My father’s old Industar 50mm F3.5

Not long ago while cleaning the house more thoroughly I discovered my father’s old Industar 50mm F3.5. There are many versions of the Industar 50, this one is the version for the M39 mount without the “-2” in its name. And now I have finally bought a M39 to micro 4/3 adapter to test this lens out.

So far I have shot only a couple of test shots not worth showing on the blog. Image quality seems pretty good in the center even wide open. Depth of field control is, as you would expect for an f/3.5 lens on MFT, pretty limited. Nevertheless I really like the feeling of this lens in the hand. These old manual focus lenses are entirely made of metal and feel so much more solid than contemporary lenses. Only the small aperture ring on the very front of the Industar seems flimsy and fiddly. Every other part of the lens is rock solid. Comparing it to the plastic Olympus 45mm f/1.8 is not a good idea. The 45mm f/1.8 has fantastic image quality, but the Industar is a small tank. 😉

As soon as I shoot some decent photos I will post them on my Flickr stream and here on the blog. It might take a while, however, since I’m shooting with a lot of different gear at the moment.

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