I’m a big fan of vintage 50mm lenses. I’ve test 3 fast 50mm primes in this test and ended up keeping the Olympus which I use on daily basis. I also absolutely love my Helios 44-2 58mm lens. There are so many other great 50mm lenses that I’m yet to discover.
The video above was shot completely on Yashica Yashinon DS 50mm f/1.4 lens, which is yet another amazing value for money 50mm f/1.4 lens.
I don’t have this one yet, but thanks to a fellow filmmaker, Ryd Cook we can see how this lens performs in real life conditions. I think the image is very pleasant and the lens is capable. The video is ungraded so you can see how it performs straight out of the camera.
Here is Ryd’s view on this lens:
I love this lens, I picked it up for £75 on eBay which is uber cheap! I use it with a Canon 550d/t2i.
The focus ring is massive and really nice to use. Perfect for focus pulls! The aperture ring is a little close to the camera at the back of the lens, but you soon get used to it. It nicely clicks into each different f/stop, which is great, but not totally ideal for video if you want to change aperture while recording, the change is too blunt.
The image is quite soft, but in a beautiful way. The colours are so lovely that I often don’t dare to go near grading footage shot with this lens. The bokeh is beautiful too, and shooting in low light is an absolute dream, you can keep your ISO very low and get a lovely noise free image. Not easy to focus once you’re on 1.4 though!
I highly recommend this lens.
I try my best to make this website a great resource people interested in vintage lenses for video use, so I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and it will help you save some money on your future lens investments. I’ve joined the ebay partnership program to help me run this website and fund my monthly lens giveaways, so if you found this post useful and would like to help me produce more similar content, please use the links in this post if you’re planning to buy one of these lenses or use this link if you want to buy anything else on eBay. You will not be spending a penny more using these links, while still helping me as I will get a small percentage from any purchase or successful bid you make. A win-win solution for everyone!
Thanks for all your work. I am from India so I get my lenses from ebay.in – is there a link for me to use through which I can support your work. I use a lot of vintage lenses – including my old 16mm lens – enlarger lenses etc
I have that lens and camera body, did you need an adapter?? Mine don’t seem to fit together!
This lens is great! I have it in my small collection of Yashica/Yashinon lenses that I still conserve sin the late 90’s. For photo or video gives a different character and mood.