Second-hand steals

Molly Hollman

● Pentax SMC Pentax-M 50mm F1.7

My first DSLR was a Pentax K-r and I chose Pentax as I previously had Pentax film cameras in the past and loved the lenses. However, I foolishly sold my lenses with my Pentax film camera and when starting out with digital had very little budget remaining after buying the camera. I found some manual vintage lenses on eBay, having meticulously read reviews on the Pentax lens forum. The two I started with were the SMC Pentax-A 50mm F1.7 and the SMC Pentax-M 50mm F1.7 – although I confess it took a while to get used to focusing manually.

Both lenses are truly amazing. I'm rather a bokeh addict and they give the creamiest backgrounds and the most glorious colours. They suit my preferred genre of flower and nature photography as the aperture is low enough to blur backgrounds beautifully; throwing the subject into focus, but also giving interesting colours and shapes in the background when not wide open. They double up as great portrait lenses too.

I now have a Sony A7 III with a cheap adapter for the lenses and, if anything, I am using them more – as the Sony ‘manual focus assist' is brilliant at showing me the area in focus in live view or through the