What do you get when you mount a 105 year old folding camera lens from 1910 to a modern mirrorless camera?
So Paris-based photographer Mathieu Stern decided to embark on a new series for his YouTube channel, called the Weird Lens Challenge. Basically the idea is to mount various different lenses (the older and weirder, the better) to a modern mirrorless camera and see how they perform. In the first episode from this new series, Stern shows how he took a 105 year old folding camera lens from1910 and mounted it to a Sony a7II, using bellows for focusing.
“The lens is incredibly sharp for a 105 year old lady… but it also gives some strange lens flares and light leaks that are pretty dreamy,” Stern says. The video contains some of the footage shot with the lens, if you’re interested in seeing some of the stills from this project, you can find them here.
Subscribe to Stern’s YouTube channel to see more from the Weird Lens Challenge, you can also keep up with him on his blog, Twitter or Facebook page.
Those flares are probably due to the lack of coatings on the lens. Modern lenses minimise those lens surface reflections by coating the lens.