A few weeks ago, I came across an ENNA Tele-Ennalyt 1:4,5/240 mm lens on eBay. I have never tried ENNA lenses before, and was curious about this brand and lens. Since the lens was rather cheap, less than 20$, I decided to give it a go, and ordered it.
A little history first. The ENNA Werk was a relatively small producer of lenses based in Munich (München) in Germany, and operated between 1920 and 1992. They were renown in Germany for making decent lenses for German cameras, but were never as famous as Zeiss, and based on this test alone, not that precise.
Since my lens has an M42 mount, I decided to attach it to my Praktica MTL5 B, and I went for a walk in an apple garden outside a local museum. For Norwegian readers, I was in Hamar at Domkirkeodden.
I loaded the Praktica with an Ilford Delta 100, and decided to give it a go with the different unripe apples and leaves present at the amazing location. With the East-German camera and the West German lens, I expected everything to be very smooth going.
It turns out, that focussing with the ENNA lens, was really difficult, and most of my images were slightly out of focus. This is because the Praktica Viewfinder with its focus help, did not work with the lens. For some reason.
That said, the Enna produces a really pleasant soft bokeh that I really adore. And for a cheap lens like this, I am very happy with the results. I will run a few more test rounds with this lens to make sure the problem is not the photographer.
Enjoy the images.
Images were developed using Kodak Xtol 1:0 for 8 minutes at 20 degrees, the water stop and fix. The fixer was at its last cycle here, and used 10 minutes to clear the negatives. I have come to like Delta 100 with Xtol, and would recommend this combo to anyone comfortable with developing in powder chemistry. It is not that different at all.
Cheap Camera Adventures 