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This is a brief look at 3 legacy lenses I have, all near or at full aperture.

 

The photos are: a recently acquired Canon FDn 50mm f1.2 @ f1.4, Helios M44-4 @ f2.2 and SMC Takumar 50mm @ f1.4.

 

A couple of things; owing to the silly Auto ISO on the A7R, I ended up shooting these at 1/60 sec. If I'd been a bit more awake I would have taken it off auto ISO <sigh>. Also, the Helios has a sticky aperture, hence not using it fully open, and the Canon, not being the aspherical, can be a bit flare-y wide open, so I used it at f1.4, since that's where I'll mostly use it. Other sites I've checked out suggest that this lens at 1.4 might be tiny bit more contrasty than the Canon FD 50/1.4 wide open.

 

To my eye, the Canon is the winner, and I'm not that interested in the other two lenses now (they certainly have their character, but I would like to settle on one).

 

Hope this is interesting for some...

 

cheers

Phil

 

ps these files were about 300kB, but have been compressed on upload.

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If you shoot on M mode, and set your shutter speed at say 1/125 or 1/250, won't the Auto-ISO adjust to suit?

 

I agree the Canon looks good, but so does the Helios.

yes, that's the way to go...

 

...and the Helios is good, but I junked it trying to fix a sticky aperture. The bokeh is fine if you're careful with the background, otherwise it's "interesting".

 

One note; the Takumar is so low in contrast wide open that the focus peaking didn't work! No such issue with the other two...

 

I'm now happy that I'm not missing out just using the Canon.

 

BTW another conclusion is that, in practical situations, the differences are subtle, the three were more similar than I expected.

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