A rare and highly collectable Canon lens is coming up for auction at the always interesting Wetzler Camera Auctions on October 8, 2022
The lens in question? A Canon FD 24mm f/1.4 S.S.C. Aspherical. This lens was released in 1975 and is pretty rare, no one here has ever seen one.
This was the world's largest aperture 24mm wide angle lens at the time. A ground and polished glass aspherical lens surface, applied at the rear surface of the eighth lens element correct spherical aberration and astigmatism to achieve high picture quality even at a full aperture of f/1.4. The floating mechanism achieves high definition from the shortest focusing distance to infinity.
The starting bid for the Canon FD 24mm f/1.4 S.S.C. Aspherical is €6,000, and it's expected to fetch between €12,000-€15,000 when it's all said and done.
There are currently two of these lenses on ebay for $16,000+!
Canon FD 24mm f/1.4 S.S.C. Aspherical
- Marketed: March 1975
- Original Price: 180,000 yen / $1300 USD
- Lens Construction: 8 groups
- Lens Construction: 10 elements
- No. of Diaphragm Blades: 8
- Minimum Aperture: f/16
- Closest Focusing Distance: 0.3m / 11.8″
- Maximum Magnification: 0.117x
- Filter Diameter: 72mm
- Maximum Diameter x Length: 75mm x 68mm / 2.9″ x 2.7″
- Weight: 500g / 1.1lbs
Check out the Canon FD 24mm f/1.4 S.S.C. Aspherical auction
This, and the early use of an aspherical & extreme aperture will determine its collector-value.
Could climb to stunningly high summits...
It was a mass-produced lens, but we don't even know the exact number of 1200mm f/5.6L lenses that were made. Even that one has a large range of estimates.
There are two on ebay for $16,000+
Edit: not to forget the early screwmount bodies and lenses...
I guess I collect a few of these, but the epic battles these two had defined part of my childhood.
It's a case of "it's rare, I like it, I want it, and have the money". It's about fun.
And, is a Jackson Pollock worth a few hundred million$, after all, it's just linen with a few paint stains on it.
Fact is, there are many rich collectors seeking rare cameras and lenses, mostly Leica. Why not?
PS: I once started collecting screwmount and bayonet Leicas. After a while, I hated the idea of not being allowed (scratches...) to use them. And sold the lot, to buy more "usable" stuff.
But if ever I find a Noctilux 1,2/50, at a very attractive price, somewhere in a barn in Northern Lappland...
The Leica M Noctilux 1,2/50mm, with its two aspherical ground lens surfaces, was made from 1966 (!) till 1975.
So, the Canon was a bit late to the party...by 11 years.
I AM becoming a BIG fan of collecting and adapting vintage lenses to modern mirrorless digital cameras.
Sure the new glass is almost perfect in it's images, and in some cases...that is the problem.
I find the imperfections and warts on some old vintage lenses in their design and implementation to have a way of rendering that I consider a bit more artistic.
I find many of them great to use for portraiture...the softer lenses on skin is nice when shooting women. Todays lenses have a tendency to show "too many" pores, haha.
And while it doesn't float everyones' boats, and it can be overdone....I am a big fan these days of swirly bokeh...and bubble bokeh...etc. I'm enjoying playing with some lenses that blur out the background in what can be described as a "painterly" fashion.
And the good thing is....many of these lenses can be had for a song. Although, the word gets out on some and the prices start to rise.
And also, film is still rising in popularity and many of those old lenses still work GREAT on old film cameras and that's increasing the prices as people scour for them to use on old film cameras.
Anyway....I'm with you that things like this need to be used. And I think there is a place for them in the repertoire for getting different looks, classical looks, that some appreciate at times over the clinical perfection looks with todays modern lenses.
cayenne
It is akin to comparing a modern wine to a vintage one.
It is not safe to assume that no one is capturing images with these.
No, I don't have MTFs or sharpness charts, but own the corresponding modern lenses.
So, no objective proofs, but my subjective certainty!
Like the sound. There are people who prefer listening to music on vinyl, and think it sounds better than the ‘cold and clinical’ remastered, digitized, lossless audio.
I am not one of those people. I like to hear snap, crackle, and pop from my breakfast cereal, not my speakers.
Not always trending to worse but far from uncommon for modern masters to be compressed to the point you may be looking at a DR of around 4 or 5 (worse in some cases) vs much higher for the vinyl version thus some folks who care gravitate to vinyl version. I've worked with several people with pro audio engineer and e-eng backgrounds who hate audiophile nonsense but prefer some (not always) vinyl versions. Of course they don't listen to it on vinyl but in a digital format but files authored from the original vinyl vs modern remasters, the wider DR versions being unavailable generally in direct download digital or DVDA or CDA forms.
These are good points but they are more relevant if you are talking about a lossy audio format like mp3 etc, neuro’s point still holds if we’re talking about let’s say 192khz digital masters either with or without the mechanical sounds of a turntable accompanying the track.