I found a cheap price for a lens I was really interested in: the zeiss biotar 58mm f2.
I wanted to know if once adapted with m42 to eos ring it created problems with the mirror on my 5DmkII.
Anyone have experience with this lens?
How much different is it from the much cheaper Helios 44-2?
An unmodified Biotar 58/2 hits the mirror on my 5D (so it probably will on the 5DII, also). The culprit was the retaining ring on the rear element, which had plenty of room to be filed down. After cutting down the rear element ring by a millimeter or two, the lens worked fine on my 5D.
The lens is certainly worth getting at a cheap price, if only for the distinctive "swirly" bokeh it produces. Center sharpness is decent from wide open, corner sharpness falls off a bit, but the main attraction of the lens is the very distinctive tangential elliptical bokeh towards the edges when wide or near-wide open, which gives interestingly shaped "swirling" background blur.
