Vintage Lenses
In 2016 i bought my first M42 lens and tried it on my Nikon D5200 with a M42 to Nikon F Mount adapter. I loved it right away. You can set the aparture manually, so you can play with the Focus and Depth of Field. I learned a lot from these lenses, beacuse i had to use everything manual including the ammount light i needed in a shot.
I really love the old vintage lenses, expecially the ones with good bokeh. It's fun to shoot with manual focus lenses and focus on what you really want to focus on. They are very strong build from metal and glass. Some of these lenses even have build in hoods.
Bokeh
I am a huge fan of beautiful bokeh an i think the background is as important as that what you want to take a picture of. Sometimes I look for backgrounds with nice bokeh and search for something in front of that background. That's a diffrent way of photography, but a really fun way.
There are a lot of vintage lenses with nice bokeh, here are some examples.
I made these pictures with my Meyer-Optik Domiplan 50mm 2.8. I realy love the 'Soapy' Bokeh of this lens. (also called 'Bubble bokeh')
I made these pictures with my Sigma mini wide II 28mm 2.8. I really like this small lens a lot. Its a also a perfect lens for Macro-photography as well. And thebekey is lovely.
I made these pictures with my Helios 44M 58mm f2, It has wonderfull flare that gives a nice vintage look and the bokeh is amazing. Its famous by its 'Swirly' bokeh.
I made these with my Pentacon 135mm 2.8. Its a lens with wonderfull bokeh, because of the 15 aperture blades. With the long focal distance, you can focus trough things that are in front of it and wil still be a part of the picture. That way you get a nice colourfull picture. It's a wonderfull portrait lens as wel with the 135mm focal length.
I made these pictures with my Tair 11A 135mm 2.8 (known as the Russian Tank) It has 20 aperture blades, the bokeh is always beautiful round.
I made these pictures with a Pentacon 50mm 1.8. It's a great lens for nature photography. But I use this lens more with a reversal ring for extreme close ups. (You can read more about macro photograpy with vintage lenses in the tab Macro Tips).
Some more pictures i made with the manual vintage lenses
