Hanimex, an importer of photographic equipment into Australia and New Zealand, was founded in 1947 by Jack Hannes (not to be confused with Jack Hanna). The name was an abbreviation for Hannes Import Export, and according to their promotional material, the lenses were imported from Japan. Technological progress in lens manufacture in Japan has been …
History The Helios 44-2 is actually the first vintage manual-focus lens I ever bought. It’s a 58mm f2 prime lens. It was made in Russia from 1950’s as a copy of a German Carl Zeiss lens. You might think the 2 in the 44-2 referred to the maximum aperture of f2, but it really means …
There are a lot of vintage lenses with the Takumar name out there. The one I happened to get my hands on is the 55mm f1.8. When I got these lenses, a friend who has been collecting vintage glass longer than I have helped me sort through them. According to him, the ones that say …
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 …
