Tag: meyer-optik gorlitz

Soft light, plastic lenses, and bokeh ~ back to the Sima Soft Focus lens and others

Posted in Aesthetics and Technique, Gear Talk, PhotographyTagged , , , , , , , 7 Comments

In my haste to post examples from the all-plastic Sima lens, I forgot to post one of the nicest examples of how the single plastic lens bends the light. Adam, over at Driftwood Imagery, has also been inspired to mess around with his own recently acquired copy of this lens.

Nikon D7100 and Sima lens into the sunlight

I’m not sure if I was paid in cash or gratitude (probably in gratitude, knowing my eagerness to experiment with old glass at the time), but it was nice to use the Sima lens at sunset. In the photo above, you can see how the plastic element creates blue, green, and purple chromatically aberrant auras around strong light sources. Everything blooms wonderfully. And while I’m in the mood to post portraits – a rare genre for me – here’s another from the same session. I swear to you that even though the pose and angle looks the same, I did actually take time to switch lenses!

Nikon D7100 and Pentacon AV 80mm 2.8 Diaplan projector lens

Note the bokeh bubbles in the photo above ~ a good example that’s sure to inspire interest from people who love characterful out of focus areas. The Meyer-Optik Trioplan range of lenses is known to produce such pleasant hard-edged background bubbles. A recent obsession with such bubbly bokeh has pushed second-hand prices up dramatically, though I’ve not checked recent figures.

I was lucky to snag the Pentacon AV 80mm 2.8 Diaplan some years ago ~ a projector lens made by Pentacon (Meyer-Optik was part of the company merger that formed Pentacon). It has the same optical triplet formula as the famous early Trioplans. The only downside: being a projector lens, you need to mount it and focus it, somehow. I used some PVC tubing and glued it to a cheap mount adapter to form a simple push-pull focus mechanism.

Bokeh is just another tool in the kit-bag of the photographer. Sometimes you want everything in-focus and sharp, and sometimes you want great seperation between the subject and a super smooth background formed by a 16-bladed vintage lens iris. There are people who find Trioplan bubbles distracting and others who appreciate those gentle geometries. If we have the right tools to suit our photographic vision, and we understand their qualities and how to use them, we are a long way down the road to making the photos we imagine. Rather than favour a single tool, better to continue adding tools to our bag and treat them as equals on our journey.

And the model in question? Well, after I made some initial safety photos with what many people would call a normal modern lens and then experimenting with the Diaplan and the Sima, she ended up choosing the safe photo! I guess the bubbles don’t always appeal to the eye.

The Meyer-Optik Gorlitz Lydith lens ~ 30mm of vintage sharpness

Posted in Gear Talk, PhotographyTagged , , , , , 4 Comments

Some years ago, I made another blog that was about film cameras, vintage lenses, and digital cameras. That blog is long since gone, but having discovered a few recent archived posts, I’m resurrecting some of them:

When Hugo Meyer founded his optical works in 1896 in the town of Gorlitz, little did he know that many of his lenses, including the 30mm wide-angle Lydith lens, would become cult classics in the years following the digital camera revolution. These days, Meyer-Optik Gorlitz lenses are very popular amongst legacy lens enthusiasts and often go for high prices on well-known auction sites. After 1971, Meyer lenses were branded as Pentacon. You can even buy a new and up-to-date Lydith from Meyer-Optik ~ same name but not the same company…that’s brand acquisition and marketing for you.

The Lydith 30mm 3.5 lens is not a fast lens. Nor is it especially resistant to flare, due to the early glass coating methods in place at the time of manufacture. But what it lacks in speed and light dispersion qualities, it makes up for in excellent acuity and sharpness.

Olympus OMD EM5 Mark 1 and Meyer-Optik Gorlitz Lydith lens with an adapter

The Lydith lens is well-made and solid, whilst not being overly heavy, and the zebra pattern adorning the aperture and focus rings on my version make it an attractive lens. The wide 30mm focal length translates to a 60mm field of view on Micro Four Thirds cameras, and a 45mm equivalent field of view on APS-C sensor cameras.

The floral image above demonstrates the centre sharpness of the Lydith. On a crop sensor digital camera, like Micro Four Thirds, the sharpness of the lens will be immeditealy apparent due to the fact that the sensor uses only the central area of the lens. Using such a crop sensor camera with old lenses like this is an advantage if you’re the kind of photographer to whom sharpness is important.

Whilst the Lydith is not especially fast, with 3.5 being the widest aperture, it still produces pleasant and smooth out of focus areas. Edge acuity is generally impressive for such an old lens at the widest aperture setting. The bokeh could be considered distracting, but there’s enough subject seperation to make it acceptable, I think. It’s smooth enough, and background highlights are well rounded. The 10-bladed iris helps. There is also no serious chromatic aberration to speak of from the 5 element Lydith in these samples. These photos are all straight out of the camera JPGs on the Natural colour preset from the Olympus, without additional editing.