Lens News

Serious photography can be seriously expensive, especially for those who update their cameras often and insist on carrying a bag loaded with premium glass. But here’s a secret for photographers on a budget: For the same money (or less), you can often achieve far better results with a high-quality vintage lens, than by “saving money” on a modern mid-level or kit lens.

As you’ll see in the video below, high-end vintage prime lenses, like those from Zeiss, Canon, and Nikon, can be found for a fraction of what you’d spend on their modern-day equivalent, and they often feature fast maximum apertures and a build-quality that is unrivaled today.

The tradeoff is that you’ll have to focus manually, which is a reasonable compromise for achieving superb image quality on the cheap—unless you do  a lot of sports/action photography. You’ll also need to pick up an inexpensive adapter to make the lens compatible with whatever camera you use.

The video below is from photographer Mark Holtze, who works as an editor on feature films and network TV. While his tips for using vintage lenses pertain to DSLRs, they are are equally applicable with interchangeable-lens mirrorless cameras. So watch the video, and spend some time this weekend cruising garage sales and haunting your local thrift shop.

You can find more tips from Holtze on his YouTube channel, and be sure to check out our recent video with three bargain vintage lenses that deliver great results. You may also want to read yesterday’s story explaining how to use a free Lightroom plugin that provides EXIF data for images shot with manual focus lenses.

And don't miss an earlier story we posted with our 10 favorite vintage lenses for use on digital cameras.