Saturday, April 16, 2011

4,- for a prime 50mm 1.8

There's fewer and fewer of these little secondhand shops; usually run by elderly hobbyists that make a few (extra) bucks by selling vintage stuff. This store in Amsterdam specializes in old photographic equipment and (8mm) filmprojectors. I believe this shop is one of the few in Europe that has a generous stock of spare light bulbs for 8mm projectors.
He also has boxes full of lenses, old Pentax camera's, spare caps, straps, filters and one giant 35 mm projector (100 kilogram?) that will most likely never leave the shop. And it's all crammed up till the ceiling and organized in a way that only the proprietor will ever understand. And sometimes even he has no idea...

I decided to buy a few of these old, dust-collecting lenses and he gave me 6 lenses for 25 euros. I'm planning to spend a day taking photographs with each one mounted to my Canon 550D, just to see what these dirt-cheap lenses were still capable of. This is all straight out of the camera. Day 1: the Meyer-Optik Görlitz Oreston 1.8/50 (it's a wonderful 4,- piece of glass... click on the photo for a larger view)

3 comments:

  1. Do you remember where the shop was? I am going to visit Amsterdam and would like to browse their local vintage photography shops as well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://www.parallaxe.nl/uk/indexm.html

      have fun...

      best regards,

      Jeroen

      Delete
    2. Great, thanks! :) Will be there next week

      Delete