A good lens for guitar close-ups

[JohnW63]

I got a little collection of camera stuff from a friend of my parents, about 10 years ago. Not new, but in good shape. I think I gave him $200 for the lot. It came with a Minolta camera and three lens. An X-700 camera and a Minolta 58mm f1.2 as well as a 135mm f2.8. The third lesn a Vivitar zoom is of no real note. It's got a motor drive too! Ooooo! This is all late 70s vintage, I think.

The cool lens is the 58mm. I happened to re-visit the photo.net web site and found a handful of pictures I uploaded. I scanned the slides and reduced the size to fit the upload sizes for the year oof our lord 2013. But one made me remember why I like the 58mm.

Even refrigerator nick-knacks can look cool with a wide open fast lens.

I'm thinking musical gear close ups would be neat with this lens. It only fits Minolta cameras. If I could find a digital camera I could mount this one with good results, I may look into it.

 

[Guildedagain]

It's got good bokeh? ;[]

I had a Nikon 55mm F~1.2, good lord what a hunk o glass, take pics at midnight handheld with fast film.

I just love manual focusing through old glass.

Get a load of this rear element, HUGE!

 

[Nuuska]

Old cameras are somehow similar to reel-to-reel tape recordes - not suitable for everything without extras - but o-boy how they do what they do. Naturally one has to know how to use them.

 

[JohnW63]

I can get an adapter and a used mirrorless camera body ( They have a very short distance from mount to sensor so adapters can be used to get the distance the lens was supposed to have correct. ) for not a big chunk of change. It's all in perspective though. A used full frame mirrorless is going to be $650 and up and a good adapter could be $60+. Should I spend $700 just so I can use to fun glass? I can use them with ether the X-700 or the XG-7 I got cheap and a pocket full of slide film but... price of film, and developing. The nice part is they will save to CDs at high rez for you as part of the development.

 

[Guildedagain]

People were mounting up old lenses on DSLR bodies long before mirrorless, best of both worlds, just learn what's compatible with what.

The 58 f1.2 is not a close up lens, just a standard lens. Nikon's version of the close up was the Micro 55mm in either f2.8 or f3.5, these are fantastical lenses.

This shot with manual focus Micro f3.5 mounted on Nikon D200 DSLR body. If you want to take amazing photographs, you need amazing glass. It's not all about sensors, far from it. It's about resolution, resolving power, chromatic aberration, etc, etc and Bokeh.