THE BACKGROUND

DISCLAIMER: This is not a serious “Review.” This is “fun with lens adaptors.”

Four years ago, during the quarantine, I performed a small shootout of my Soviet and Japanese M42 lenses on film, shot with a Pentax SP 500 (you can find the results here). Meanwhile, this year, I finally managed to acquire a digital Leica M body (typ 240). This is my first ever digital rangefinder body and it is, of course, mirrorless, which meant it would work well with any kind of lens adapters for different mounts. So, this week I bought a fairly basic (and quite affordable) K&F Concept M42-L/M lens mount adapter to use on the M. One very reason I chose the M 240 instead of a different body (like, for instance, the M 262) is that it features live view. In the case of the M42 lenses, this allows me to use the screen to zoom live and focus pretty precisely where I need, even though these are not rangefinder lenses and focus peaking is not automatic. It’s pretty neat! Of course, it’s not very handy for shooting quickly on the street with large apertures, but I’ve got my M mount lenses for that. I will soon start taking most of the lenses out one by one, but, for now, here’s a first reference shootout I did last night here at home :)

THE SET-UP:

Basic tripod and some string lights on the background to check (and enjoy) the different bokeh renditions of the vintage lenses:

THE LENSES (in the order of the shootout):

the Helios 44M-4. 58mm f/2:

the famous & radioactive radioactive Asahi Super-Takumar 50mm, f/1.4:

the Chinon Auto MC 28mm f/2.8:

the Jupiter 11A, aka the Soviet “rocket ship” lens. 135mm f/4:

the Pentacon 135mm f2.8 Auto MC:

THE RESULTS:

(all images have been shot at ISO 800 and rendered in the same way, with the WB at Tungsten (at 2850 Kelvin) and a Portra 160-type Preset in Lightroom. (I never use straight RAW files anyway, so why bother showing them here?). The light grain is obviously added.

1) Helios 44M:

close-up crop:

2) Super-Takumar 50mm, f/1.4:

close-up crop:

3) Chinon Auto MC 28mm f/2.8:

close-up crop:

mostly wanted to check the vari cross filter for this 28mm, which has indeed collected some dirt inside it throughout the years. Will try to clean it in the future:

4) Jupiter 11A:

close-up crop:

5) Pentacon 135mm f2.8:

close-up crop:

That’s it from the M42s. For personal reference (and since the camera was already on the tripod), I also took some shots with my 3 M-mount lenses:

1) Leica Summicron 35 version 3 (1977)

2) Voigtländer 21mm f4 Color Skopar:

3) Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f1.2 Aspherical VM:

CONCLUSION:

What did I learn? Well, nothing new, but I was reminded of something very important. Photography is fun. And so it should be, at least for me. The cheap lens adapter works well enough for me, and I’m going to enjoy shooting with these lenses, especially the HELIOS 44 with its sweet bokeh and the Soviet Rocket :)

Thanks for sticking around to the end!

PS. Special thanks to the Maneki Neko, the Iron Pyrite & the Jade Lion :)