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Classic vintage lenses are getting way too expensive!

ted_smith

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I need some counsel.

In August I photographed a relatives wedding with my Hasselblad 501CM and got stunning results. I was delighted. It reinvigorated me for using my Blad and for portraiture (see attached examples).



But the reality is, as much as I was reinvigorated, it is just not the kind of camera one hauls around with them when out for a bike ride with the kids, or when going to your kids party. If you pull a camera like that out these days at a casual everyday event like a kids party and people think "what the...."

So then I returned to the idea of supplementing my lens choices for my Nikon F5, for which I only have the 50mm 1.8. Especially with the reintroduction of Ektachrome which is only in 35mm. The F5 is an amazing camera with superb metering and manual modes. But I was saddened at the still and increasingly crazy prices of vintage glass for Nikon too. I've been trying to get a 105mm f2.5 for about 2 years for less than £150 and it just is not happening. I see them on ebay routinely for between £180 and even as high as £400! That's twice what I paid for my 80-200mm 2.8 back in 2007 (which was stolen in 2011!). I am finding lenses like the Nikon 85mm F2 AIS around £130-£200, the NIKON SERIES E 135MM F2.8 AI-s Nikkor upwards of £150-£200 for a half decent one.

So then I thought about my little Olympus OM10 rig. That camera is small and easy for everyday use, but again, I only have the 50mm 1.8 for it. And the problem is it doesn't meter like the Nikon and doesn't have a manual mode. So even if I had more lenses for it, I don't have the creative control that I do with the Nikon and Blad. "Nevermind..." I thought..."amazing quality vintage lenses for that will be cheap as chips these days....nobody uses those OM cameras anymore" and I'll just work around the creative restrictions. How wrong I was about the prices for those lenses! I've been looking at the Olympus OM E-Zuiko Auto-T 100mm F2.8 which seems to be upwards of £150, the OLYMPUS OM ZUIKO MC AUTO T 85MM F2, upwards of £270 to £330!! The Olympus 180mm F2.8 Zuiko, upwards of £250!

By way of example, here is an OLYMPUS OM 85MM F2 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/OLYMPUS-...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649) for £270. That's MORE than the well known and quite classically regarded Nikon Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 available recently in great condition for £200 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nikon-Ni...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649)

I even thought about getting Photodox or Zork adapters so I could use my Carl Zeiss Blad lenses with the Nikon F5, but from what I read the general view seemed to be that it's not worth the bother due to the loss of quality.

So then I thought about getting better OM cameras, like the OM3 or OM4, but guess what...yep, £350-£400 for one of those even!! I can't believe how much this line of cameras (old Nikon and old Olympus OM) are getting these days. And they say film is dead? Not from where I am sitting!

I've spent about two months trying to find a bargain and they just don't come up. The lenses are either damaged, from abroad (meaning import taxes make bargain not bargains) or just way too expensive. I'm not horribly poor, but I have a family and a house so I just don't have the spare income to blow £200+ on what the wife would see as unnecessary outlay.

I feel like I can't win. I've got an amazing Blad with an 80, 120 and 150 but it's impractical for daily use (I even bought a man satchel recently for it, but once my laptop goes in it I can't close the zip of the dam thing with the wide Blad in it!). I have an amazing Nikon but with no affordable quality glass and only the standard 50mm 1.8D. And I have two "average" OM10 cameras, but no quality but affordable glass for those either because it seems they are now more valuable than gold.

I was hoping I could buy good quality but old (vintage) 100mm and a 130mm or 180mm within the f1.8 - f2.5 range, especially for the OM, for tens of pounds these days. And even they are now too expensive.

I feel blue :-(

(PS - I'm aware of lenses like the Olympus OM 135mm f3.5 lens and similar, which can be had for £40 give or take, but I gather they are not all that great for image quality).
 
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I hear you. I recently got a Nikon F2 to supplement my Pentax in 35mm, and I’m finding that Nikon lenses are at least twice the price of Pentax lenses. The only lenses for my Nikon I’ve afforded are pre-AI lenses. That said, with some exception, Pentax lenses are pretty affordable.
 
An old Pentax M42 screw-mount body, a 28mm or 35mm f/3.5, a 50/1.8 and a 105mm lens wouldn't cost much and the image quality would be excellent.
 
