus there's no electronic aperture
control everything is manual and so some
of those older lenses were just
incompatible with newer DSLR cameras
and because of the way that DSLR cameras are
built and the way that lenses are built
you can't mix and match those cameras
and lenses you can do that with
mirrorless cameras well why is that well
if I take this lens off of my mirrorless
camera here this is a Leica M10 you can
see that there is no mirror in front of
our sensor thus a mirrorless camera and
that means that instead of the lens
mount being way out here it's very, very
close to the sensor itself and that's
really important because the back of a
lens has to be a specific dense distance
to the sensor to focus properly and on
DSLR cameras because of that mirror
mixing and matching an icon or a Leica
or whatever when you put an adapter well
the back of the lens and the sensor well
they're just too far away and that lens
won't focus it just won't work
but with mirrorless cameras you don't
have that there's enough room to put an
adapter so that you can put a Leica,
put an adapter
put an Nikon, put a Minolta, put an Olympus
put a Pentax whatever on that camera
and it works just fine.
So how does this work?
Well a couple of things you need
when you're doing this the first thing is you need a mirrorless camera so you
can use the Fuji you can use Fuji film like this you can use a Sony you can use
a Leica you can use whatever you have Micro Four Thirds a full-frame camera
they all work but you also need one of these things this is called a lens
adapter now on one side of this is the adapter that mounts to the camera so you
have to have something that mounts to your specific brand so it has to be a
Fuji specific or a sony or like a specific mount and on the other side
that's the side that mounts to the lens it has to be specific to the lens that
you're using so this is a Nikon lens and so I have for this one a Nikon 2m mount
an amount is for a Leica camera so this pops on here so I've mounted this now I
have a lens that will mount right onto my Leica camera so that pops on just
like this if I line it up correctly there we go all right so now that we
have we've got our mirrorless camera we have our lens adapter and we have our
lens the exact same thing is true of our XT one right here so we've got our
camera we've got our adapter we've got an old Russian helios lens and this
adapter is specific for Fuji to Helios we've got something else here we've got
an Olympus lens and this Olympus lens has an adapter on it and this adapter if
I can take this off really fast there we go this adapter here is specific for
Olympus which is what this lens is and then this goes to a Fuji camera so
Olympus to Fuji so that's the thing that you have to really make sure that you
get right once you have your old lens you need to have an adapter that mounts
your camera and that brand of lens there are billions of these out there so it's
really easy to find the adapter that you need I put a description and a link and
put a link in the description of this video of all the lens adapters on
Adorama comm so you can find the one that's specific to your needs
so whatever lens you have that brand whatever camera that you have that brand
get the adapter that goes from this brand to this brand it's all going to
work now which lenses work well there are a
couple of things that you need for the lens to work
number one is you have to understand that these lens adapters well they have
nothing no there's no electronic contacts going on there and so there's
nothing that's going to focus the lens there's no auto focus there's nothing to
control the aperture all of that needs to be manual so make sure that you have
a manual focusing lens and a lens with a manual aperture adjustment those two
things you absolutely need you can see that on this Olympus lens here we've got
manual focus and then we have a manual aperture adjustment same thing on this
old Helios manual aperture manual focus once you have that then you can dial in
the aperture that you want and then you can manually focus so let's talk about
focusing because focusing these lenses can be a little bit tricky there's no
auto focus you have to sort of slow down that's part of the fun experience of
using these lenses so how can you make sure that your focus is crystal clear
well almost every mirrorless camera has a couple of features that will help you
focus the first one is magnification and so
when you're auto are when you're manually focusing you can push a button
and the live view or your electronic viewfinder will automatically zoom in to
just a section of what you're seeing and then you can make sure that you're
really focusing really nice and clearly but if you want even a little bit extra
focusing help you can turn on something called focus peaking what focus peaking
does is that once something is in focus the lines around those things stand out
they'll turn red or they'll start glowing or they'll have a little
marching ants around them and you can really clearly see exactly where the
focus plane is and using those two things magnification and focus peaking
when you're using your electronic viewfinder you can make sure everything
is absolutely in focus and it's really really simple that's all there is to it
once you get your lens your lens adapter you learn how to use focus peaking and
focus magnification you can have a lot of fun using all these old lenses now
again why would you want to do this well these lenses have characteristics that
newer don't have and so a lot of the flaws and
a lot of the joy of the old lenses with vignette amother really bad bokeh it's
actually looks great these are the things that we're doing when we're
adding filters on all of our social media apps now we can do them in camera
and they look wonderful so I really encourage you to take your
new camera and use some old technology to get some really great results and
save a lot of money because these lenses aren't that expensive thank you so much
for joining me for this episode of exploring photography don't forget to
click subscribe so you don't miss a single episode and remember all the
stuff that we've been talking about in this video and all the other videos you
can see that in the description of this video you can click on the links for
things like lens adapters and lenses and the adorama used store you can see all
that stuff all of our videos have the products in the description of the
videos and also if you want to see sort of what these lenses look like and what
I've been doing with my vintage lenses check out my instagram feed you can see
what I've been doing and you'll see that over the next few weeks so check that
out thank you again for joining me and I will see you again next time.