Tiny review of some exotic portrait lenses
Accura supertel 85/1.9, Cyclope 85/1.5, Cyclope 85/1.2, Tokina AT-X PRO 828 (added for comparison).
Recently I purchased some very exotic lenses and tried to compare them with already existing in my collection anв between each other. Three of them are fully manual and were mounted on my Canon EOS 5D body through M42 screw mount adapter. The fourth one is a relatively fast autofocus zoom which I added for comparison. It's not possible to adjust aperture on these manual lenses, anyway I prefer to shoot wide open.
All photos were made at fully open aperture, ISO 100, AutoWB, converted with ACR (flat contrast curve, all defaults). It seems that photos were underexposed, but I decided not to correct exposure afterwards.
Accura Supertel 85/1.9
Accura Supertel 85/1.9 was made in Japan in 1967, has metal body, aperture blades were broken and then removed by previous owner.
Pleasing bokeh with soft outlines. Some color cast maybe, or it was just improper WB? I see no signs of chromatic aberrations or nisen-bokeh, although it appears that this lens is not very sharp even in the center. I'd say it's fine for portraits.
Cyclope 85/1.5
As far as I know, this lens was removed from some night vision scope or something similar. Although it has M42-mount it's not a photographic lens, but its specs allow to use it on DSLR and are rather outstanding. I heard that the optical scheme is fully identical to Helios-40, which was a russian copy of Carl-Zeiss Planar. That is quite possible, because the glass elements look identical and have the same size. There is no possibility to adjust the aperture, but the lens is quite sharp even wide open. It has smooth focusing ring and besides being made of metal, weighs less than 600 grams.
Color seems to be neutral. Depth of field is shallower than in previous example because of a wider aperture. But it seems that the image, at least near its center, has more micro-contrast and small details are better distinguishable. The bokeh is not very soft, sometimes it reminds of drawing, although I see some lines-doubling (nisen-bokeh), for example on the shoes on the right side. I see no chromatic aberrations of any kind. I like the pictures from this lens because of some kind of 3D-effect it produces. Probably it has slightly curved depth of field but it wonderfully "draws" out-of focus transitions, not like some lenses which just make some kind of in-focus strip, making other parts of an image blurred.
Cyclope 85/1.2
The origin of this very exotic lens is similar to the previous one. But I think that unlike the slower lens this one was not intended for photographic use. Before I was able to mount it on my 5D, some modifications were necessary. I had to saw off the part which was protruding inside the camera, otherwise it could break the mirror. But finally I succeeded;)
I can see a lot of aberrations of all kinds. The depth of field is extremely narrow. Resolution drops near the corners and when shooting portraits it's better to keep main subject near the center of composition. Color balance is on the warm side. It's also obvious, that the true focal lenght is rather around 130mm. The picture reminds me of some photos made with lensbabies lens, although the contrast and resolution is even lower. The lens is so fast, that in the daylight the camera sometimes shows overexposure even with the shutter set to 1/8000 and 100ISO! It seems that in low light there's also a lower amount of aberrations, at least in my experience. Despite of many problems, I like this lens and use it for unusual, soft portraits.
Tokina AT-X 828 AF Pro 80-200/2.8
I included this lens in review mainly for comparison. It's a fast AF-zoom that I use for sports-shooting which can be also used for making portraits. Though not as good as Canon L-lenses, this one is substantionally cheaper and delivers sufficient performance.
Neutral colors. Surprisingly, the background is blurred even more than with Accura-lens although aperture of Tokina was at 2.8 and it was set to the same focal lenght (85mm). When viewing at 100%, lateral chromatic aberrations that look like soft wide yellow outlines in background are visible. Purple fringing is also distinguishable as a narrow outline on manequin's jacket. Naturally, with this lens we see the maximum micro-contrast probably because of an aperture setting of 2.8.
