I wonder how many children have held this old guy...

V.

Two actually. This was my wife's when she was little. She gave it to her little brother. He found it again when he was moving (about 15 years ago) and retuned it to her.

way cool...

V.

Fantastic. I love the composition.

Thanks, those old lenses and the very short FOV can be challenging.

Looks cool.

Amazing as ever!

looks like it came out very well from here! =^^=

Egad, that bear has some miles on it!

Why is it that old photography techniques have this very unique contrast and soft-focus to them that modern cameras don't seem to be able to replicate? I love it so much, I wish I could get something similar with my DLSR.

A couple things
1. Very shallow depth of field.
This was shot with a 90mm lens wide open at f4. Similar to a DSLR lens about a 35mm lens at f1.5.
2. Old lenses and uncoated glass.
Modern lenses are designed to be super sharp and coated to reduce lens flare. This lens is none of those things.

You can replicate a lot of that look using photoshop though. The real difference is that the analog processes produce a tangible physical object.

Yeah, I'm interested in recreating effects rather than faking them.

So it would be a matter of finding an old lens that can be fitted onto a lens mount for the DSLR (or making one, if you can have access to lens grinding equipment). The mounting is no problem, especially that Pentax has a simple cheap M42 adapter for its K bayonet mount, so even if a custom adapter has to be made any lathe workshop can make a simple metal part to specification with an M42 thread, for probably not too much. (Properly cleaning an old lens from any dust or fungus that could get into the DSLR body is more tricky.)

So the two questions are how old the lens has to be, and (in case we are talking about pre-M42 systems) finding one that can be focused onto the DSLR crop sensor. Anything other than lenses made for 36mm (or slightly smaller/larger) film would be designed for a large distance from a large backplate, so additional lenses would be needed to re-focus it.

I hear you. Thats why I ended up learning wet plate. So much of the vintage look are due to flaws inherent in the process.

I shoot M4/3 digital so I don't get the really deep DOF you can get with a full frame. I've come pretty close in some cases with a M32 mount and some old Leica and Canon glass from the 50's and 60's. I also have a mount for Nikon, not as much luck with lenses from the 70's and beyond. I haven't tried any of the FSU (Russian) M32 lenses from the 60's or 70's but it may be worth a shot.

I have two old Russian consumer cameras for 36mm film that use a much smaller than 42 screw mount, could be M32 don't remember the exact size and they are packed away at the moment. Would be interesting to create a simple whatever-their-size-is to M42 converter and fit them on. They are probably not very great lenses, which could be an advantage if we want some nice vintage look, and maybe post-process the pictures from RAW to something similar to B&W film.

I want to get an M42 insert for the Pentax anyway because I have a bunch of pretty nice M42 lenses, including a boxed kit consisting of a Chinon/Revueflex 3000 SL body with a 35, a 55 and a 200mm lens.