Blast from the past: Photographer attaches 105-year-old lens to mirrorless camera!

 

 

French photographer Mathieu Stern just kicked off a new video series called "The Weird Lens Challenge." In this series, Stern will be using "only the weird lenses, the old, the crazy ones" and mounting them to a mirrorless camera.

His first antique optic for the series is a 1910 folding camera lens, an Eastman Kodak Kodex / Topaz Bayer Paris f/6.3 120mm lens. Despite being over a century old, it still produces fairly sharp results. The style and age of the lens forced Stern to get creative in attaching it to his Sony A7 II, though.

Using cardboard, an m42 macro tube, and an m42 bellows, Stern was able to focus the 105-year-old lens attached to his Sony A7 II via a Nex adapter ring. Without the modern lens coatings found on lenses today, the old glass does have difficulty controlling flare, and its renditions of color and contrast lack the punch of modern lenses. Nonetheless, using a lens from the turn of the 20th century on a modern mirrorless camera is pretty cool! See Stern's results below.

It'll be interesting to see what old lens Stern tries out on his YouTube channel next!

(Seen via Popular Photography. If you would like to try lens adapters for yourself, see this excellent guide by Popular Photography.)