Photo Walk with the Zeiss Jena Biotar Lens

These past few weeks, I’ve been shooting a lot of film. I tend to go through cycles between film and digital photography. At least for the time being, I think I have satisfied the urge to use my Nikon film cameras.

But switching to my Canon EOS R8 doesn’t always involve swinging completely in the direction of modern camera gear. One of my very favorite lenses is a Carl Zeiss Jena 58mm f/2 Biotar. Five years ago, Casual Photophile wrote a review of that lens that’s worth reading. My particular example has an Exakta lens mount. I keep it permanently attached to an Exakta-to-RF lens adapter.

Now that I’m shooting with a full-frame mirrorless camera, I can use this lens as it was designed to be used: as a normal lens, albeit one that is slightly longer than the usual 50mm. Its 58mm focal length is the equivalent of a short telephoto lens on my little cropped-sensor Canon EOS M50.

Perhaps not the best example of the unique character of this lens—for a better representation of what it can do, check out the photo of the neighborhood flower patch that I have in my nature photography portfolio series—I shot this image on my photo walk yesterday afternoon:

A mid-1970s Honda motorcycle was sitting for sale on the side of the road. Even though harsh midday light was shining straight down on it, subtle shadows caught my eye. I wanted some separation between the bike and the background, so I set my aperture to f/4. I knew I was walking around during the brightest part of the day, so I set my camera’s ISO to 125 to match the ASA rating of Ilford FP4 Plus, the film stock I use most often. I wanted a little practice with seeing what shutter speed the camera chose in aperture priority mode.

A little later on, my favorite narrow alley was getting hit with just the right light for some interesting shadows.

There’s no doubt about it: I am a big fan of shooting film. But every now and again, it’s nice to have the convenience, ease, and immediacy of modern digital cameras. Using old film SLR lenses adapted to my Canon EOS R8 gives me a bit of both worlds. I especially appreciate having a physical helical focuser and aperture ring to work. Canon’s manual focusing aids offer enormous help with judging depth of field and getting those regions I want in focus just right.

As an aside, it would be awesome to have a more traditional manual-focus RF-mount lens that could communicate fully with the camera body. I wish there was a more financially accessible option for a 50mm lens among Voigtländer’s offerings for Canon mirrorless cameras. Their 50mm f/1 lens looks like a big and expensive chunk of glass to carry around.