lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I believe the problem lenses are the Pre-AI ones, really old.

jerrym

Well said. I agree with you and think the same way.

Leitz Loc: Solms

If the lens was made in 1974, it was not single coated.

neh

I just tried an older 50mm 1.2 N/Al Nikkor lens with an Al-EOS Adapter ring with my Canon Rebel T3i and it worked fine. This was from my Nikkormat FT2 days in the 70s. I have a few of these lenses as well as Tamron Adaptall to EOS lenses, and other lenses with older Nikon mounts that also work with the adapter rings. (Of course in manual mode) Interesting topic that inspired me to try them with my Canon camera. Yes---I have used Nikon products for many years and have now added Canon products to my collection

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Lenses made in the 1970s are not really all that old in that the technology, at the time, was already quite advanced. There were many lenses manufactured by Leitz (Leica), Zeiss, Rodenstock, Nikon, Schneider, Asahi (Pentax) and others that were excellent performers. Perhaps some of them were unappreciated at the time and thereafter because many of the films could not resolve the extent of these lenses. In the 1980s and early 90s, just prior to the digital era, Kodak, and Fuji began to vastly improve many of their medium and high-speed films- Kodak's T- Grain emulsions for example, and some folks though their old lenses were improving with age like ancient violins.

Think about this- back in the day, even prior to the latter 20th century, many serious photographers used medium and large format equipment. Those old lenses had to cover film formats many times greater than a 35mm negative or a digital sensor.There were lenses made by Ross, Wollensack, Taylor-Hobson- and Cooke circa 1930 s- 1950 that were razor sharp. The Kodak Commercial Ektar came out in the 1950s and still measures up well by today's standards.

There are certain optical formulas such as the classic Tessar configuration that are still employed in current lens manufacturing.

Of course, there are up to date technologies that have yielded perhaps sharper lenses. Computer-assisted lens design and manufacturing techniques have enabled the minimization of certain optical aberrations, better and faster and sometimes more versatile lenses, especially in the zoom and high-speed categories. Nevertheless, some of that old glass is just fine- excuse my French- "SANS LE BATTAGE PUBLICITARIE " that means without the marketing hype.

Another thing- Some old glass was made to be intentionally soft. There are many portraits, landscape and floral subject that can benefit from soft-focus interpretations. These images are NOT out of focus and can not be produced with the same "beauty" even with diffusion filters or post-processing blur applications. The Rodenstock Imagon is a classic. When transitioning into digital, I chose the Canon line mainly because they were the only one that actually had a 135mm soft-focus prime lens, dedicated to their system, that was fashioned after the older formulas.

Besides, many photography enthusiasts are too preoccupied with lens statistics. They deried "kit lenses" get all hung up on things like zooms vs. primes- you would think that everyone is producing photomurals or viewing their images on the Jumbotron at the local arena. There is hardly a "terrible " lens currently made by any of the major manufacturers. If you are really needing extreme performance, no doubt, there is merchandise out there, if you are willing to pay the price.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

"If the lens was made in 1974, it was not single coated." It was in 1975 that Nikon began to use multicoating on all of the new lenses. My 1974, 50mm f1.4 is a non AI lens and although at the time Nikon was using a single coating at the front and another in the rear element these lenses were still designated a single coating. This is what I know from the information given to me. My lens was AI converted by John White, a gentleman that makes these conversions in his shop in Michigan.

I thank you all of you for your contributions. Over the years there have been significant improvements in lens technology, Multicoating, VR, Nano coating, Fluoride coating, AF and others that I will not mention. In spite of that high technology old lenses continue to do their job and some of them like my 1967, 105mm f2.5 lens continues to amaze me with its superb image quality. This lens was used by Steve McCurry to shoot his famous portrait "The Afghan Girl" in a refugee camp in Pakistan in the early 70's if memory does not fail.

Indeed many of these lenses have a tendency to show chromatic aberrations. They were designed for film, not the digital sensor. The majority of these old lenses are excellent performers and they can be bought for bargain prices today.
How good a lens do I need? Be your own judge.

olemikey Loc: 6 mile creek, Spacecoast Florida

Simple answer - the lenses that make YOU happy are the best ones to own...….


I haven't bought a "new" lens in 4 decades, but I have bought a lot of recent used and old lenses I like and use, and I'm always looking for another. And I haven't had to break my piggy bank either.

mjmjam Loc: Michigan

As good as you can afford

Leitz Loc: Solms

According to Braczko, the 50 f/1.4 was multicoated since April, 1972. This link says they were multi-coated starting in 1973, from serial number 1280001:
http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/serialno.html

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

It is always possible that I have the wrong information and the lens is a pre 70's lens. It does not matter to me, it performs to my liking.
Thank you for the new information.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

I think the answer here has to be, "It depends."

One of the reasons I expanded to full frame was because it was not possible to do a sufficient job with wide angle on my crop sensor cameras. So I found a very nice 18-35mm variable aperture "D" zoom on this site at a really good price. It served well until I was getting ready to participate in a night sky workshop. The goals of the class included creating panoramas of the summertime night sky. That meant two things...at least a f2.8 maximum aperture and a lens that did a better job in the corners. (And yes...this corner thing is relative, because all wide angle lenses that I have ever looked at or tried seem to struggle in the corners.) So that mandated that if my results wree going to be as good as possible, i needed to move to the 14-24mm f2.8. Please note that I still have and use the 18-35. Sometimes for non-critical full frame shooting when I want to save a little weight. More likely as a very nice normal-wide angle on the D300 that I still use. Much lighter than the 17-55mm f2.8 that serves more critical needs. And the corner problems don't matter, because I'm not using the corners.

MilRic

More often than not, it is the owner of the finger that presses the button that makes the difference.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

Legacy glass IMHO is often better optically, usually has a shallower DOF available, is better built and will do a great job.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

Troooo dat.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

Deleted.