I went over to momma’s for breakfast yesterday, and she handed off some camera gear that belonged to my Grandfather. A full Vivitar rig: 250/SI (with some mold in the eyepiece), Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina-made, in the 30th week of 1975, or maybe 85, but everything else is from the mid 1970s, and it looks like a 70s lens), Montgomery Ward branded 28 f/2.8, JCPenny Diamatic branded 135mm f/2.8, and a Vivitar 2x teleconverter, plus a couple of weird-looking flashes with no settings, and a bunch of 49mm filters.
Since I have a 50 that I’m really happy with (the 1.8G Nikkor), and a fabulous 24mm f/2.8, I was particularly interested in the 135.
Slight problem: the lenses all feature an m42 screw mount. Luckily, so does the EL Nikkor 50mm, so I already had an adapter.
I took the 135 out briefly yesterday, with unsatisfactory results, and today I found out why: it’s broken. It focuses from ~8′ to about 30, but never reaches infinity, and you can unscrew and remove the front half of the lens.
I suppose the focus issue could be due to the retrofit, but the adapter adds negligible thickness to the mount.
In itself, this is not a big deal, for me. I probably wouldn’t want to use the lens for a tele anyway, given that I have the 70-210 Vivitar that absolutely rocks.
It’s the 8′ minimum focus distance that gets me.
However, if the Zomb-E series has taught me anything, broken can be beautiful.
Witness the nice background and very pleasant foreground blur here. The stems and flowers are between 6′ and 7.5′ away, and the bokeh on the group to the right is just my thing. I wish I could’ve gotten something in focus, but oh well.
D7000. JCPenny Diamatic 135mm f/2.8 (maybe Accura-made, maybe not). ISO400, 1/500th, f/2.8, -1EV. Very slight crop to bring the left edge to meet the branch on the left.
