Why I Made the Decision to Buy Film Lenses
I had it all at this point, or at least I had it all for the work I needed to do. I could comfortably cover the entire focal range from 16–200mm, which was more than enough for the portraits, street photography, performance, events, and indoor sports coverage I do. I personally love gear, but every photographer probably comes to the point in their career where they say, “I think I have enough, for now.” I still planned to upgrade my camera body, but I was already shooting on mirrorless. What else could I possibly want? I shot work content and freelance constantly, but I wanted to make shooting photos for myself fun, not just work to make sure I could buy new clothes, keep my refrigerator stacked, and pay my tuition. I needed some new gear, but what do I buy?
Well, we live in a camera age where the action of taking photos has become easier than ever on both the casual side of things and on the professional side of things. My images were pretty clean even in low light thanks to modern camera sensors. My lenses and body did a fantastic job keeping focus and maintaining sharp image quality. Photography had just become so automatic for me, even though I still shot RAW and used manual settings. I needed something to challenge me. And that’s when I discovered shooting on film lenses.
Why the Revival and Why Mirrorless?
Vintage film lenses are making a comeback. What’s old is what’s new again. Besides the Analog Renaissance where people, demographically Millennials, are reverting to using film cameras, reading paper back books, and using record players, film lenses are being brought back to life because now they are more usable than ever. And much of this is thanks to the current evolution of photography into the world of mirrorless cameras.
Disclaimer: Just to set the record straight, plenty of people have been shooting with film lenses on modern digital cameras for a while, but there is any even greater interest now in the last few years than ever.
Back to the point, there was a very big problem with shooting vintage film lenses like from Canon FD or Pentax K (or almost any 35mm film SLR mount) on DSLRs. It comes down to flange distance, the distance from the opening of the mount to the image sensor itself. SLR cameras, including the ones on film, have always had a relatively large flange distance because of the mirror used to reflect light into the eyepiece, creating the optical viewfinder and letting you see through the lens. For a lens to work properly, a lens must be built and designed for a specific mount and flange distance in order for the light coming out of the lens to fall perfectly upon the sensor or film. I’m no expert, but this is the gist.
But the problem is actually adapting film lenses onto DSLRs. For example, the Canon DSLR mount known as EF might have the same or similar flange distance as the original Canon FD. Great! Except you need to have an adapter from the FD to EF mount in order to be able to actually mount the lens. This extends the distance from the effective lens mount to the sensor because of the length of the adapter which is always one to two centimeters. The proper flange distance is now no longer maintained due to this extra length. To fix this, another corrective piece of glass must be placed inside the adapter to refract the light properly onto the image sensor. But the last thing you want for your lens is to add another piece of glass which, if not high quality, could harm and lessen the overage image quality. Even good glass inside of an adapter will not, by the nature of things, retain the complete quality of the film lens itself. You can have adapters without the extra glass to refract the light, but then the issue of not being able to focus to infinity comes into play. And this is certainly not ideal. This made using film lenses on DSLRs quite a challenge, and I’ve heard the same issue from many who have tried. It doesn’t make it impossible, but it could indeed be better.
But then in the last decade or so, out comes mainstream mirrorless cameras where much credit must go to the Sony Alphas. Through the last couple of years, mirrorless cameras have become ever more refined, ever more affordable, and ever more usable. They have certainly come into the main frame, and it’s becoming clear that manufacturers are stopping more iterations of DSLRs in order to prioritize mirrorless. But the best part of mirrorless is that, well, there is no mirror that takes up space between the mount and sensor (Yeah, yeah, it’s in the name, mirrorless). This gives mirrorless lenses a much shorter flange distance, somewhere around 20mm in comparison to the 40mm to 50mm flange distances of film SLRs and DSLRs. This means that the adapters for mirrorless cameras only need to match the flange distance designed for film lenses by adding length to the mount and therefore do not need a corrective piece of glass in order to adjust for a distance that’s too long. That’s why all the new DSLR to mirrorless adapters for your camera brand are more or less just hollow tubes that electronically connect the lens to the camera and ensure the lens can be mounted. Okay, it’s probably not this easy to design one, but that’s the idea. Anyways, this is also great for vintage SLR film lenses, where this is no electronic connection, because all they require is a hollow tube that mounts to the lens and then to the body.
No need for extra glass and no worrying about focusing to infinity because the flange distance can be maintained with nothing more than a plastic tube. It’s a win-win, at least for retaining the full quality of the film lens. This ease in adapting film lenses to mirrorless has sparked a renewed interest in using these older lenses. For some of you like myself, I’m going out and buying film lenses for the first time. For others, it means busting out your old lenses from the 80s and using them again some thirty years later. It’s a Christmas miracle! But of course, as you should know, there are challenges in shooting with film lenses that you may not be accustomed to given all the bell and whistles of modern cameras and lenses today.
Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 Image Samples
First, The Drawbacks
Oh, boy. There are drawbacks. If you thought putting your digital camera in manual exposure was a manual experience, wait until you put film lenses on your camera. If you have shot film before, these are not really issues because you’re used to them or at least familiar, but if you’re like me and grew comfortable with modern systems, this is going to get taking used to.
