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anyone using vintage glass?


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Evening everyone

I have a selection of old vintage lenses that I use and just wondered if there are any that people recommend or use for astrophotography?
I am just in the process of watching a TAIR-3-PhS f/4.5 300MM on ebay which looking around on astrobin and other places seems to be pretty good for the money.

I already have a few which I may try over the next few months
CZ Jena 135 f/3.5
CZ Jena t-star 50 f/1.7
CZ Jena 35 f/2.4
Optomax 300 f/5.6

Just thought I would put this out there and see what others are using?

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Er... the only vintage glass I have is my 1982 Meade 2080 that is my main telescope. That's... uh... 34 years old. I dunno if that's vintage... or just classic... or antique. Hopefully not antique, because I am considerably older than the scope! :)

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I have an old 2" Huygens 60mm eyepiece. I'd guess late 19th or early 20th century. It had a rather bizarre thread coupling so I had to make an adaptor for modern 2" focusers. Apparent field of view is roughly 50° which is very wide for the two lens Huygens design. Optically it's surprisingly good though the eye relief is very, very tight because of the brass cup end

antique huygens brass eyepiece.jpg

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Thanks for the replies everyone.
I will be keeping my eyes open, I have some very good experiences with old manual focus glass for "daytime" photography and was interested to see if there are older lenses that do well under a night sky as well.

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23 hours ago, digitalcyanide said:

CZ Jena 135 f/3.5

If that's the Sonnar lens with integrated lens hood, they are very sharp with minimal CA and, if recent enough to be coated, little flare. I have one I bought second hand in the early 80s and it's excellent.

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I did have a few Super Takumar lenses which were very sharp and smooth during daytime use, never got round to trying them for AP. I'm not the only one as the buyer for my 135mm Takumar got back to me to say how delighted he was :)

My one other vintage glass is my Kenko 76mm f16 refractor from the 70's, not quite as vintage as Tim's kit :)

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Hi,

Most of my images are taken with the Tair 3s, either in single setup on Canon 550D, either in dual setup 2xTair 3s 550D + 450D

I'll paste some links to google drive:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjRUhqS0xMRGZRNDQ
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjdGM2VUJIcG9DMWs
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjWExQOGhPR2ctalE (+ Ha with ASI120MM on Sankor 135 F/2.8 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjU0lXSnByWXc0TmM)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjblNGYU52d3pUaVE
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjLVJxX2tSMHM1RDQ (a little ashamed with this one)

Good luck and clear skies,

Alex

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I use Asahi Takumar, Super Takumar or SMC Takumar lenses for my widefield imaging.  They are superb quality glass lenses designed for use on the Asahi Pentax SLR film camera with 36mm x 24mm image format.  I find they work well even at full aperture on my 4/3" format ASI1600MM-Cool camera and previously on the Atik 460EX with smaller image format.  The 135mm f2.5 Super Takumar is what I'm currently using for DSO imaging. 

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I have a collection of old lenses, mostly Super-Takumars from the 1960s and SMC Takumars from the '70s. Here's a recent image taken with a 135mm lens if you're interested. I also have a 400mm PrinzGalaxy m42 lens that I picked up in a charity shop for £10, it's good for lunar imaging.

I put together a bit of a guide to budget lenses that you might find useful.

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Thanks everyone for the fantastic replies and input.
I missed the Tair 3s that I had been watching but have my eye on two more over the next few days.
Ebay may well be getting a fair amount of traffic from me over the coming weeks.

I have heard and seen good things about the  Super-Takumars but have never managed to find one at reasonable price, I will have to keep searching.
All mine are currently going to be used with the Fuji XT2 which so far I am over the moon with. However after seeing more and more images from the little ASI120MC / MM cameras I am tempted to have a go with mine as I have only ever used it so far for guiding and planetary imaging.
Going forward I am seriously considering a dedicated CCD and this may give me a foot in the door to try and get my head around things.

The fact that legacy glass can obviously be used so well also enables me to shoot more wide field images that do not cost the earth and save for other things.

 

Thanks again everyone

 

 

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