Vintage Or Modern Super Telephoto Lens For Wildlife Action Photography

Pentacon 500mm f5.6 Vintage Lens and the Fuji GFX 50s

Over the last year I have shifted to using more and more vintage lenses with my Fuji GFX 50s.  Having access to vintage medium format lenses that provide sharp and distinctly different looks compared to modern digital lenses has been a joy.  Lenses from Carl Zeiss Jena for the Pentacon 6 lens mount in particular have been great to shoot with.  Using vintage lenses on modern digital cameras breathes new life into these amazing tools.  Therefore, I felt required to try some of the Pentacon made lenses.  The Pentacon 500mm f5.6 lens is the first of these lenses that I am writing a review for.  Let’s see how this lens performed in some real world applications.

Read More

Carl Zeiss Jena DDR Sonnar 300mm f4 and the Fuji GFX 50s

The possibility of using a modern digital medium format camera like the Fuji GFX 50s with almost any vintage medium format lens ever made is exciting and just makes my creative juices start to flow.  One of these vintage lenses is the Carl Zeiss Jena DDR Sonnar 300mm f4.  There were so many legacy lenses produced. Therefore, their are many to choose from.  There are many pros and cons to using vintage lenses on modern digital cameras which I won’t go into here, but a separate post on that topic is coming.

The Jena DDR 300mm lens I tested has the Pentacon Six mount.  It is the most modern version of the lens, therefore it has multi coating.  The older versions only had a single layer or no coating.  This is the 3rd Carl Zeiss Jena DDR lens I have reviewed.  So far, these lenses have all been outstanding optically, well constructed, and super fun to create photographs with.

Read More

Carl Zeiss Jena DDR Sonnor 180mm f2.8 and the Fuji GFX 50s

When full frame mirrorless digital cameras started being manufactured a few years ago, it breathed new life into a vast amount of vintage film camera lenses.  One of these vintage lenses is the Carl Zeiss Jena DDR Sonnor 180mm f2.8.  This was expanded when Fuji released the affordable GFX 50s medium format mirrorless camera.  There are many pros and cons to using vintage lenses on modern digital cameras which I won’t go into here, but a separate post on that topic is coming.

The Jena DDR 180mm lens I tested has the Pentacon Six mount.  It is the most modern version of the lens, therefore it has multi coating.  The older versions only had a single layer or no coating.  This lens is considered by many to be the crown jewel of Pentacon 6 Carl Zeiss lenses and an amazing portrait lens.

Read More