A while back I got out my old 50mm F1.8 FD (manual focus) lens & spent my afternoon off playing with this vintage lens.
The manual focus & manual aperture took a while to get used to. I couldn't get (what I considered) a reasonably good image wide open, around f8 I was happier with the sharpness of the image. A lot of this could be do to my inexperience with type of lens. I do focus manually a fair bit with modern lenses, but this was not quiet the same thing.
Outside in full sun it was f11 or slower, not to get a sharper image, but to control the light a bit better. It seemed to let in more light than I would expect at a given F stop and faster f stops increased the glow & bloom that seems an inherent part of shooting with this lens.
The slightly soft focus & glow/bloom are part of what makes shooting with a vintage lens unique interesting. At the same time I tried to gain some control over how much of these characteristics where in my shots.
Aside from trying different things in camera I also tried different approaches in post processing. Some images I tried to lessen the vintage feel and make them look more like what would be expected from a modern lens. Some images I didn't compensate for the effect of the lens & a few I even pushed the "vintage-ness" even farther.
I only spent one afternoon shooting with this lens & initially wasn't too crazy about it, but then started to enjoy playing around with it. Shooting with a fully manual vintage lens seems a lot more alchemical than shooting with modern auto everything lenses, its' more try this, try that, a little more, a little less, be more aware of light positions, reflections etc.
It's not my new 'go to' lens, but I will be playing with it some more, when I have time to play. 
FD Lens
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