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Step 3The Bad News
Ok, so you've got this impressive hunk of metal and glass... the bad news is that it isn't just a pain to mount on your DSLR. Odds are that the lens cannot be fully functional on your DSLR no matter what you do.
Take your lens and a sheet of paper where you can see the sun. Use the lens to focus the image of the sun on the paper (look at the back of the paper). How much space is there between the rear of the lens and the paper? For my Kowa 1:1 55mm, the answer is only about 1/4 inch!
My Sony A-mount DSLRs have a lens flange mount to sensor distance of 44.5mm, which is about 1 3/4 inches. The shortest APS-C mount to sensor distance in commodity use is the EVIL Sony E-mount, and that's 18mm, or a little less than 3/4 inch. Thus, you can pretty much forget about infinity focus. Even if you did get the lens pushed back far enough, for example by modifying the lens body to fit deep inside a Sony E-mount, the image circle at infinity is nowhere near big enough to cover an APS-C sensor.
Having accepted that this lens is for macro only, it is time to talk about the lack of a focus helical. Your lens doesn't have one, does it? It probably does have a screw thread, so you could use partially unscrewing it as your focus mechanism. However, in such a macro domain, that's not likely to be worthwhile. You could always mount it on extension tubes or a bellows for really extreme macro use....
More bad news: your ultra-fast lens isn't actually as fast as it is marked. Why? At extreme close focus, the extra distance behind the lens typically increases the effective focal length. This happens for most lenses, including ones designed as macros. My f/1.0 thus behaves more like f/1.7, thankfully also increasing the image circle to just about cover APS-C.
The final bad news: at least at this level of macro, image quality is technically horrifically BAD! In fact, IQ is probably significantly worse than any lens you've ever tried. Contrast is very poor, flare is highly visible and bizarrely shaped, and sharpness is mediocre in the center and non-existent at the edges.
So, why bother? Because it effortlessly makes abstract images like the one shown here, it may be worth it. You simply can't make images like this any other way. With this type of lens, enough light gets in to do this hand held, and the ultra-thin depth-of-focus paired with undercorrected aberrations makes an amazingly smooth blur of the background. The bokeh is uniquely appealing so long as flare does not mess it up.
Take your lens and a sheet of paper where you can see the sun. Use the lens to focus the image of the sun on the paper (look at the back of the paper). How much space is there between the rear of the lens and the paper? For my Kowa 1:1 55mm, the answer is only about 1/4 inch!
My Sony A-mount DSLRs have a lens flange mount to sensor distance of 44.5mm, which is about 1 3/4 inches. The shortest APS-C mount to sensor distance in commodity use is the EVIL Sony E-mount, and that's 18mm, or a little less than 3/4 inch. Thus, you can pretty much forget about infinity focus. Even if you did get the lens pushed back far enough, for example by modifying the lens body to fit deep inside a Sony E-mount, the image circle at infinity is nowhere near big enough to cover an APS-C sensor.
Having accepted that this lens is for macro only, it is time to talk about the lack of a focus helical. Your lens doesn't have one, does it? It probably does have a screw thread, so you could use partially unscrewing it as your focus mechanism. However, in such a macro domain, that's not likely to be worthwhile. You could always mount it on extension tubes or a bellows for really extreme macro use....
More bad news: your ultra-fast lens isn't actually as fast as it is marked. Why? At extreme close focus, the extra distance behind the lens typically increases the effective focal length. This happens for most lenses, including ones designed as macros. My f/1.0 thus behaves more like f/1.7, thankfully also increasing the image circle to just about cover APS-C.
The final bad news: at least at this level of macro, image quality is technically horrifically BAD! In fact, IQ is probably significantly worse than any lens you've ever tried. Contrast is very poor, flare is highly visible and bizarrely shaped, and sharpness is mediocre in the center and non-existent at the edges.
So, why bother? Because it effortlessly makes abstract images like the one shown here, it may be worth it. You simply can't make images like this any other way. With this type of lens, enough light gets in to do this hand held, and the ultra-thin depth-of-focus paired with undercorrected aberrations makes an amazingly smooth blur of the background. The bokeh is uniquely appealing so long as flare does not mess it up.
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