Favourite Lens

IWC Dopplel

Anyone have an old favourite lens ?  I bought a lovely old 35mm, made in 1968 and it superb, who needs aspherical surfaces and electronics, buttery smooth to focus, tiny and pin sharp. Not super cheap but will hold it's value and cheap for Leica, but anyone looking for a wonderful M mount 35mm which will hold its money and is superb - Leica f2.8/35mm Sumaron. £800-900 will buy you a minter

Faldrax

My favorite lens is my Minolta 85 f/1.4 G RS - so ~ 25 years 'younger' than yours, but still from the last centrury

There's just something about the way a top end Minolta prime renders the image that I like.

newbie1

They are all favorites If I had to pick one, it would be the Eye of Sauron 200mm f1.8 from Canon.

eddiewood

1996 Tamron 90mm f2.8 macro, the 72E version.  Tack sharp and nice bokeh when used for head shots, nice length on a cropped sensor if you have the room for it.  Being a macro the AF isn't quick enough for moving subjects even with the focus limiter, so I recently added the "modern" plastic Sony 85mm f2.8.

I also have the 1986 version of the Minolta 100mm f2.8 for macro too, I've never got around to letting one of these two macros go.  I can't choose!

snerkler

The only old lenses I have now are for my Olympus and Pentax SLRs so from those I’d say the Olympus 50mm f1.8.
Of my current lenses I do really love the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VRII but the new Z 50mm f1.8s is pretty special.

Jules

Olympus 25mm F1.2 Pro.  Its not so much the optical performance (which is great with the feathered bokeh), but the way it handles.  The manual focus clutch is an absolute dream to use for manually pulling focus in video.

Paired with a Panasonic GH5, its ergonomically almost perfect and pretty much persuaded me to abandon full frame.