GEAR COOL LENSES THE JOY OF LO-FI!
The boom in lo-fi photography, especially with hipsters taking up film photography, has ignited a whole newmarket for remade, old-school lenses that give a huge variety of unique effects. From a pinhole look to a super-wide with lots of vignetting, there are plenty to choose from. They’re all manual focus with manual apertures, so are ideal for the filmmaker looking to create something very different. Trendy film photography firm Lomography is pioneering this booming sector, and has its own 32mm f/2.5 Lomogon Art lens to fit Canon EF, Nikon F, Pentax K and Fujifilm X with an adapter. The look gives lots of vignetting, rich colours and lots of contrast. The Lomo Minitar lens is a super- compact 32mm f/2.8 lens that gives a lot of vignetting and vivid colours, and is good for low light. It comes in a Leica Mmount, but there are adapters for Sony E, Fujifilm X and MFT mounts. The Daguerreotype Achromat 64mm f/2.9 lens is a remake of the world’s first optical lens and can be fitted to Nikon F, Canon EF and MFT mounts. To change the aperture, you use drop-in Waterhouse plates “Although it’s tempting to use lo-fi lenses wide open, it can become a bit gimmicky”
that go down to an equivalent of f/16. And with just two lens elements, the images are soft and dreamy. You can also fit differently shaped aperture plates to change the look even more. But perhaps the most useful are the Petzval lenses, which come in 80.5mm f/1.9 or 55mm f.1,7 Mark II versions and are specially designed for mirrorless cameras. Available in Sony E, Canon RF and Sony Z full-frame mirrorless mounts, the lenses are based on a 180-year-old design that gives unique swirly bokeh, which can be adjusted with a dial on the lens. With the lens shot wide open, the bokeh from the eight-bladed aperture is very velvety and swirly. Close down, using the stepless aperture ring, and everything is much sharper, but at any f/stop, you can alter the swirly
IMAGES The Petzval lens gives a unique swirly bokeh (above) while the Lomo Minitar lens is very soft at the edges with lots of vignetting (below)
look of the bokeh with the bokeh control ring. You can also drop in Waterhouse-style plates that have different shapes cut into them to change the appearance of the bokeh. The look is very different, adjustable to your tastes and gives a strong style that’s ideal for making your film stand out. Alternatively, Lensbaby also sells a whole range of lo-fi lenses to fit most DSLR and mirrorless lenses. They are available in a range of focal lengths and designs, including lenses built to mimic a tilt-shift lens and optics where you can adjust the bokeh, like the Petzval. Although it’s tempting to use any of these lo-fi lenses wide open for a shallow depth-of-field and maximum vignetting, with the bokeh adjusted for maximum effect, it can become a bit gimmicky, which is fine for a dream sequence, but not for a whole project. But if you dial back the look, then hipster lenses like these can be more useful. Sometimes less is more.
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