I have used — enjoyed, even — lenses from the 1960s and 1970s on my DSLRs and mirrorless bodies in the past decade and a half. Vintage lenses are often cheap, and they only take one adaptor to work with modern mounts. This is a beautiful part of photography, making experimentation more accessible, but there's another way to look at this: Why can I use a 70-year-old lens and the only thing I'm missing is autofocus?
There will be a lot of answers to that question, but perhaps the question won't always make sense. The new Viltrox AF 135mm f/1.8 LAB lens for the Sony E mount has that combination of a long focal length and wide maximum aperture that has been enjoyed since the Pentacon 135mm f/2.8 of the 1970s that has garnered the name "bokeh monster", but it's modern too. It has a full-color display on the barrel, wireless connectivity, and the ability to change the aperture by less than the typical one-third of a stop, among many other features.
The question photographers need to ask themselves is this: do you want more technology packed into your lenses? Or, is the juice just not worth the squeeze?
