Finally, A Cool Lens

26/10/24

My camera is a Samsung NX1000 Digital Camera, which for the time was pretty good, and it holds up to this day in my opinion. It has a few recurring issues like the mode-selector being really sensitive and deciding to switch modes mid-shoot, which I have to fix every 2 months by filling the camera's guts with contact cleaner. It's otherwise a decent camera. I take most of my photos with it and regardless of how "ehh" they are it's a big upgrade from my A-Series phone, which itself is barely held together.

Unfortunately though, the NX series hasn't really been spoken of by Samsung since around 2015, and my Camera is about 12 years old now. Due to this abandonment of the line, along with the fact that it was never especially popular and that it used a propietary lens mount, finding good lenses for the camera alternative to the basic 20-50mm lens it came with isn't as simple as an Amazon search.

Okay, well, that was a lie, there are a few on Amazon. However I do need to account for the fact that I don't have much to spend. So I resorted to the next best thing: A lens adapter. It makes perfect sense to just purchase an adapter for the camera, as they seem to be manufactured by a select few companies - and then just find myself a much cheaper vintage lens on eBay or somewhere similar.

I settled on an NX-M42 adapter, as M42 lenses are pretty diverse in selection. I just had to be okay with giving up autofocus, but whatever. I found myself a decent looking Praktica lens on eBay, with 80-200mm focal length, at f/4.5. The high focal length stood out to me, as I wanted a much greater zoom range. I bid on it knowing the odds were slim, but to my surprise it arrived 3 days later in brilliant condition.

Note in the above photo, the adapter is still attached, which is why it seems awfully chunky.

I went out this morning to test it out on the beach, and i'm pretty happy with the results. I'm going to try it with long exposure at some point to see how it turns out. Below is a photo I took earlier, with a photo I took from my phone for comparison. 200mm gets you far.