A while back I located a local “pusher” of obsolescent photography gear. He’s got a booth in a local mini-mail and occasionally comes up with some very interesting items. One of them happened to be a Vivitar Automatic Teleconverter 2X-1 for the M42 mounting system. Having a couple of such lenses on hand made it a useless struggle to NOT lay out the small sum requested, especially after an initial look through to gauge the possibilities. And then it languished in the lens drawer while life interfered with art… until today.
This morning I grabbed the main camera bag in which I’d stuck the Canon EOS 6D and a selection of lenses, ready for whatever happened to happen. The Helios 44-M 58mm on top of the Vivitar Teleconverter happened to be the first one to pop out of the bag when I spotted some flowers I wanted to shoot. Riding in the Fotodiox M42-EOS adapter it gives the 6D a decided “retro-look”, and focusing was quick and fairly painless. The tiny plot of flower garden in front of the church’s meeting place is the gift that keeps on giving. I really like the way the combination renders the background in these pics.
When we got home my wife spotted this little guy on the window behind one of the decorative bars. Not a good angle, but I managed to capture his image.
As we walked the dogs in the park my wife called me over to see these tiny little bits of color. Again, the lens combination gave a nice separation of subject from the background. I need to try the Vivitar with my other M42 lens to see how it comes out.
And as I headed back to the house I saw this little stingless bee coming in for a pollen load. The lens is a bit “soft” for such work, but somehow I managed to get him fairly well in focus despite using an “obsolete manual lens”.
Yes, this is a fun and useful lens combo. Maybe one of these days I’ll think to do a “with/without” comparison between images captured with the Vivitar teleconverter vs those with the same lens without it. Or not. Time will tell!
