Lomo T-43: First shots
My collection of tiny Soviet lenses continues with the Lomo T-43.
It's a 40mm f/4 triplet (trioplan) lens. Tiny, and weighs almost nothing.
It's not a rangefinder lens per se; it has to be removed from its original integrated camera body, the Smena 8m, and transplanted into the shell of a donor lens to convert to LTM/L39. I found an eBay seller that had done so. From there, I adapted it to M.
It took weeks to arrive from the Ukraine, but arrived just in time for Christmas. I got to unbox it on Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to me!
Total with shipping was just $51.
Here are the first shots on my Ricoh GXR M!
Initial thoughts:
- it's tiny, lightweight, & beautiful
- it's got a lovely vintage rendering… very cheap-film-camera-like on the GXR M module
- like the Russar MR-2 (post coming soon), it's hard to focus properly on the GXR with the focus peaking alone
- it's extremely prone to flare that will spread across large portions (or even the entire) image, reducing contrast
- it can be very sharp
- wide open, the center can be very sharp but then blurriness radiates out in a circular pattern although (like the Russar MR-2)
I really need to come up with a testing process for these lenses, a way to tell after the fact what aperture settings were (and be sure the photos are from the lens I thought they were!). Maybe snappy title cards, like for movies!
More info on the Lomo T-43
Stephen Dowling