simple.joy is the name I chose (surprisingly spontaneously for someone regularly overthinking stuff) for my photographic experimentation, when I first developed an interest in old and unusual lenses. It was an old Schneider Kreuznach Xenar lens, which ignited the spark and curiosity to not only explore the various opportunities photography offers, but also take a look into the lenses, their peculiarities, the companies and people behind them and their interesting and complicated history.
I didn’t expect to be drawn into another completely different hobby, after I’ve been convinced to have found my main interests for a long time already… and yet it happened with this incredible fascinating world of adapted old lenses and the unique stories they’re still able to tell us, both through their history, as well as the images created with and in part even inspired by them.
I still really feel exactly that: a ‘simple joy’, whenever I have a lens on my camera which provides something surprising or anytime I find out some tiny historical detail that went completely unnoticed before. Any chance I meet another passionate person about that topic and am able to exchange some thoughts and experiences or whenever I’m able to rescue a lens from being thrown away or by repairing whatever little I’m capable of as someone who is all thumbs.
Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of the most knowledgeable, kind and generous people imaginable among those who share my interest in old lenses and even though I’m as far from a true researcher, as you can possibly imagine, I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit about various stuff related to the history of photography, lens designs, the people behind those and also managed to get some feeling for the differences between lenses, their strengths and flaws and – through experimentation and thinking outside of the box – also some unique capabilities far from the intended use.
I’ve always been drawn to macro and close-up photography, which is why my journey started out with enlarging, repro- and industrial lenses and my search for capable systems to use lenses at vastly different distances without having to change gear led me to my current bellows setup, which I usually adapt all of my lenses onto.
Because I also insisted on being able to play with perspective like old large format cameras were able to, yet still being able to handheld everything (if necessary even) with one hand, I’ve ended up with my – perhaps somewhat clunky and peculiar – tilt/shift bellows setup, which I dearly love.
Not everything works out of course… many things are far from simple… and yet the joy is usually still far greater than any frustration about the setbacks along the way.
Even though I can’t exactly remember why and when, I started to do a little bit of my own research on some of the old lenses I had developed an interest in, and when I met Mark Welsh, through some lucky coincidences, decided to support him in his extremely ambitious project deltalenses, where he had already started to document hundreds of enlarging lenses. Through joining efforts and extending our scope to projection, repro- and other alt-lenses we managed to grow that database to several thousand entries.
While Mark complemented that database with his well thought-out lens tests, I decided to do something else instead of technical lens testing, which I’ve never seen as a good fit for my restless personality. And so I’ve started to create something more akin to deep-dives into the history of lens makers, particular lens series or other adjacent topics. You can find several of my write-ups on deltalenses which I still consider to be the most ambitious project of its kind in the world of adapted lenses:
If you happen to have any knowledge on lenses like that, any data or correction to contribute, please consider helping Mark out in this endeavor, so it can grow to be an even more incredible resource than it already is!
Around 2025 I’ve started to get into a kind of identity crisis regarding my experimental photographic work, research and write ups. I felt like the enormous amount of time and energy I put into it, just wasn’t worth it and considered stopping most of it. When I tried to look objectively at whatever it was that I was creating, it seemed like it was either too narrow or too broad in scope, perhaps often too little focused on presenting things as facts and regularly too much entangled in personal stories, impressions and anecdotes instead.
And yet – whenever I tried to change my tone or approach to a topic, in order to match what more professional writers or reserachers do – it just didn’t feel right and coherent anymore.
The moment I realized that it just doesn’t make sense to try to be something I’m clearly not (like a professional photographer, researcher or writer), I decided to create my own website instead and just do stuff in my own – likely more flawed – but unique and personal way.
And as you can see, from this clearly failed approach at providing a short and easy-to-digest ‘about me’ text, like any good AI assistant would likely recommend or offer to create in such a case, I’m here doing exactly that.
This site and the work I put into it, the (highly subjective and often personal) words and particularly the creation of the experimental images you can find around here, are indeed my own ‘simple joy’, which I’m attempting to share with whoever is interested.
And if I manage to inspire even a single person to develop an interest in some of the weird lenses, the history of the manufacturers or even to start or resume their own photographic experiments with some unusual or unknown lens or self-made adaption, it makes me really happy.
So if you have any questions or want to reach out to discuss, add or correct something or have an idea for a collaboration or an interesting undiscovered part of the vast area of photographic history, please don’t hesitate to reach out, either here or on any of the sites, I’m regularly participating on (some of which you can find under Inspiration).
Yours,
Johannes | simple.joy