Mir 1b 37mm f2.8 - lens review
After I got into vintage lenses in 2017, I started looking for some Soviet ones, to see for myself if the hype was real, but for a good couple years I could never find one in good conditions or for a good price, until the day I stumbled into a mint Mir 1b. It's a pretty well-known lens, one of those everyone on the internet recommends, so I was quite interested in trying it out. It’s a fairly small lens, 52mm long with internal focusing and a 49mm front thread, but it has a nice heft with its 200 grams of weight due to the all-metal body. The focusing ring has a nice gruppy shape and it turns 270 degrees, but minimum focusing distance is a massive 70cm; some people disassemble the lens to remove the screw that stops the ring from turning all the way and achieve a shorter minimum distance, but I still haven’t tried doing it myself. The iris had ten blades and the aperture is… confusing. To be honest, when I recorded the video review I still couldn’t wrap my...