Vintage 50mm Landscape Photography on a Pentax f.17

Paul Farace Photography
May 6
2 min read

Can this 50 year old 50mm lens hold up in 2026?

It's time for some Vintage 50mm landscape photography!

This week we put the Pentax 50mm f1.7 lens to work on some beautiful Florida seascapes. This lens has amazing character either wide open or stopped down and we get some absolutely epic conditions during sunrise to put it to the test.

I am using a Fotasy adapter to get this k-mount lens onto my Sony camera. You can pick these up for very cheap: https://amzn.to/3R1576d

Can this 50 year old lens produce excellent images all these years later? Lets find out! In this video we cover tips for shooting with a fully manual lens like lens settings, camera settings, manual focusing tips, capturing proper exposures and more. I also cover tips on photographing coastal water cascades.

Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/5e5flL9km1k

We started extra early to make sure we arrived in time for blue hour and sunrise. We arrived with plenty of time to get some longer exposures without the need for any ND filters. As the morning came and sun began to rise we captured a variety of long exposures at different shutter speeds. Both without an ND filter and then with as the light came up.

Then we switched over to some handheld shots with a sdhallow depth of field to test. I almost got soaked about 50 times trying to get cool shots inbwteen rocks as the water came through. Worth it? Yeah I dont know about that haha, but check out the detail shots in the gallery below. You could create an entire series with the dreamy loook.

Marineland Florida seascape with Pentax 50mm

This lens was awesome to use and I already love using manual aperture and focus lenses. The chaachter you get out of this lens is one of a kind for sure, love it or hate it. I might d to start bringing it along for shallow depth of field b-roll shots for my videos. It just has a vibe.

Check out the full image gallery below and be sure to watch the full video for tips, tricks and to see how this lens performed on the Florida seascapes.

Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/5e5flL9km1k

Pentax 50mm Florida Seascape Photo Gallery