Gotta love a standard lens. Not too hard to get good performance out of, and there used to be one attached to every changeable-lens camera that was sold. There’s a lot of them about and they can be reasonably priced.
I have been using a wide-aperture standard lens that I got from a charity shop. It was a bit of a punt, as the rear element looked like it was chipped at the edge. But if you imagine that the lens throws a cone of light at the film plane to cover a rectangular frame, the damage was lined-up with the long edge of the film. I hoped that this would put any problems well outside the actual area captured by the film. I also painted the chipped area with black paint. It was worth a try, and how else am I going to get an f1.2 lens for the price of a coffee?
It renders nicely, and the out of focus areas are busy but interesting. (Eek! I’m turning into a bokeh monster)
It can get a bit too busy if there are highlights in the background though.
The chip in the lens is a bit odd though. There is no damage to the lens from being dropped and the design of the lens almost means there has to be a cutaway in the rear element to clear the aperture-operating pin. If anyone else has one of these (Tomioka Auto Yashinon 55mm 1:1.2) do let me know what a good one looks like. And yes, I know this lens uses radioactive glass. It’s an alpha emitter, so stopped by a lens cap.
I’ve also got an Industar 50-2. This is a weird little Soviet pancake lens that came with a Praktica as a rear cap. The maximum aperture is f3.5, but it renders backrounds really smoothly.
This cost the equivalent of a couple of fancy coffees. Probably less, because I don’t drink CostaBucks so I don’t really know what they cost. It vignettes a bit when wide open, but that adds to the results when I use it as a portrait lens on a crop-sensor digital camera (making it equivalent to a 75mm).
I’ve also got a Helios-44 which does the swirly background thing if you get close.
I’d also like to point out that my versions of these lenses seem to break the golden rules of lens-buying. What we are told is that scratches on the front element are OK, but don’t buy anything that has damage to the rear element. Avoid lenses with fungus – except the Industar 50-2 had spider’s webs instead. And if you buy a Helios-44, get one where you can turn the focus ring. Mine is so stiff it unscrews the lens rather than focusing.
Don’t care though – they cost peanuts and I enjoy using them because of the results.
UPDATE
So I got curious enough to go and find what my ‘chipped’ lens looks like, and it appears that the cropped rear element is a real thing and was made that way. I can only think it must have put other people (than this chancer) off, which is why it was cheap.
FURTHER UPDATE
I have just found what these f1.2 lenses sell for. Eek! This is very far from a thrifty fifty. So, do I sell it to fund some other work, or keep it to continue playing with?
Fup Duck Photography 
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