Why I like imperfect optics

There was a power cut at home so we had to resort to candlelight. So I thought it would be a nice opportunity for candlelit photography.

What I was not expecting was to see the aperture blades in the picture. Despite investing in a rather nice camera body, almost all of my lenses are M42 mount. This particular lens is a Pentacon Electric 1.8/50 that was attached to a Praktica MTL3 I found up in the attic nearly 10 years ago.

The really nice thing about these lenses is their simplicity. Before getting the RP I was mainly using the Praktica so had to do everything manually. Not for everyone but I took great pleasure in that. But that simplicity makes life very easy if things do go wrong. The aperture blades had oil on them a while back so would get stuck wide open. Eventually I took the lens apart in the lab, cleaned the blades and regreased the helicoid. It's now as good as new. Try doing that with an RF lens!