2012-11-18 – Olympus PEN E-PL1
yellow leaves and concrete, San José, California

#california #epl1

Completing The Set: The 70mm f2.8 Lens For The Pentax Auto 110 Super SLR Camera

I’m a big fan of the Pentax Auto 110 Super, the dinky little 110-format SLR camera. Which is odd really, because I don’t actually have one. It’s the lens system for this camera that I really like, and the reason for this is because 110 film is almost exactly the same size as the micro four-thirds sensor and if you have an adapter you can use Pentax 110 lenses with micro four-thirds mirrorless cameras. Which is really cool.

Over the past year or so I’ve collected all of the Pentax Auto 110 lenses; the 18mm, the positively tiny 24mm, the 50mm, and the 20–40mm zoom lens. But one lens that has always evaded me is the 70mm telephoto lens. Until now. Of course, I came across it during a random search of the Kamerastore website. It was in the ‘Not Passed’ category,  with ‘flaws that will affect typical use.’ In this case, the lens, ‘has dust in the central elements, as well as in the rear. These will lessen image quality. The lens also does not focus to infinity.’

The dust wasn’t too much of an obstacle, but what gave me pause was that bit about the lens not focusing to infinity. And then I wondered … . What if someone had tried to clean the lens and somehow, while reassembling it, had put one of the elements in backwards. Not only would this stop the lens focusing to infinity, I thought, but it might also give a really nice Deakinizer effect. 

If you’re not familiar with the Deakinizer, it was a lens invented by cinematographer Roger Deakins that creates an image with a clear centre to the frame and blurred edges. A cheap way to make a Deakinizer is to hold a wide-angle converter reversed in front of a camera lens, and another way is to take an old lens and reverse one of the elements. This is often done to old Helios lenses, and can give a wonderful swirly bokeh effect. So with that in mind, I took the plunge and ordered the Pentax 70mm f2.8 lens.

The Pentax Auto lenses have no aperture adjustment and are fixed wide open at f2,8. Originally the Pentax Auto body contained an adjustable aperture. Consequently, have learned that in bright sunlight I may need to use a neutral density filter to cut down the light reaching the sensor. For reference, the filter size of each lens is 30.5mm (18mm wide-angle lens), 25.5mm (24mm f/2.8 standard lens), 37.5mm (50mm telephoto lens), 49mm (20–40mm zoom lens  and 70mm telephoto lens).

On its arrival, the 70mm f2.8 Pentax-110 lens was in lovely condition. As described there were a couple of big lumps of dust under or near the rear element, but otherwise it was fine. I fitted it into the adapter in the Olympus Pen E-PL2. With ‘close’ subjects the focusing was spot on, but as soon as I focused the lens to infinity, on the camera the image wouldn’t focus at all. Mind you, it was a dull day and the LCD screen wasn’t that easy to view when trying to focus properly. 

One thing that was apparent was a large vignette in the top right corner of the image, and in the bottom left it appeared to me that the lens wasn’t focusing properly. That said, when I took the camera to the front of the house and viewed across the road, the buildings and trees in the middle distance were spot-on for focusing.

In conclusion, I reckon that at some stage a previous owner had tried to clean the lens and somehow had not reassembled it properly. That said, for my use, where I enjoy uneven focus across the image, this will be a fun lens to try out. I’ve a lot of projects on the go at the moment, but I’m certainly looking forward to using this lens again. And now I have a wide range of mirrorless prime lenses, which is awesome. 

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow my WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline on Mastodon.

#Adapter #DigitalPhotography #Epl1 #Jankuary #Microfourthirds #MiniatureCamera #Mirrorless #Olympus #Olympuspen #PentaxAuto110 #PentaxAutoSLR #VintageLens

I don’t really have any proper lenses for my mirrorless cameras. Well, apart from the 18mm lens cap lens, which is made by Olympus so I guess that could be classed as ‘proper’, but it’s fixed aperture and has a plastic lens so that’s on the borderline. What I have used until now are some odd lenses like the Lomography Experimental Lens Kit and the Thingyfy Pinhole Pro pinhole lens.

