shot on Sony a7siii with an Olympus om 300mm f4.5 adapted.
I don’t remember exactly where this was. somewhere in Colorado. not too far from Denver. Love this old manual focus 300mm though. it’s one of my favorites whenever I think I can get away with it. it sits in my bag more than I’d like though. it’s a hard focal length to justify when i have a 150-500 right there. most of the subjects I’d shoot with it would just be better captured at 500mm. wicked sharp with lovely bokeh and shockingly nice contrast and flair control for an older telephoto.
if you’re cool with manual focus and looking for a very nice 300mm for cheap. this is a great get. i got mine for just over $100 from a local camera store. I’m sure it could be had for less.
Stunning, really good use of B&W!
I need more prime teles.
check through the used gear at your local camera store! i love finding fun and funky lenses that way. i spent a stint working at a camera store myself. some of these older manual lenses sit and collect dust for ages.
getting good with manual focus is the biggest photography life hack i know. i come from broadcast, so we used to do fast manual focus camera drills to stay sharp for sports and the like. that skill has saved me so much money and bought me so many fun lenses.
like sure, I’m not quite as fast as my camera’s auto focus, but that only became true like one generation of camera ago. that said, manual focus will never grab the branches in front of the bird like auto focus will.
if you’ve got a spare $100 knocking around I’d say this particular 300mm is plenty worth the look.
I mainly shoot nikon F mount, so I’d have to see if an adaptor is available! I know there are a ton of AI mount manual focus lenses, but I haven’t done too much research on which ones are well regarded.
Oh I have a few nikon Ai lenses that I like.
the 28mm f2.0 is a little pricier as far as manual lenses go. think i spent around $200 for mine around 10 years ago. but it’s one of my favourites. wicked sharp with just enough speed to get some really great subject isolation when you need it. sometimes the foreground bokeh can get a little funky in ways I don’t love, but that’s the worst thing I can say about it. here’s some shots I got with it: 1 2 3
the 135 f2.8 has been fantastic. it’s one of the newer additions to my collection, but I’m loving it so far. it has a wonderful dreamy creamy bokeh and focus falloff. it may not be a plena, but it’s shockingly close for the price. I got mine for under $100. the built in lens hood is pretty slick too. wish it stuck around tbh. here’s a little thing I shot with it for shorts. it’s all I have to show from it so far, but I plan to shoot with it a lot more.
I can strongly recommend both lenses.
oh and don’t take this as an endorsement of ken rockwell lol. I often find myself disagreeing with him. he gets so hung up on things that I just don’t get sometimes. like, one time he shit all over a lens I loved just because it didn’t have dof range markers. like sure, they can be handy for figuring out the ideal infinity focus for landscapes when the aperture is closed, but does it really matter that much???