The M42 Pentax cameras and lenses are great and so inexpensive. I also have OM gear. Like a Spotmatic, a nice OM 2s won’t set you back much. Stay away from the always expensive 85mm f2 and settle for the 100mm f2.8, they are usually cheap, as are the 135 and 200mm at least in the states.
 
Vintage lens prices jumped up years ago when the mirrorless cameras were released. Old news.
Lenses with a good reputation are commanding good prices. Not crazy high. Well Leica is.

The good news is there are a ton of great cameras and lenses for dirt cheap.

What people are finding is that many of these cheap lenses are as good as the expensive lenses.

So it comes down to this.
Spend the money and get what you want now.
Be patient a and you can probably find them for half.
Be adventurous and try to make the best of whatever you can.

What good is it too complain on a forum?
 
The time between buying Hasselblad lenses just takes a little longer than other lenses. That said I was finished buying any more of them, but then KEH had a 500mm C lens at such a low price for it in EX condition that I just had to buy it. Then in August someone posted that a friend was selling off his Hasselblad equipment. I asked about the Fisheye and again the price was so low that I bought it too. When all the lenses are in the pack, I an barely stand up with the pack on my back.
 
The prices are going up. If it’s any consolation, the prices will drop in the next 10-20 years. It’s the same thing that happened to the guitar market. Baby Boomers retired and had their houses paid for and their kids moved out and became financially secure. That freed up a lot of money for them, and they spent like crazy on their hobbies, finally able to afford the things that had only dreamed of. That drove the prices up. But recently, that generation has been struck with arthritis and many of them can’t play guitar anymore, so they sold them off. The market flooded, the demand dwindled, and the market crashed. With cameras, it’ll be macular degeneration. That tends to happen later in life than the onset of arthritis, so there will be a lag, but it will still happen.

Also right now there is a resurgence of interest in film and popularity of posting photos to social media. That too will wane and camera phones will continue to improve. It’s having the same effect that home recording had on music a decade or two ago. It’s getting a lot of amateurs interested in the hobby. But they’ll get frustrated and move on to the next big thing.

So play the long game and be patient. There are still lots of good deals on cameras to be found. Pentax, Mamiya, and Russian rangefinders, are still pretty affordable and have some amazing high quality lenses and bodies to choose from. So too are many fixed lens cameras like old folders that don’t say Zeiss. And large format is on the rise, but still remains pretty affordable (if you don’t count film). You just have to shoot the stuff everyone else hasn’t caught wind of yet.
 
  • Svenedin
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  • Reason: duplicate
I use the OM system almost exclusively for 35mm and I have acquired a lot of kit over a 30 year period. Recently I was looking for an OM Zuiko 35mm shift. I was a bit shocked by the prices especially on eBay. Searching around, there were significantly better prices off eBay from shops like Park Cameras, Ffordes, Cameraworld etc. I’d also recommend buying from members on Photrio. Many eBay sellers are rather greedy but the prices are also kept high because the lenses are good and they are being repurposed for d*g*t*l use. The OM 85mm is too dear for me, I’ve never had one but I do have a 100mm f2.8 instead which is a lovely little lens that conveniently also uses a 49mm filter (like many of the shorter focal length lenses). If you want a longer lens the 200mm is cheaper than the 180mm but slower (however, with fine grain films such as TMax 400 the need for fast lenses is less critical these days). In terms of bodies I use OM4-Ti or OM3-Ti. Some of the ancillary gear for the OM system is still quite cheap but rarer items (like for instance a grid pattern focus screen for a shift lens) are pricey. My favourite lens is my 50mm f1.4 closely followed by the 24mm f2.8 and 100mm f2.8. If you want to get into the OM system my recommendation is an OM4-Ti but not the cheaper OM-4 which may or may not have been modified by Olympus to solve the battery drain problem of the OM4 (which is not present in the OM4-Ti unless faulty). The OM3-Ti is all mechanical and really a collectors camera with sky high prices (lovely though of course). There are still a few people around who can repair the OM cameras including OM Doktor in Hamburg who has repaired my cameras for me over the years.
 
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You have to buy lenses that don't fit digital cameras if you want realistic pricing.
 
ic-racer said:
You have to buy lenses that don't fit digital cameras if you want realistic pricing.
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That's true, but I discovered a while back that there is a major industry in China supplying adapters to mount just about anything on interchangeable lens mirrorless digit@l cameras. I thought to pick up an old C mount movie lens to rebuild/upgrade a homebrew Minox enlarger ("nobody shoots movies anymore"). I discovered 1) C-mounts are used for many closed circuit TV and security systems; and 2) you can get adapters to put them on all sorts of bit zapping cams. So that maintains upward pressure on pricing. Many old lenses, especially for compact smaller formats are not all that inexpensive -- and some that are cheap appear to be a meniscus or little better, dismal IQ.
 
