In my vintage lens adventures, I’ve rarely come across any that were truly awful. Indeed many have initially been underdogs on paper, but have then surprised me in use.
So I decided to set myself a challenge that encompassed the two aspects of my 35hunter approach – finding a lens that met certain criteria, then finding some tiny pockets of beauty to photograph with it.
Being something of a cheapskate, I decided to set my spending limit to just £5. Could I find a usable lens for £5 or less, and get some decent results with it?
Read part one, with the MC Sun Zoom 28-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Macro here.
Part 2 of this series features the Paragon 300mm f/5.6, in M42 mount.
This lens I saw looking neglected and forgotten under a pile of ornaments at a car boot sale.
A quick inspection revealed mechanically it was fine, with a preset aperture and lots of aperture blades, but with pretty serious condensation inside one of the rear elements.
I asked the seller what they wanted for it, and they had no clue, so I offered £1. And she accepted immediately. Maybe I should’ve opened at 50p…
Not having used a 300m lens before, I was surprised how light it is. But it is huge in length, even on my not insubstantial Pentax K10D.
The Paragon also has a strange arm attachment (part of which I removed) which I think is to mount it on a tripod.
So, with its cloudy rear elements, slow speed (f/5.6 max remember!) and cumbersome handling, could I possibly get any decent images from it?
Not too shockingly, yes!
With experience I’ve realised that dust, minor fungus, even serious scratches, don’t have the apparently terrifying impact on images that some people fear.
True, the haze does make an impact, and the images are quite soft and, well a little hazy.
But for me it makes the photographs romantic somehow, especially with the long focal length giving such shallow depth of field.
These were all shot handheld too, and mostly wide open. I wonder if a tripod was used a couple of stops down the sharpness would increase.
But that kind of preparation sort of defeats the unique strength of the Paragon, and that is its dreamy romantic charm, from a bygone era.
For the grand total investment of just £1, the Paragon offers amazing performance per pound.
Given its long focal length (for me!) and the relative difficulty of focusing at f/5.6 with a DLSR and hazy elements, it’s not something I’ll pull out at every opportunity.
But it’s probably worth another play before deciding whether to attempt to dismantle those rear elements and see if they can be cleaned, or to just donate it as is to a local charity shop.
What have been your most pleasing results with very cheap cameras and/or lenses? How do you feel using cheap kit compared with far more expensive?
Please let us know in the comments below.
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35hunter 
Really interesting, I have a Mitakon 80-200mm that has some haze behind the front element. I haven’t used it because of that. Will give it a go.
Definitely try it! From the little I know about the structure of lenses, the further any optical defects are from the film/sensor plane, the less impact they have.
In other words any imperfections on the front elements are much less likely to have any impact on the images than any on the rear elements.
My Paragon is pretty horrendous right at the rear. But it’s still very usable, as hopefully the photographs above show!
I have a Sears 80-200 zoom for K mount that I expected to be awful but was, in reality, very nice. It came with some camera body I bought, so it was “free.”
Wow! That was impressive, never thought cheap Lens can produce such great results!
Thanks Benj. Keep an eye out for the next post in this series, I’ve been testing it out this week…
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I have the exact same lens bought from a charity shop. I’m a complete beginner and know very little about lenses so I was wondering if you could enlighten me on the use of this lens. I’m not certain if I’m using it correctly. I’ve got it adapted for a Sony a3000 mirrorless micro 4/3 and I cannot get this thing to focus closer than maybe 10 metres and it won’t focus on anything further than 75 meters. Is this its range of focus or am I doing something wrong, or is it broken? I’m just starting out and I’m very much enjoying vintage manual focus lenses and understand the cropping of the full frame to Micro 4/3 and have had great fun with my kenlock 35-105 and I’m waiting for an adapter for a vivitar series 1 70-210.
Hi Leon, thanks for your comments.
First, I don’t think the Sony a3000 is micro four thirds, but Sony E Mount. This lens is M42 so you need an adapter that’s M42 to Sony E Mount.
I don’t have the lens now but it probably should focus on something a couple of metres away. Because of the large focal length everything will appear much closer anyway so with a long lens like this you don’t need super close focus. It should be closer than 10m though.
Start with using the right adapter and then see how you get on, if it resolves the focusing issues? Let me know how it goes.