So there I am, with a collection of weird and wonderful lenses but no ‘real’ glass. However, over the past few months I’ve been gathering some lenses that I’ve been after for a quite a while. The Pentax Auto 110 was an interchangeable lens SLR camera for 110 film. It’s diminutive form came with a range of lenses, from wide angle to a telephoto zoom, that are well known as the smallest and cutest lenses ever made. The other useful feature of these lenses is that the image size of 110 film (17mm×13mm) is almost exactly the same size as the micro four-thirds sensor (17.3mm×13mm), so with an adapter close enough to the image sensor there’s almost complete compatibility with the mirrorless cameras.

The Pentax Auto lenses have no aperture adjustment and are fixed wide open at f2,8. Originally the Pentax Auto body contained an adjustable aperture, but with the Olympus set to aperture priority or manual mode it’s easy to get a good exposure. I have read that in bright sunlight you may need to use a neutral density filter to cut down the light reaching the sensor. In this instance I might have to invest in some step up rings. For reference, the filter size of each lens is 30.5mm (18mm wide-angle lens), 25.5mm (24mm f/2.8 standard lens), 37.5mm (50mm telephoto lens), 49mm (20–40mm zoom lens).

It was a nice sunny day today, and as we had planned to go to Costa Nova for lunch I thought it would be nice to take along the Olympus Pen E-PL1 and the Pentax Auto lenses. One thing I will mention before we start is that I discovered I’m not really good at distance focussing with these lenses and a lot of the images were a little bit out of focus. That said, it was fabulous fun using these old lenses on a digital mirrorless camera and the cheap Pentax Auto to micro four-thirds adapter worked like a charm.

You can see from the first few images that I had a real problem with focussing, wide open at f2,8 the lenses are really sensitive about getting the distance correct. Even with subjects that are, to all intents and purposes, at infinity sometimes the images were a little soft.

Most of the time I used the 18mm wide-angle angle lens, which is not as small as the 24mm standard lens but has a lovely wide field of view. In the harbour at Costa Nova, though I did a comparison with the wide-angle, standard and short telephoto lens. This time I did not bring the zoom lens along.

With these lenses a neutral density filter is certainly a must. Even though the camera exposed most of the images really nicely, the shutter speed was at the limit that the camera cam handle. I’m certainly going to be looking around for suitable ND filters and/or step up rings.

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow my WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com@keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline on Mastodon.

https://keithdevereux.wordpress.com/2024/02/18/using-1970s-pentax-auto-110-lenses-with-a-micro-four-thirds-mirrorless-camera-18-february-2024/

#Adapter #DigitalPhotography #Epl1 #Jankuary #Microfourthirds #MiniatureCamera #Mirrorless #Olympus #Olympuspen #PentaxAuto110 #PentaxAutoSLR #VintageLens

The older of my recent camera purchases continues to impress me. #Olympus #OMDigital #EPL1 #Florida #Sunset https://www.flickr.com/photos/cell911/52729952564/in/dateposted-public/

Camera gear refresh in progress, part III. My first SLR was a Pentax MX purchased at age 14 in 1978 with paper route earnings. That’s the 50mm f1.7 from it on the E-PL1 thanks to a Fotodiox mount adapter. @Valdis and @DerrickStory ought to love this combo. More K mount glass awaits. #olympus #omdigital #epl1 #pentax #photography #vintagelens

Camera gear refresh in progress, part 1. Picked up a very nice used Olympus E-PL1 with kit lens on Friday. In the #microfourthirds camp because my better half has a bag full of lenses (I'm on the lookout for wider) and I love the light weight and compactness. Partly inspired by a recent discussion of @ade968 and @chrismarquardt on the #tfopnow #podcast. #CameraGear #photography #omdigital #olympus #epl1 #GearAcquisitionSyndrome

Queens Quay sunrise OTD 2010

#sunrise
#Toronto
#Photography
#EPL1