Why This 67 Year Old Lens Is My Favourite!
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- Опубліковано 7 січ 2025
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The Canon 50mm f1.4 LTM is a lens that was first produced in 1957, but I believe it still holds up so well all this time later, on film or digital. If you are after a beautiful, portrait lens with character that is both soft and dreamy wide open and super sharp stopped down then this is the lens for you!
AND! They're not that expensive either!!
If you own an M body, you are doing yourself a massive disservice not trying this one out!
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My lens that falls similarly in this category for me is just my Fujifilm 35mm f1.4. All the videos on here talk about its "character" and quirky bokeh, etc. It just feels >right< to me, how it handles things, the imperfections, the dream kind of feel.
I'm getting slowly into film and weirder quirky stuff seems to follow that around, so this video was fun for me, in considering options. Keep going, Matthew. Love your content so much.
I really need to buy another 35 1.4, I hear great things and I reckon it’ll be amazing on the XPro1!
I’d highly suggest either this or the 35mm f2 LTM, both are fantastic!
@@rudermanphoto Yes, both of those are fantastic!
The infinity focus lock is there to make it easy to screw and unscrew the lens on LTM cameras. I'm fairly sure you can remove the focus lock on this lens by removing the screw at the bottom of the lock.
I believe you need to disassemble the lens to do it, I may get them to do it during a CLA - although after 8 years of owning it feels weird to remove it haha
@@rudermanphoto ⚠️ CAUTION: DO NOT put vintage lenses up to your eyes, alot of fast lenses had thorium in the lens which is radioactive. You can tell which ones by the yellow tint of the lens elements. Its usally fine to hold but putting it againsy any soft tissues like your mouth, or eyes can give pass some radiation into those areas.
The 50mm f1.4 is most likely radioactive so seeing you put it up to your eye in the Thumbnail prompting me to warn you. BE SAFE
My "favorite" lens is the 1964 M42 Takumar 50/1.4 (8 element). Like the Canon it is full of charisma in all the ways you describe (but not thwarted with a 1m MFD, it has instead 45cm). It is also quite sharp, even wide open, with soap bubble bokeh gone wild! Stopping down it behaves exceptionally well with brutal sharpness and details that rivals any modern optic. It's flaws are low contrast, not handling flare, mild CA bla bla (the usual for old vintage glass).
When you use these lenses you realise that this charm is just a forgotten art with todays offering. It's nice that Light Lens Labs is reproducing classics but we're still within a manual focus domain. I really wanted SIRUI to triumph here with their recent Sniper range, and indeed in some ways they have. But if I were to classify them I would say they are more akin to a fairly ordinary cheap $30 vintage optic rendering, having many of the flaws but somewhat lacking the charm factor. It's still good that they exist because indeed they offer something different, especially how I think most of them are similar weight and size for film makers. After trying them I may still end up purchasing them one day...
But I would just love some company to really produce high end vintage charm glass with proper AF to boot. We get SO MANY carbon copies of lenses, a gazillion 23/1.4's, 33 and 56's.. but they are all basically doing the same thing. I even went to the extent and purchased a FOTODIOX MF to AF adapter for my Takumar 50/1.4 so that I gained Eye AF! It works as advertised, a bit sluggish, AF.S only, but its nice to have albeit expensive.
Yeah being an SLR lens you wouldn’t have to worry about the terrible 1m MFD!
I’ll suss that Takumar lens out, sounds like a really great option and I already have plenty of M42 adapters as I use the Helios 44-2!
I would love to try the TechArt M-Z AF adapter with this Canon as I hear it has very solid AF performance, and there the infinity lock would actually be good as it must be locked at infinity to work properly, just need to get a ZF…
Sirui offered to send me the sniper lens to review but I honestly didn’t find it all that interesting at all, vintage glass is so plentiful and easy to find I don’t understand why you don’t just shoot with real stuff from the 60’s, and there’s an element of “holy shit this lens is 67 years old and still delivers awesome results” which I really love about glass from this time period - as well as its character and charm too.
I guess the benefit to new lenses is that you don’t have to deal with issues that may have appeared over these 67 years like weird feeling focus rings or other problems that can be fixed with a CLA.
I’ve got one of these, the coating on the front element looks like it took a beating, but otherwise it’s pretty nice. The results are great on my Z6II or with my CLE 😸
Hi Matthew, I love your videos about manual focus and vintage lenses! I am thinking of adapting one to my Fuji X-T20 and wanted to ask you, which adapter you use. I know you mentioned it in the video but I couldn‘t quite figure out the brand. I guess my English left me there hahah. Keep up the amazing videos, I really appreciate them :)
I use the Urth adapters!
They’re not the cheapest but unlike many cheaper adapters from brands like K&F they don’t rattle when you mount a lens to them, it’s like mounting onto a native mount.
I have a canon FD 50 1.4, and I shoot absolutely everything on it! I have a sigma 24-70 art, which is phenomenal. But, in portrait sessions I almost always swap out to that 50.
Something about vintage glass that is just perfect for portrait work.
Have you compared it to the Canon FD 50mm f1.4? There were soooo many of those made that they're super easy to find.
I haven’t, never tried any FD lenses actually but everyone says the 50 1.4 is meant to be really special - I’ll have to get one and try it out!
As we get inundated with horrible Ai "art" it's refreshing to see organic looking images made with vintage glass
Nikkor 105mm AIS the legendary
It is indeed, I have a video on that lens too :)
Matt: "At f/1.4 this lens is really really soft"
Also Matt: zooms 600% into an f/1.4 photo and viewers can see every single eyelash ;)
Relative to how sharp the rest of aperture range on the lens is!
But yeah I admit it was worded not the best haha
Yeah dw the point was clear😉