Are these old lenses any good?

[Pho]

As some of you may know I'm looking into a camera. I'm deffinately thinking of the DSLR range now. I don't want to spent lots yet as I still have lots to learn with photos, so I've been looking at the Nikon D50 amongst others.

This got me thinking, maybe I can salvage my dads old lenses for use with this camera, without having to buy new lenses straight away. Having finally found them I'm wondering on your opinions of them, especially the giant hubble size challenging thing . Would they be good enough?

I wasn't too sure how to photograph them so took a few random shots of them and I'll try and supply all the tech. details I can. I had to remove several of the shots because the forum limits the amount of images. If you want to see the rest try here: http://photobucket.com/albums/d81/amkiller/Lenses/


This is a Tamron lens. The info on it reads:
CF Tele Macro
BBAR MC 58
30'-11.3'
1 : 3.8 1:4/210
80-210mm




Another Tamron one:
7 elements in 7 groups
Angle of View: 64°-34°
Minimum Focusing Distance: 0.25 m (0.82 ft.)
Minimum Aperture: f/22
Filter Size: 58 mm
Lens Hood: screw-in (not included)
Weight: 340 g (with M42 adapter)




A Pentacon one:
Construction - 5 elements, 4 groups
Angular field - 18°
Minimum focusing distance - 1.5m (pre-set), 1.7 (auto)
Diaphragm action - Pre-set / Fully automatic
Minimum aperture - f/32 (pre-set), f/22 (auto)
Filter size - 55mm screw-in type
Push-on diameter - 57 (pre-set) / 60mm (auto)
Weight - 515g (pre-set), 470g (auto)
Barrel length - 94mm (pre-set), 89mm (auto)




Another Pentacon:
Construction - 7 elements, 7 groups
Angular field - 73°
Minimum focusing distance - 0.25m
Diaphragm action - Fully automatic
Minimum aperture - f/22
Filter size - 55mm screw-in type
Push-on diameter - 57mm
Weight - 240g (auto) / 220g (electric)
Barrel length - 52mm

 

[Pho]

This is sat next to a 30cm ruler (ok, 26cm as 4cm snapped off, it didn't shatter as advertised though ). Damn heavy!
It's Russian built, I couldn't find much from a google except in Russian. It has on it, Tair-3, 4.5/300a. Having tried it through an old SLR it magnifies a house up the road quite well.






Theirs also a box full of stuff, including some old school light meter and loads of filters, a couple of zooming things / micro things (for want of a better word). Theirs some more stuff in other boxes too but these looked the most interesting.




All of them connect with this style ring, it's around 4cm diameter and, I think this is what my dad said, has a 'bayonett' fitting (the little metal prong).





Thanks a lot, I appreciate your having to wade through lots of stuff here .

 

[xolotl]

Its hard to tell how good they are just by looking at them and because they are quite old I doubt there will be much on the net about them.

Your best bet is to just try it, when you get your D50 buy the correct adapter (there about £30 on ebay) and just try them out. They look fully manual so you will have to focus and set the aperture but you don't have much to lose.

 

[hoodmeister]

Aye, certainly don't sell // chuck out anything.

As stated, you'll need an adapter to use em' on a D50, and they'll also be fully manual. Older lenses are much easier to focus manually than most newer ones though, so as long as you're not planning to try and use them on sports and fast moving things, you should be fine.

Don't forget that the giant Russian thing will (as with all the lenses) be magnified further by the crop factor of your dSLR - should be able to get some seriously voyeuristic shots with that

There's a bunch of Cokin filter gear in the "box of stuff" - impossible to make out what filters on the supplied image, but there's bound to be some handy ones in there. Even if you find that these lenses aren't much cop (or are too hard for you to use) keep the Cokin filters - they will still have application with newer lenses.

 

[Johnny|lucidcomposure]

woah! all them filters! They are prob only useful for lens threads of 60mm and under. But yeah keep them!

 

[DRZ]

Unfortunately, most of those lenses simply wont work with whatever new camera you get

Even with the adapter ring, the way the aperture is set just before shutter release is done by a mechanism inside the camera pushing on that little prong out the back.

If any of them have a swich on them to put them into "manual" mode then they can be used.

 

[TRiP]

thats a nice set of lenses. not sure where you got the info from though as some of it doesnt sound quite right.(auto aperture on a fully manual lens)

they look like they're M42 screw mount, not bayonett. so you will need the relevant adapter ring (about £12 if you can find it in a camera shop).

 

[Pho]

Its hard to tell how good they are just by looking at them and because they are quite old I doubt there will be much on the net about them.

Your best bet is to just try it, when you get your D50 buy the correct adapter (there about £30 on ebay) and just try them out. They look fully manual so you will have to focus and set the aperture but you don't have much to lose.

Still not sure on the D50 yet, I'm too un-decisive . Knowing I'll more than likely need different lenses (from reading the rest of the replies) for macro/high zoom keeps pushing me toward the digi cam range, which I know aren't as good, but everythings just there, but then I prefer DSLR. See my problems?



Their does seem like an excessive amount of filters, but I will keep them .

Unfortunately, most of those lenses simply wont work with whatever new camera you get

Even with the adapter ring, the way the aperture is set just before shutter release is done by a mechanism inside the camera pushing on that little prong out the back.

If any of them have a swich on them to put them into "manual" mode then they can be used.

Oh, damn. I think theirs 1 or 2 which have the manual thing on, the big Russian thing seems to too .

thats a nice set of lenses. not sure where you got the info from though as some of it doesnt sound quite right.(auto aperture on a fully manual lens)

they look like they're M42 screw mount, not bayonett. so you will need the relevant adapter ring (about £12 if you can find it in a camera shop).

Mostly from Googling the info found on the camera (and google image search usually backed me up).

Thanks for pointing out the propper name, I'll have a look into that.

 

[Pho]

Thinking about the aperture problem, could you not buy an aperature ring, or I even read somewhere you can control the aperture electronically on the camera, would this not solve the lens problem to an extent?

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Depends on the D50.
I asked about using older manual lenses on a D70, which might be the same. The answer I got was that they would work, but that the through lens metering wouldn't operate.
Now to me, only the most critical elements of an SLR is the TLM, without that, you might aswell not both unless you're in a studio and have all the time in the world.