#1. Manual Aperture and Focus
First, there is no electronic connection, at least for the vast majority of cases, when adapting film lenses onto a digital camera. On mirrorless, as I said before, this adapter is literally a hollow tube made of plastic. This means that you have to adjust the aperture on the lens itself, and here’s the big one for me, manual focus. Manual focusing takes a while to get used to, and I’m still getting used to it. Luckily on mirrorless, which is not found on DSLRs because its literally impossible to do with an optical viewfinder, you can have focus peaking and focus assists through the electric viewfinder itself. This allows me to pull the camera up to my eye and know exactly when a manual film lens is hitting focus. As for the aperture being manually set, this is not so bad, but the only way to know the aperture is by actually looking and setting it on the lens itself.
#2. They’re Old; Let Me Explain
Also, these lenses are old. Some of these lenses could be old enough to be my parents. This largely means that some aspects about how aged these lenses are can be a problem. To start, you really need to hunt for the good and well kept ones as a lot of these may suffer from fungus and dust. Some of the mounting systems for the lenses are themselves a bit tricky and finicky like the pre-breech lock Canon FD lenses. These lenses usually have old coatings too that are not as good as today's standards meaning the lens is much more prone to issues like chromatic aberration. They may also be softer than modern, expensive lenses you may be used to and typically have a lot more vignetting.
Canon FD 28mm f/2.8 Image Samples
Why You Should Be Using Them Despite the Drawbacks
Despite the clear draw backs of using vintage lenses in comparison to modern ones made for your mount, there’s a lot of really great reasons to use them as well.
#1. Cost
The first reason is cost. These babies are cheap or at least a lot of them are cheap. As I say, there’s going to be a lot of exceptions, and I’m just pointing out the general trend. For example, I bought the Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 for like $80 and the FD 28mm f/2.8 for $50. The adapter itself, being a hollow tube, also cost me like $15. Anything more than like $25 for a hollow plastic adapter is a ripoff. 50mm and 28mm are all I really need to shoot street, and I was able to have both of these for $130, which is way less expensive then if I bought the same two prime focal lengths for modern Canon Cameras. In reality, a lot of these really great lenses are going to be somewhere in the $100 range, which is an absolute steal for what you’re getting.
#2. The Feel of a Manual Experience
I always say this, and I will always stick by this. Photography is a process, and having the most expensive gear will not make you a better photographer. Vintage film lenses are hard to use, but they, in the end, will help you to grow and increase your skill set. Learning to manual focus may not be necessary in a world of superb autofocus, but nonetheless is a great skill in your tool kit for when your focus is just not hitting right on weird subjects or in dark situations.
Film lenses also just let you interact more with your camera rather than relying on its automatic tools. I know I mentioned it can be a challenge, but there’s also something great about using the manual aspects of a film lens. It’s just plain fun to be able to turn your aperture and focus wheel. It feels like I’m being brought back to an era of photography lost in time when people didn’t have all the great features we have today. This is why, for example, people really love to use the Fuji X cameras because they remind people of what its like to be shooting on film and handling film cameras. But I don’t think there’s any better way of feeling like you’re shooting film when on digital other than actually using film lenses. If I could describe it in one word, it just feels so vintage.
Interestingly enough, if you are also interested in cinematography, using film lenses is a great teacher as well. Modern movie sets use lenses that have similar handling to vintage film lenses. By this I mean they use a manual aperture adjustment as well as use manual focus. Shooting photography on vintage film lenses gets you used to using similar types of techniques modern movie makers still use. I found my time invaluable with film lenses in photography when I started to shoot sports reels using manual focus on a cinema camera.
All Shot Using the Mirrorless Canon EOS RP
#3. The Look
The look of your image, at least before editing, is dependent on two things, your camera sensor and your lens. Whereas your camera is like the mind and body, your lens is the heart and soul. The lens itself contributes its own nuanced look in creating an image. Actually, the lens is probably responsible for most of the look of an image anyways.
And as I always love to say, vintage films have that “twang.” There’s some magic in that 40-year old glass. They must have been making lenses differently back then (or at least I assume). The glass and coatings give the feel from another era given their quirks and imperfections, and you’ll notice when you start playing with the image in your editing software that you’re innately working with a whole different beast. As a person who is obsessed with replicating the film look on digital, vintage film lenses spiritually and literally get me one step closer to achieving this. I mean, what better way to emulate film than to actually use film lenses?
#4. The Choice
This is the best reason of them all. The beauty of shooting on film lenses and the fact that they’re manual anyways means you can use any film SLR lenses on your mirrorless camera with just a cheap plastic tube designed to adapt the mount. You could shoot on Canon RF and use Nikon film lenses. You could shooting on the Sony E-mount and use Canon FD. You could use Nikon Z and have Pentax K lenses. Old Russian lenses too? Yep! The possibilities are endless and the adapters are a dime a dozen! You could literally go wild adapting almost anything you want.
A Few Closing Words
In closing, vintage film lenses are worth a try. They’re relatively cheap anyways, and it’s a great way to rejuvenate your excitement about photography which is is exactly what they did for me. There is just this special funny feeling shooting on film lenses that I cannot get shooting on anything else. Something about the manual nature just clicks with me and is just so amazingly rewarding when you get it right. These vintage film lenses, whether its Canon FD, Voigtlander, Pentax K, or Zeiss, definitely have a new lease on life these days.
