The Dead Lens Club!

[Lowell Goudge]

Originally Posted by Igilligan

I got to have that lens... PM sent. You name the price. Money is no object

This may be the final nail in my LBA coffin. You have finally proven what I have always known, but refused to admit. There is no reason for me to continue to buy glass to try and get better picture.

My goodness those are really wonderful shots. My fave for optical reasons is the one with your son's hand on the bent struture... His hand sort of bends at the same place and works with the bokeh to "warp" the photo...
But many of the others are simply beautiful...

Thank you for the reminder that it really is the eye behind the camera and the hands on the controls.
It is a great lesson for all of us suffering from waves of LBA. Even if it is a painful lesson.

Before you purchase the lens, make sure it also comes with the program mindread.exe so that the lens can know the image you want to have at the end of it all

But you do confirm a point, the most expensive equipment does not automatically make the best photo.

[jsherman999]

Originally Posted by Lowell Goudge

Before you purchase the lens, make sure it also comes with the program mindread.exe so that the lens can know the image you want to have at the end of it all

But you do confirm a point, the most expensive equipment does not automatically make the best photo.

Heh - any S-M-C Takumar 50 1.4 + K100D/K10D/K20D will probably get you those
images, you don't need a fungally-challenged one! Although a nice S-M-C may run you around $100.

Maybe next time you buy lenses from me I'll throw it in the box (in fungal-sealed
bag) for free!

[Igilligan]

Jay, If not a fungal-sealed bag... at least you could just sandpaper the front element to give me a chance to get your kind of results!!!!! hehe

[Nesster]

Apologies before hand



I saw it on ebay, and knew I had to have it!

It is a telephoto extender, meant for candid shots, so the lens is camouflaged as a Lipton ice tea bottle. Your unsuspecting subject will think you're holding a bottle to your camera!

I won the auction, cost me $623.31 plus shipping from Canada.

[jsherman999]

Originally Posted by Nesster

Apologies before hand



I saw it on ebay, and knew I had to have it!

It is a telephoto extender, meant for candid shots, so the lens is camouflaged as a Lipton ice tea bottle. Your unsuspecting subject will think you're holding a bottle to your camera!

I won the auction, cost me $623.31 plus shipping from Canada.

I think I see a speck of dust in there.

[jsherman999]

.

Takes a lot more than a little fungus (and radioactive yellowing) to bring down
the mighty S-M-C Tak 50!







Crop - K100D still crops pretty well:

[pingflood]

This reminds me of one web site I read a while back, where they took a lens that looked like it had been dragged behind a car and produced some really nice results with it. The front element was so scratched and nicked that I was amazed anything would even get through it, but there it was producing nice images nonetheless.

And people fret over a dust speck.

[vinzer]

Originally Posted by jsherman999

.

The Halloween of 2008 is almost apon us. Ghouls, ghosts, and other
denizens of the underworld are beginning to wake, and walk the earth,
driven by their undying, insatiable hunger for.....

...Images?

Got a lens that was left for dead by you or another? Aperture blades frozen,
elements ridden with fungus, elements scratched... and yet... The lens still
lives?

S-M-C Takumar 50mm f/1.4 COMPLETELY FUNGAL RIDDEN undead lens:



*snip*

.

Oh man, you are effing amazing! Even dead lenses are no threat to your photography. I love the images. Kudos.

Nice to see that even dead lenses can still churn out good images. Will find myself one.

[richard64]

Originally Posted by jsherman999

.

The Halloween of 2008 is almost apon us. Ghouls, ghosts, and other
denizens of the underworld are beginning to wake, and walk the earth,
driven by their undying, insatiable hunger for.....

...Images?

Got a lens that was left for dead by you or another? Aperture blades frozen,
elements ridden with fungus, elements scratched... and yet... The lens still
lives?

S-M-C Takumar 50mm f/1.4 COMPLETELY FUNGAL RIDDEN undead lens:

Is it just me, or do others have the urge to open up that lens and give it a bit of a clean? Is the fungus between cemented elements?

Your images are great, so maybe my cleaning urges would be uneccessary...

Richard

[gkopeliadis]

Originally Posted by Damn Brit

I bought an old M42 2xTC a couple of weeks ago and I can't find it anywhere. I've got a suspicion one of my cat's has rolled it somewhere, it was in a round leather case. It's neither dead nor undead but in Limbo at the moment.

Is your real name Schrödinger ?

[Steinback]

I retired this particular lens and replaced it with a Vivitar series 1 after shooting this group of swans and ducks. Several of the shots turned out reasonably well, but I was surprised by how soft they looked compared to when I used to shoot the lens on film. Turned out that one of the elements is completely hazed over (likely from shooting too many football games on the rain/ snow back in highschool).

Super Albinon 80-200mm

[georgweb]

jsherman,
this thread almost brings my PC to halt, but well worth the wait :-)

Steinback,
why not put on the Super Albinon another time, deliberately embracing the flare by shooting into the sun and overexposing?

Click on the image to view it in a larger size

Here's a weird dead lense, it's an M42 Porst/Enna 3.5/35 preset non-MC full-plastic version. Long name, but short of performance, cause when I got it something was wrong with the helicoid (way off the usual scale range).
I thought 'first take some pics with it'. Looks like somebody 'repaired' it in a way that some lens elements are reversed or interchanged or missing. I leave it as it is for that special 'Hamilton' touch :-)
Georg (the other)

[jsherman999]

Originally Posted by richard64

Is it just me, or do others have the urge to open up that lens and give it a bit of a clean? Is the fungus between cemented elements?

Your images are great, so maybe my cleaning urges would be uneccessary...

Richard

Ill have to find that link that describes how to do that. I'm not sure I even
have the right tools, though. I may just leave it fungal, it gives it some character!


Did a bit of shooting with 4 lenses today, the Fungal-50 was one...

Here I'm shooting at an angle to the sun without hood, and you can see a little
lack of contrast - although I still love the rendering:




This lens has those nice yellow-warm images thanks to slight yellowing - here's
the same image with a color adjustment:

[jsherman999]

.

Posted these elsewhere also, but I guess they belong in the Dead Lens Club for posterity.
Include the Tamron 70-200 2.8 as a lens that can come back from the dead:






1/20s f/2.8 200mm:

200mm f/2.8:

200mm f/2.8:

[jsherman999]

1/10s f/2.8 200mm:

200mm f/5.6

200mm f/2.8

200mm f/4

200mm f/2.8:

1/20s f/2.8 70mm: