Author: Paul L.G. Morris

I am an amateur photographer whose photography is mostly of gardens, nature and the rural environment. My specialities are close-ups, panoramic views, or a combination of both that I call 'Nearscapes'. I work mostly for my own interest having closed my business PM Studios Ltd.

Using an old, vintage ‘Diana’ lens in the garden

My first camera, back in the 1960’s, was bought using an offer from Colgate toothpaste: 12/6d (I think) + 2 carton ends (62.5p in today’s money but about £15 in today’s value). This camera is still available new under the ‘Diana’ brand but you do see old ones in junk and vintage shops. This one I paid £5 for although you do see them for silly money:

Diana F camera – the flash version (my 1960’s camera didn’t have flash)

These cameras are surprisingly popular despite the poor quality lens, as you can see in this photo from 1964:

1964 photo on a stony beach showing how poor the lens was

I decided to have a go fixing the lens to my modern digital camera to see how well this vintage lens works (or not!). So I cut the lens off the camera with a hacksaw, pliers removed some more of the lens barrel and Blu-Tak attached it to some bellows on the camera – I had to reverse mount it to get the lens close enough to the sensor for distant focussing:

Diana lens attached via bellows (and Blu-Tak) to my camera

Below I show some example photos. I found that the aperture setting (cloudy, cloudy-bright or sunny) made a difference to the quality of the image (drag the slider to compare the two images with different apertures: Cloudy on the left, Sunny on the right). But these photos are from the central portion of the image the lens provides – it is meant for roll film which is about 10 times the image area the digital camera utilises:

Garden view using the cloudy setting
Same garden view using the sunny setting

I am still trying this lens out, and the ‘art’ effects that work with it. This urn in the garden shows on the left an image using the ‘cloudy’ setting, and the right my ‘KL2’ art effect:

Urn in the garden on its side taken with the ‘cloudy’ setting
Urn in the garden on its side taken with the ‘cloudy’ aperture setting processed using my ‘Kl2’ art effect

This next pair is of yellow flowers. The left image is the ‘cloudy’ aperture version, the right my ‘Kl2’ art effect:

Yellow primula flowers in the garden taken with the ”cloudy’ setting
Yellow primula flowers in the garden process with my Kl2′ art effect

The next pair shows, again, the ‘cloudy’ aperture setting on the left and a stronger ‘Kl2’ art effect on the right.

Two garden pots, no art effect
Two garden pots with a stronger ‘Kl2’ art effect

This exercise shows that, although the crop sensor is showing only the middle part of the image (the camera uses roll film), there is still a level of distortion and blurriness to the image. But I think this works for some images when using my ‘KL2’ art effect. More practice is needed…