What's the worst 35mm lens you've used?

[regularchickens]

I'm looking to change up my digital work a bit, and I want to get away from strictly representational styles. I want to soften up my images a lot, hopefully optically and not via processing. So, I want to pick up a "bad" lens that gives a soft, hazy look, toward the end of getting a look like what you'd get from a Polaroid Automatic 250 on FP-100C. I have a NEX-7, so any mount is fair game.

I guess the first thing that comes to my mind would be the Fujian 35mm f/1.7 CCTV lens, but that gets its peripheral softness from being used on a sensor bigger than the image circle it's designed for. Are there any "dog" lenses that would work toward this end? Or am I better off picking up a soft-focus filter?

 

[jsrockit]

How about some of the toy lenses by SLR Magic for the NEX?

http://www.amazon.com/SLR-Magic-35m...UTF8&qid=1371230888&sr=8-8&keywords=slr+magic

Truly awful lenses are generally just bland meaning there will be no magic results. You don't want bad only, you want technically bad, but useful for quirky results.

Not 35mm, but how about a Leica 50mm Summitar? For 35mm, the Leica 35mm Elmar will get you closer to what you want. Don't let the Leica name fool you on these.

 

[mfogiel]

I second the 35 Elmar - this will give you some flare, lower contrast, and a pleasant out of focus.

 

[Jan Pedersen]

I would certainly not consider a 50 Summitar to be an awful lens, it may have some character but i find it to be a great lens.
A Jupiter 12 would come closer to what the op is looking for.

 

[jsrockit]

I would certainly not consider a 50 Summitar to be an awful lens, it may have some character but i find it to be a great lens.
A Jupiter 12 would come closer to what the op is looking for.

I never said it was awful. I don't think the OP really want's truly awful. They are just bland. Quirky lenses with charecter seem a much better fit. The Summitar is certainly quirky and has charecter. However, it may be too sharp for him, so I concede defeat. 😉

 

[f16sunshine]

Meyer Domiplan 50mm is pretty much the "squishiest" glowy lens I have ever used.
Tons of them out there in M42 mount so easy to adapt.

i've owned a couple of DDR Zeiss Flektagon f2.4 35mm's that where de-centered.
Also m42. These things are actually sharp on center and good ones are sharp corner to corner. Very few good ones remain as Production quality was Sh!!za !

 

[regularchickens]

jsrockit is on the right track. To be more specific, I'm looking for a lens that's not necessarily sharp or well-corrected, but that has a nice flavor to its images. The SLR Magic 35/T1.4 might be that, and the 35 Elmar looks promising, too.

Undesirable would be the 35 Nokton, which is uncorrected and soft wide open, but not in a very pleasing way.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

What about a Lensbaby? I have the Composer which is a super-funky lens, especially wide open. They have a 35mm optic for it, as well as the 50mm which normally comes with it, and an 80mm optic too. While not available for true rangefinders, they do come in most digital mirrorless mounts (Sony NEX, Oly 4/3, micro 4/3, Samsung NX).

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

I want to soften up my images a lot, hopefully optically and not via processing. So, I want to pick up a "bad" lens that gives a soft, hazy look, toward the end of getting a look like what you'd get from a Polaroid Automatic 250 on FP-100C.

The M42 35mm lenses, sold under the Hanimex and Prinzflex brands in the UK, may be what you're looking for. They're not horribly soft but they do provide an image that just isn't quite sharp.

 

[sebastel]

The M42 35mm lenses, sold under the Hanimex and Prinzflex brands in the UK, may be what you're looking for. They're not horribly soft but they do provide an image that just isn't quite sharp.

these are also what came to my mind.
should be fairly cheap, too - expect the adapter to be more expensive.

 

[redisburning]

Tamron made a Soft Focus lens that has a proper defocus control, a 75-150 or something like that. You could just make the effect subtle, if that's what you want.

to answer the thread title, I have a Kalimar 35-70 3.5~4.5 that I have coupled with an Albinar 2x teleconverter. As you might imagine, the results are humorously awful. Ill test it tomorrow to see what the OoF is like lol

 

[Richard G]

version 4 Summicron.

 

[Ronald_H]

One bought a bargain basement APS-C Sigma 18-55 zoom for my D70. Although I have more expensive Sigma lenses that are outstandingly good, this was was worse than crap. Corner softness was too bad to be believed.

 

[noisycheese]

Why not try an alternative filter, like a double layer of ziplock sandwich bag rubber banded over the open end of your lens hood?

 

[Aristophanes]

Some Russian thing. I think it had Stalin's spit on it or something.

 

[Particular]

You could get a lens that is known to have a problem like haze. There are lots of them on ebay. I recently got a 135mm Komura that had been tampered with. The front element had not been put back right, which shifted the focus and added lots of chromatic aberration. I corrected it, but it would be easy to experiment with such a lens, by unscrewing the front or rear element, and adding a spacer, or do other things to make it 'bad'.

 

[gavinlg]

Jupiter 12 is pretty bad. Contax G 35mm f2 planar was the worst good lens Ive used. Pretty useless wide open.

 

[Robert Lai]

I had a rather bad Nikon 35 2.8 AIS. It looked almost sharp, but it could never quite achieve a plane of definite focus.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I never said it was awful. I don't think the OP really want's truly awful. They are just bland. Quirky lenses with charecter seem a much better fit. The Summitar is certainly quirky and has charecter. However, it may be too sharp for him, so I concede defeat. 😉

He did mention "soft" and "hazy". The Summitar is neither bland, soft or hazy; a soft bland and hazy copy of a Summitar is in a serious need of a CLA.

I think you're thinking of the Summarit, which are more often than not soft and hazy (but never bland), since they often have lots of, well, haze...and scratches; their literally bland and hazy-prone coating is to blame.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I want to soften up my images a lot, hopefully optically and not via processing. So, I want to pick up a "bad" lens that gives a soft, hazy look, toward the end of getting a look like what you'd get from a Polaroid Automatic 250 on FP-100C. I have a NEX-7, so any mount is fair game.

For an NEX-7, besides getting a really really bad copy of a 50mm f/1.5 Summarit, you could get a bad copy of a 50mm Summar (not Summitar). Or you could find a really cheap copy of any Fed/Industar lens, disassemble it (not without having had a big serving of french fries and forgetting to wash your hands), fiddle with the elements a lot, put them back in. Voila.

There's also lensbaby, if you're faint of heart for tinkering around with the inside of a lens, but not faint of heart in trying to figure that thing (lensbaby) out.