The OP is spot on. I foolishly sold a 105 f/2.5 AI-s a few years back, got a case of the "want another one", and found that the prices have gone crazy. I've seen some for under $200, if you want haze, fungus, etc. Excellent condition examples have exceeded the $400 mark around here.
 
Perhaps you could sell one of the 35mm kits to fund a lens for the other?
 

If you use old Nikon lenses of manual type you may find it on cheap pricing today. The characteristics
of that lenses are not bad. And there are masses of good used on EBay still today.

with regards

PS : As I would imagine from your shots above you may live without autfocus AND without lens controled messurement. The golden contacts you are missing on that older Nikon stuff make it real unexpensive. And a complete manual exposure controlling isn't a problem (even with a F5) isn't it
 
Mirrorless cameras are driving up the price of many vintage lens lineups, I've Minolta MD and Canon FD lens starting to rise as well.
 
Paul Howell said:
Mirrorless cameras are driving up the price of many vintage lens lineups, I've Minolta MD and Canon FD lens starting to rise as well.
Click to expand...

I also wonder about. With digital change all older lenses were classified as not good enough for digital.
Pricing went in direction I well remember . i got a very nice Nikon ais 35mm for USD 75,-.
Manufacturer who did not change their Mount stated : with digital you need New construction digital lenses because you also need more resolution from the lens?

Same people who bought this stuff in the past demand today "Pvintage lenses" because of nice bokeh.

with regards
 
Theo Sulphate said:
An old Pentax M42 screw-mount body, a 28mm or 35mm f/3.5, a 50/1.8 and a 105mm lens wouldn't cost much and the image quality would be excellent.
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Go for the 50 1.4 super tac. Not that much more than the 1.8, and a closeup quality wide open you won’t believe. If someone MADE me go to one camera, it would be my first one, the Spotmatic with the 50/1.4.
 
I had a 50/1.4 Super Takumar and it yellowed badly. I could've tried the "sun treatment",

http://www.pentax-manuals.com/repairs/yellow.htm

but decided to get the original 8-element 50/1.4 instead. It's said to be the very best, that Pentax wanted to make a statement with that lens, and they lost money on every single one.
 
I have an 8 element Super Takumar. It's a very nice lens. I've never really used that much, it's not yellow. I can't believe how cheap newer Hasselblad Zeiss lenses like the 50, 150, 250mm are selling at. I picked up the latest floating element 50. What incredible glass. Kids go out and buy new manual focus lenses for their mirrorless cameras paying huge prices.
 
You can get a zoomy d lens, good ones can be had for under $100. Would go well with an f5.
28-105mm f3.5-4.5 D and a 35-70 f2.8 D for example.
I have at least 1 copy of most of the nikon primes, but for convenience use a zoom a lot of the time.
 
Seems like lens R&D and production has not stopped. So, the other thing that I have done is to use lenses for digital cameras on film cameras. If the digicam folks don't want them, I'll use them.
I recently picked up one of these. It works very well on a film camera.
 

How much you paid for the F5? I paid $2000 for it when I bought it new.
 
Bargains are where you find them. Mostly and especially lately, that doesn’t seem to be eBay.
I’m content with my lens kit for my OM so I haven’t shopped for a long time in that mount. I also have three other mounts, PK, M42, and Minolta MD, but don’t use them much. The PK body has a 50 f2 that came with it and the M42 body sports a 55 f2.8 Vivitar macro picked up a a pawn shop for $20. It’s a nice lens that focuses from infinity to 1:1. I recently found a old but pristine 35mm f2.8 Vivitar in M42 for $17, not a killer deal but okay. The SRT MC II had its standard 50 1.7 Rokkor and was sitting on a Value Village shelf for $13 but I got my 30% senior discount so about $10. It works fine. Thing is I wasn’t looking when I found these all these items, they just happened. I find that when I actually want a certain lens and shop seriously, the bargains vanish. Go figure.
 

Yep! Took me decades to accumulate the equipment I have. Often surprised when I read that people on this site who have been using film for just a few years possess a gaggle of cameras and lenses. And by the way, the used stuff wasn’t cheap back then.
 
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