I’ve been using Sony digital cameras for a few years. I started with the A55 and then upgraded to an A77 and now an A7II. I usually stuck with auto-focus lenses because they’re so easy and cameras keep getting better and better at auto focus.
But a while back I saw a YouTube video about the Helios 44-2 lens. This Russian-made lens from some time between 1958 and the 1990s has a unique, swirly bokeh pattern. The reviewer said that they could be found on E-Bay for as little as £10, or US$15. I think his video may have increased the popularity of the lens because I ended up paying about $30 for mine, and that was a couple of years ago. Looking today, the I can find them anywhere from $55 to over $100. The Helios 44-2 has an M42 thread mount which can be adapted to just about anything if you get the right adaptor for it. I got an adaptor from Amazon for about $15. I’ve used it a few times for the artistic effect it produces, but I didn’t think much about other vintage lenses.
Then one day I saw an ad on the Facebook marketplace for my city that somebody was selling a bunch of old film camera gear and an Epson ink-jet printer for $50. From the pictures, it looked like a couple of boxes of cameras, lenses, and flashes. I know that the Minolta lenses with auto-focus are usually compatible with the Sony A-mount which my A77 has, so I figured that if I could get one good lens out of that, it would be worth the money.
When I went to pick them up, it turned out to be 22 boxes. The boxes were all mixed up, so after sorting through it all, I ended up with several boxes of old flash attachments (many of which had corroding batteries still in them), several boxes of camera bodies (mostly Minolta and Pentax, with a few others), and several boxes of lenses.
A friend of mine collects vintage lenses, so I asked him to come help me figure out what camera mounts I had so I could buy adaptors. Most of the lenses were zooms, which he informed me were usually not worth much, but I ended up with quite a number of prime lenses which seemed like they’d be worth checking out. So I bought adaptors for M42 (I already had one, but got another), Minolta MD, Pentax PK, Konika AR, and Canon FD and started testing lenses.
Then I got the crazy idea to start a YouTube channel (or rather, revive one that I had done little with before) and start posting vintage lens reviews. So the idea is to post a video once a week reviewing one lens. Or sometimes 2 or 3 when I have similar lenses or the same brand.
So stay tuned. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. The only videos there at the moment are two videos that I made for local bands a few years ago which aren’t very good (the videos, that is. The bands are great).