I’ve been eying up one of these for ages, I just wasn’t keen on the £100+ price tag on Ebay.
In July 25, I saw one in an auction lot and I got it for £20 (together with some other camera stuff and 2 more weird lenses lol). It can be a “lucky dip” – you’ll never know if the lens is full of fungus, if the mechanism works etc. But I was lucky this time.
The only thing was it came attached to a Ihagee Dresden camera with an Exa mount and as I found out, adapters for Exa – Canon RF are not easy to come by. Amazon didn’t have any, but I found a Chinese supplier on Ebay for the Exacta – RF lens adapter (Exakta EXA lens to Canon EOS R RF mount mirrorless full frame camera adapter).
The Biotar lens looked clean without any fungus, but the focusing mechanism is slightly stiff. The aperture steps work perfectly well. I was surprised about how small this lens actually is.
But the results…. speak for themselves! Absolutely adore this lens!
In the right conditions, the bokeh bubbles are very defined with a clear edge. Just love this effect.
