Vintage lenses are fantastic pieces of glass that give images a different feel from modern lenses. Most of them were designed before the advent of computers – their optical systems were calculated the old school way, so they have some compromises that modern lenses don’t – and that gives them, and the images they make, character! Each vintage lens has an identity, and its images are unique to itself.
And as a bonus, they’re much cheaper than modern lenses too! If you want to check some cheap 50mm f1.4 lenses, please read The Must-Have Vintage 50mm Lenses for Your Camera in 2023.
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If like me, you shoot a digital mirrorless camera, you can mount these fantastic old lenses from the days of film and shoot them digitally, giving the ease and convenience of digital photography together with the incredible look of vintage lenses – the best of both worlds!
Perhaps you’re a vintage lens fan, or perhaps you’ve never used one before and want to try some out. Well, today you’re in luck because the five lenses I’m going to look at in this article are some of the nicest I’ve used.
They’re all 70s or 80s lenses except one, which is a 1950s lens. They’re all affordable, available from about £10 up to about £150, and they’re all lovely lenses too – apart from one, which is horrible – but more on that later!
They’re all vintage wide-angle lenses with focal lengths of 40mm, 28mm, 24mm, and 20mm, so it’s a somewhat eclectic mix of focal lengths today!
And while they’ll all give a comprehensive image on full-frame cameras, some also provide very useful focal length equivalents for crop sensor bodies. So if you’re shooting APS-C or Micro Four Thirds, we’ll talk about that too.
It’s beneficial for a photographer to have experience with a wide-angle lens. They have a different character and an entirely different aesthetic to long lenses; they make a very another type of image, and they will force you to develop your photographic style.
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Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8
Before you make any images, though, you’re going to need a lens, and the first one I want to look at today is almost not wide at all! It’s very near the so-called standard focal length of 50 mm – but those 10mm make a big difference.
It’s the Konica Hexanon AR 40mm f 1.8, and this lens is certainly not horrible! In fact, this is one of my favourite lenses and there are two reasons for that.
Firstly it’s because it’s a 40mm lens – a focal length which is, for me, the perfect focal length to use on the street. There’s just something right about it, and with a 40mm lens on the front of my camera, an alchemical transformation happens.
I just seem to become a better photographer – at least, it certainly feels that way! Suddenly everything seems to come together, and everything seems right – and that 40 mm focal length does it!
This is a nicely made lens. It’s all metal, and it makes some very nice images indeed. The Hexanon line of lenses is well known for its fantastic rendering of colour – they’re very beautiful with high saturation, and they pop! I’ve never quite seen colours like this from a lens.
They’re unique to Konica, and those colours, together with that fantastic focal length of 40mm, make this a lens that everybody should use at least once!
This lens is a personal favourite of mine – it’s a fantastic performer and makes images like very few other lenses can. It’s got great contrast, excellent colour with powerful saturation, and a unique signature that I’ve only ever seen from Konica lenses.
It’s a very sharp lens, too, even wide open at f1.8. You can shoot it fully open all day long, and you’ll never see a hint of softness.
Of course, it sharpens up if you stop it down – shoot this one at f5.6 for a genuinely razor-sharp image and deeper depth of field, but I kept it wide open and never found it soft.
This lens is a real little gem, and I love it whenever I use it – and it’s cheap as well! It’s available for around £40 to £60, and sometimes you can even find it on a camera for around that price too! I bought mine with a Konica FS1, so if you’re lucky and find a lens already sitting on a camera body, you’ll have an excellent film SLR to shoot it on too!
For me, this Konica 40mm compares very well indeed with the Voigtlander 40mm lens made for Leica M Mount cameras – a much more expensive lens costing several hundreds of pounds that I recently shot.
In terms of image quality, the Konica is within an ace of the Voigtlander – put two images together made by these lenses, and you might be able to tell the difference, but (don’t tell anyone I told you) you probably won’t!
You can’t go wrong with this lens, so my advice is – if you see one, grab it. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Canon FD 28mm f2.8
I love the Canon FD lenses; they give light and bright images with beautiful clarity. They have great colour and are some of the sharpest vintage lenses you can buy. As well as that, they’re often that bit cheaper than other vintage lenses too!
This lens does have some plastic parts – some of the outer parts, such as the aperture ring – but the critical internal factors are all metal and these lenses are well-made and long-lasting.
It has a very reasonable minimum focus distance of 30cm and a usefully short focus throw of about a third of a turn.
It has a slightly more modern rendering than some other vintage lenses but still retains that vintage character, so you can quickly get the best of both worlds. It has clarity and brightness but a classic feel too, and a signature look that I think is beautiful.
This lens comes into its own on the street, and its inherently shallow depth of field makes it great for zone focusing. Setting your aperture to f5.6 or f8 means you’ll have an intense depth of field, giving sharp focus over a wide range of distances.
On full-frame cameras, this lens gives a focal length of 28mm but mounted on an APS-C camera, it will provide a full-frame equivalent focal length of 42mm, which is very close to my ideal street photography focal length of 40mm, so if you have an APS-C body.
This could be the perfect solution if you want a 40mm lens. It doesn’t have to be the Canon FD 28mm f2.8 – any 28mm lens will do the same – but this one is particularly nice, and it’s available very cheaply too. A good copy will cost around £30 to £40 or thereabouts, and for that price, you absolutely cannot go wrong! Again, if you see one, grab it!
Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 20mm f4
If you’re shooting Micro Four Thirds, your options for vintage lenses that give a 40mm equivalent are somewhat limited. You’ll need a 20mm vintage lens because there’s a crop factor of two on Micro Four Thirds bodies – but lenses more comprehensive than 28 mm get very expensive very quickly.
However, there is a solution – the Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 20mm f4, which is quite a lens! They were made in M42 and Exacta mount versions – I bought an Exacta mount version as they tend to be a bit cheaper!
As we might expect from Carl Zeiss Jena, this lens is unique because, unlike most wide-angle lenses, it’s corrected for curvature, meaning it won’t distort the image.
So whichever type of sensor you shoot this lens on, straight lines stay straight without the distortion often seen in pictures from other wides.
Sure, it can be fun to play around with distortion, but it’s not fun if you want to take an accurate representation of your subject as you might in, say, architectural photography. It’s suitable for any application where you need a wide field of view and your lines to stay straight – this lens will do it for you.
This lens has fantastic colour. Carl Zeiss Jena lenses are well known for their beautiful colour representation, and this one is no exception –
it makes stunning colours; they’re vibrant, alive, and punchy with plenty of pop. It’s got very good contrast as well, and even though my copy led a rather complicated life before it came to me, it still makes some beautiful images and its character still shines through.
This is a unique lens – it’s somewhat in demand, and prices reflect that – a good copy of this lens will cost around £150, but even so, that’s a very cheap way into vast, curvature-corrected lens ownership.
It’s also a very good way into 40 mm shooting if you’re a Micro Four Thirds photographer. A beautiful and rather unique optic with very few competitors. As with the other lenses we’ve looked at today – grab one if you can!
Pentax SMC (Super-Multi-Coated) 28mm f2.8
The Pentax SMC (Super-Multi-Coated) 28mm f2.8 is a rather unassuming little lens to look at, but appearances can be deceptive.
Pentax glass and coatings give strong contrast and good sharpness, and colours that have the unique Pentax colour palette – colours have plenty of punch and loads of depth, but at the same time have a pastel-like quality which gives them a distinctive and very beautiful look.
It’s a very sharp lens too, and can be shot wide open all day long, and just as with the Canon 28mm, you can stop this one down if you’re zone focussing and want greater depth of field in your shot. Wide-angle lenses have an inherently greater depth of field than longer ones, so this lens is ideal for use on the street.
Again because it’s a wide-angle lens, this one isn’t a blur monster. Still, some smooth background blur is available if you stay close to your subject and open your aperture to its widest setting – beneficial for the occasional close shot or even a portrait!
This lens has an outstanding build quality, and Pentax vintage lenses are said by many to be the best made of all. This one has indeed stood up well to the test of time and remains in excellent condition it’s an absolute pleasure to use.
It’s a great 28mm lens on a full-frame camera and makes an excellent 40mm equivalent on APS-C bodies. The good news is it isn’t expensive –
you should be able to find a good copy of this lens for around £40 to £60 or thereabouts, and if you’re lucky, you might find one with a film SLR attached to it too! If you’re looking for an excellent 28mm lens and you see one of these, my advice is to buy it – you won’t regret it!
Miranda 24mm f2.8 MC
At the start of this article, I mentioned that one of these lenses wasn’t that great – in fact, the word I used to describe it was ‘horrible’ – and it is! It’s the Miranda 24mm f2.8 MC, and before we go any further, my copy has led a rather strenuous life, and better documents are likely to give better results!
A 24mm lens gives a usefully wider image than a 28mm, but it’s not so vast that any distortion is noticeable. This one isn’t in excellent condition, though, and you can tell. Although wide-angle lenses is it not particularly sharp in the centre either.
It does get sharper if you stop it down to f5.6 or so, so it’s not a downright awful lens, and we probably shouldn’t expect too much of it anyway –
it was a reasonably humble lens when it was new, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. Colours are a little muted from this one, and contrast is reduced – sure signs of a service being needed!
I wanted this lens to work nicely, I liked the underdog to triumph and to come out on top, but sadly it didn’t! So why include it? Well, it’s because of the focal length. On full-frame bodies, this 24mm lens will give a focal length of 24mm – a very usable, wide-angle focal length.
However, on an APS-C body, it provides an effective focal length of 36mm – which makes it pretty much a 35mm equivalent lens!
So, if you shoot an APS-C body and want a vintage 35-mm equivalent, find a 24-mm lens – don’t get this one because it is awful!
But perhaps I’m being unfair. Given the price I paid for it – all of £10 – it’s not the wrong lens and can make some lovely images. Stopping down will sharpen it, and if you’re in a pinch and need a 24mm lens, this one will fit the bill! The colours are a little muddy and dull, but it makes some nice black-and-white shots!
However, many vintage lenses are available from several different manufacturers, most of which are likely to be somewhat more excellent than this one.
If you want a 35mm equivalent vintage lens for your APS-C camera, a 24mm lens is the way to go!
So, four fantastic lenses and one that’s less than great, but with a beneficial focal length for APS-C shooters! They’ll all make beautiful images, shoot a comprehensive image on full-frame bodies, and hit some handy full-frame equivalent focal lengths on APS-C and Micro Four Thirds bodies.
