A heavily processed photograph made at Lacock Abbey on a misty winter morning. I used a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f/2.8 lens on a Canon EOS 20D. The lens was £12 on eBay sometime in 2013.

The perspicacious Ken Rockwell observed some years ago that “when you use a $30 adapter to use an $8 lens on a $2,000 camera, you wind up with an $8 camera.” Vividly he made the point that buying a modern decent lens will produce better quality photographs, all other things being equal.

The Tessar lens is an old and simple optical design. Even when the Practika MTL 5 camera was being sold new around 1976, the East German Tessar was the cheaper option to the Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 lens, which many will claim to be the superior choice. I have used the Pentacon, and enjoyed it, but repeatedly I have returned to the Tessar. I'm really not sure why. There’s more to it than simply being a cheapskate. And Ken Rockwell’s assertion is right, if your objective is to make perfect pictures. But I don’t think that actually is my objective, certainly not in all cases.