Be Through The Vintage Glass

Modern lenses have advanced so much that they are nearly perfect now. They can produce incredibly detailed images with very few defects. Ghosting, flaring, diffraction, and blurriness have been largely eliminated. Even lenses on the cheaper end can render a technically perfect image.

With the advancement of cameras on iPhones, photos have become clinically sharp with perfect exposure. They have gotten so good that it’s easy to spot a picture from a phone now. They are perfect—almost too perfect—to the point where they have lost any form of character and uniqueness. With perfect colors, tack-sharp focus, and evenly balanced highlights and shadows, they all basically look the same. There’s no charm to them.

This is why shooting with older lenses can be so much fun. They are old and clunky. Some have soft focus even at the center of the image, producing a glow in the highlights. It adds so much character and charm to the image.

I got my hands on a really old 28mm f/2.8 Minolta lens with pristine glass. It looked like it had never been touched before. After placing an order for an adapter, I reached out to an old friend and asked for a photoshoot.

Be has incredibly beautiful, soft features. With radiant skin and an incredible modeling face, I knew she would be perfect to test this lens out.

After agreeing to the shoot, she chose an outfit that would go perfectly with the vintage colors this lens would produce. We were both going into this shoot blind, not knowing how the lens would perform. I had an idea of what to expect but was prepared to shoot with a modern lens in case the vintage one didn’t work well.

Luckily, the lens performed incredibly well. It definitely wasn’t sharp, but it was soft enough to give Be the glow I was hoping for. Skin tones rendered soft and pleasing, with smooth transitions between light and shadow. Contrast was low, yet it made the colors vibrant without being overly saturated like I’d get with a modern lens.

We shot in natural light as well as with off-camera flash, both producing incredible results. The only images I had to scrap were the ones where I missed focus. Even with the focus peaking on my camera, it was still hard to focus on Be because of the soft glow it produced. But even the few that were slightly out of focus, I still loved.

This is a lens I will pull out once in a while for special occasions. It’s fun, and it makes me more creative, which is something I need every once in a while.

It is definitely a unique lens, and it was perfect for capturing this incredible moment in time with Be.