Hunting for old lenses is one of my favourite activities. Sometimes I buy job lots of them at auction. Other times I ferret around in promising-looking boxes at car boot sales and flea markets, occasionally retrieving some cylindrical hunk of metal and glass with a defunct or non-standard mount.
Almost any kind of lens is worth a shot — all varieties of cameras lens, obviously, but also enlarging lenses (great for macro photography and a fraction of the price of a macro lens), projector lenses, and movie camera lenses.
Then it gets even more fun because, after checking out and cleaning up your finds, it’s time to try them out. For this, it’s useful to have a varied collection of lens adapters, tubes, helicoids, maybe a bellows, rubber bands, and photographic black tape. For the trickiest lenses, you might also need plywood, a jig saw or scroll saw, and some strong glue.
Your results won’t always be good or even interesting. But some will be, and you’ll learn a lot and enjoy yourself on the way.
If you’re interested in learning more, the best place by far is Mathieu Stern’s fabulous Weird Lens Museum, where you’ll find Mathieu’s catalogue of weird lenses, each…
