French Photographer Shoots Video Footage With an Old Camera Lens From 1880

In the sixth episode of his series “The Weird Lense Challenge”, French photographer Mathieu Stern took an old, early iris diaphragm lens from a large format camera from 1880, modified it so that it would fit and focus onto his Sony Alpha a7II digital camera and posted the resulting footage.

The Lens is incredibly sharp for a 136 years old simple metallic lens, from my test it’s even sharper than most of my modern Canon lenses, the results are amazing … but it also gives some strange lens flares and light leaks that are pretty dreamy (some would say it’s horrible).

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.