Retropia Lens Review - one week in!
Looking for a something different for your photography? Don’t want to spend a fortune on new kit? Then why not check out the Retropia lens for your mirrorless.
I picked mine up for just £30 and was skeptical about whether or not I would get get something interesting / different or even beautiful from this tiny piece of plastic that looks like an oreo and feels like a toy from a happy meal.
I shoot with a Sony camera and opted for the sony mount and had read that I might need to adjust some settings in camera to get it to work but it was good to go as soon as I popped and twisted the small pancake style lens on to the body.I was super excited to get started after some test shots in the house, which were not overly sucsessful as the shutter speed needed to be very low. The camera shows no f stop but apparently it works at about f11 and in my dark kitchen that was seemingly too much for it. Those photos were blurred but definitely had a feel of a disposable camera that I have used many years ago.
I then took the camera and lens with me alongside my 2 other cameras with ‘proper’ lenses to one of my commercial jobs shooting opera at a local theatre as well as on a family shoot. I also went for a walk one morning around Roath park rec and lake. The results are below and you can see how the lens performs in various light conditions and with a range of subject matter.
Conclusions
Well anything that only costs £30 for a photographer is worth looking at right? I have bought many products over the years that were cheap and very few of them perform in the way I would like it to BUT with the Oreo shaped Retropia lens has lived up to what I was hoping to get from it. The images come out of camera looking slightly foggy and very much like they would if taken on a disposable camera or a camera that I would have had as a kid. The added bonus of this lens was that I also got a pack of lightroom presets with it and the addition of them really took the images to another level (as good Lightroom presets tend to) and gave them a really nice retro look.
I am continuing to shoot with this lens and took it on a family trip yesterday and I think I will start to see what it shoots best and what does not work so well. My initial findings are that it works best as an architectural lens and maybe not a portraiture type lens. It also seemed to work best on an overcast day when I shot outside the theatre. It may be a bit of trial and error to find the sweet sopt for the lens but I can already say that I am enjoying using the lens and not having to change the f stop or get the focus right is very freeing and means I can wander around like a noob pointing and shooting!
Interested in starting to shoot with a Retropia lens then you can get your own via this link - https://www.retro-pia.com/SIMON80629 This will also help me out and allow me to continue creating great photos to share.
