path: root/unused/film-wired.txt

I recently acquired a manual focus film camera from the early 1980s and it is the most exciting piece of technology I have purchased in several years. 

I know what you're thinking, this is going to be yet another piece about how great film was and how we should all hold hands and sing kumbayah together with our various archaic, full mechanical, full hipster cameras around our necks. 

But no. It's not like that.

My flirtation with film proved an expensive reminder of how awesome digital cameras really are. To my chagrin all film did was remind me that I had forgotten how to compose a scene, forgotten how to meter a scene in my head, forgotten even how to focus quickly. I produced crap because digital had allowed me to forget all the fundamentals of film photography. 

So I went back to digital, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. Not film though. No, what I missed was the smooth manual focus and the clicking of the shutter ring. I missed the mechanics of photography that serve to pull me into the experience in a way that just doesn't happen with autofocus lenses and fiddly little dials. I also find, for the style of shooting I do (a mix of landscape and street photography) I get more reliable results with manual focus.

Okay, now if you'll join hands with the person next to you and we can start singing.

Now it's true that you can manual focus with today's digital cameras and autofocus lenses. It's usually not a great experience though. Few lenses these days have nice mechanical, clicky aperture wheels or smooth focusing rings. Fuji lenses are among the exceptions here, often possessing aperture rings that are, as [Charlene Winfred aptly puts it](charlenewinfred.com/2017/01/07/fujinon-xf-23mm-f2-another-lens-gorgeous-flare/), "rotationally happy". That's what I was looking for, lenses with a certain rotational happiness too them.

And I found them. For next to nothing. There's a wealth of really good, largely forgotten manual focus lenses out there in the world. They're full of quirks, lack the edge to edge sharpness of today's best lenses, and they're sometimes in dubious condition. But they're usually cheap and for the price of one high end fast, autofocusing masterpiece of today's glass you can get four or five really nice manual focus lenses. 

And here's the kicker: they'll work great on any of today's mirrorless cameras.

One of the fringe benefits of mirrorless cameras is that, ahem, there's no mirror. That means you don't have to worry about the mirror clearing the back of the lens. A camera lens is designed to sit at a very precise distance from the sensor. If the lens isn't at that distance it won't focus properly. But with DSLRs the lens also has to keep clear of the mirror. Mirrorless camera bodies are thinner and leave more room for adapters to get the lens to its proper distance from the sensor. Adapters range from the very cheap (there's plenty of adapters on eBay for around $10) to the rather pricey ($100+). So far I have only used the cheap ones and have had no problems with them though in some cases the very expensive adapters might be worth it.

Really all you need to do is figure out which vintage lenses you'd like to use and then go get an adapter for that brand. For example I used to have a film Minolta camera with a Minolta Rokkor 58 f/1.2, which is still my favorite lens I've ever owned. Slap a $10 adapter on your favorite mirrorless camera and it's ready to go.

Which mirrorless camera is largely irrelevant though if you want to get the actual FOV the lens was designed for you need a full frame mirrorless camera like the Sony A7 series. On a Sony A7 the Minolta Rokkor 58mm is a 58mm lens.

If you're shooting with a APS-C sensor (for example on the of the Fuji mirrorless models) that Minolta will have the equivalent FOV of an 87mm lens on a full frame sensor. With any kind of "crop" sensor the FOV of the lens will be smaller. For Micro Four Thirds multiply the length of the lens by 2, for APS-C multiply by 1.5. So, sticking with the 58mm example, on a Micro Four Thirds sensor the effective field of view will be the same as a 116mm lens on a 35mm camera. In other words, while the 58mm was a good all-around "normal" lens on my film Minolta, it's now a good portrait lens on Micro Four Thirds.

Many people like to shoot at the focal length the lens was made for, and in that case one of the Sony A7 series cameras is your best bet. I can see that angle, but personally I sometimes like the crop factor. For instance I've never liked the FOV of 28mm lenses. I find it too narrow to call wide, too wide to call normal. However there are some really great 28mm lenses out there. If I buy one of those lenses and attach it to an APS-C camera I have a really wonderful lens that's suddenly seeing the world at the equivalent of a 42mm lens, which for me is the perfect FOV for an everyday lens. Similarly the Rokkor 58mm f1.2 mentioned earlier makes a wonderful 85mm (roughly) portrait lens on APS-C.

That's all there is to adapting old lenses to work with modern cameras. You'll only be shooting in either A mode or full manual and you'll have to focus yourself of course, but thanks to tools like focus peaking and 10X view mode, focusing a full manual lens on a digital body is actually considerably easier than it is on a SLR. You also lose some EXIF data -- the camera won't record what f-stop you're shooting at -- but that doesn't bother me. There's probably an app for recording such data, but I just use a notebook on the occasions when it matters to me to have a record of what f-stop I'm at (typically only when I'm testing sharpness or some other aspect of a new lens).

It's also worth noting that if your primary criteria for what makes a good lens is edge-to-edge sharpness with no distortion or other "quirks" then older lenses are not for you. While there are some old lenses with very good optics in them it's rare to find something that beats the best of what's available today. Old lenses aren't right for every situation either. I wouldn't shoot sports with them and I probably wouldn't shoot a wedding either.

If all this sounds a bit esoteric, well, it is. If you've made it this far you are, whether you know it or not, poised at the top of a very deep and potentially expensive rabbit hole. While many vintage lenses have next to no value, others, especially those with the word Leica on the rim, still command full retail value, or more. And prices are likely going up too as more people get into the world of vintage lenses.

There are plenty of others out there who have already been deep down the rabbit hole and are willing to share their experiences. If you're looking for somewhere to start I'd suggest reading [Phillip Reeve's blog](https://phillipreeve.net), which is mainly aimed at Sony A7x users, but contains a wealth of information on vintage lenses and very thorough reviews. Other vintage lens enthusiasts including photographers like [Jonas Rask](https://jonasraskphotography.com/) and [Tom Leonard of Out for 30](https://outfor30.com/), both of whom often review old lenses.

Also check out the vintage/adapted lens forums at [DPReview](http://forum.mflenses.com/), [Fred Miranda](http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/board/55), [Fuji X Series](http://www.fujixseries.com/forums/forum/17-adapted-manual-lenses/) and other forums where photographers congregate. There's also several forums dedicated to manual focus lenses, like [MFLenses.com](http://forum.mflenses.com/). At this point there's typically a somewhat detailed site for nearly every brand of lens out there, though few are as good as [The Rokkor Files](http://www.rokkorfiles.com/), which is devoted to Minolta Rokkor lenses.

In the end I kept the film camera. I've remembered/relearned a few things, my percentage of keepers is slowly creeping back up. But for me the big takeaway was not the transformative power of film, but the return to manual focus lenses for digital cameras. To my mind this gives the best of both worlds -- the convenience, cost savings and tremendous post processing power of digital and the solidly built, smooth focusing, aperture clicking mechanics of manual focus lenses.