Lens Reviews

Using a vintage SLR lens on a DSLR can be a fun and, occasionally, frustrating experience. (Not all the inexpensive glass you dig up on eBay is going to suit your needs.) To help you find that perfect analog match for your high-tech digital SLR, we’ve picked our ten favorite classic SLR lenses that will get you shooting timeless images with your DSLR right away.

I’m a film dinosaur—about 40% of the pictures I shoot are made on black-and white film, and my favorite analog cameras range in age from 50-100 years. For the remaining 60%, I shoot digitally, sometimes with a vintage lens attached to help capture a "retro" look.

Matt Granger is a photographer and educator who runs a popular photography YouTube channel. And if you’ve ever watched any of his videos, you’d know that he has lots of opinions about photography gear.

The Goods spotlights the hottest premium photo gear out there. If you have a product you’d like considered for The Goods, e-mail images and info to editorial@shutterbug.com.

If I had to choose a single lens to use for the rest of my mountain life, without question it would be a wide-angle zoom. In my case, it would be Nikon’s AF-S Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G ED VR wide-angle zoom lens. (But anything similar would probably do the trick as well.) I would choose this over a fixed lens, which would be slightly sharper, because it offers versatility to shoot both landscapes and action with more focal lengths.

“Show me a home where the buffalo roam…and I’ll show you a really messy house.” —Anonymous

As soon as I heard about it, I wanted to try the f/2 28mm Zeiss ZF lens; ZF, for those unfamiliar with the current Zeiss line-up, is their superb line of Nikon F compatible manual focus lenses, as distinct from ZM (Leica M compatible) and ZV (classic Hasselblad compatible).

All of the ZF series are also available in ZK (Pentax K bayonet compatible) and a few, though apparently not...