Ahhhh........ New "Vintage" Glass!!!!

Yeah I did it again, I bought yet another new to me "Vintage" lens. One I have been wanting to add to my collection, not just because it is hard to find, but because it will allow me a creative use of depth of field in a focal length I have not had to this point. So... the lens I bought from my friend Ron is a Pentax SMC 200mm f2.5 lens. It is the fastest 200 Pentax ever made, it is pretty rare, not as rare as the 85mm f1.8 I played with awhile back, but I think more useful to me. I will possibly get that someday as well, just to have but I honestly think that I need to look at more modern autofocus lenses for the time being, especially the DA Limited series, DA 21/40/70 in particular.

I try to not get a particular judgement made regarding a lens until I have played with it for awhile and gotten to know its quirks. Every lens has weaknesses and strengths getting to know them is essential to using the lens correctly. The expectation for this lens in my mind is that it will be one that allows me to isolate details from a longer distance but to do so with larger apertures that allow for a more smooth and pleasing background. Knowing that this is an older lens also warns me against using it with strong backlight which produces a great deal of lateral chromatic abberations (Green Fringing around out of focus transitions behind the plane of focus and Reddish/Purple in areas in front of the plane of focus) Older lenses can be like that, at least the older long primes. Some of my more wide angle lenses show very little evidence of that at all.

These series of photos are not in chronological order but in the order I want to talk about them. I am not the kind of guy to go shoot test charts for resolution etc... I want to play in the real world, which often has little relationship to formal testing. Seeing as bokeh (a Japanese word for the appearance of the out of focus areas of a photograph) is a prime reason to buy this lens I wanted to see what it would look like. These first shots are hand held, because I was just messing around and I didn't take a tripod. 

f2.5

f4.0

f5.6

Processed version of the above shot just to see what it could look like with a little sharpening.

f8.0

f11

f16

f22

Up to f11 things get sharper with stopping down, f16 is maybe a bit more soft and f22 moreso, to me the important part is that the isolation of the elements works well and the back ground can be described as pleasing. If I had a tripod and used my live view to get exact focus dialed in on the cattails I would have been able to get a bit more sharpness out of them. So far I am pleased with the performance of the lens in reasonable light.

These were simply pleasing shots I took working to see what the lens could do from a mild distance away, I would normally try to shoot this with my DFA 100mm macro but I didn't want to get too close to the edge of a icy dock and risk falling in. The reach of 200mm gives me a safer distance to work from. Bonus!

This shot was at either f8 or f11 it has reasonable amounts of CA and yet a pleasing background.

This was wide open at f2.5, and I think I was slightly front focused as well, there is more CA but maybe not too much, I like how the benches tail off into blur more rapidly and the quality of the blur/bokeh is reasonably good. So far a quite reasonable performance for me.

 

This is a quite heavy crop taken at f5.6 with quite good results. The long focus throw will make this a difficult lens to try wildlife photography with but I may still be able to get some nice shots on occasion.

At nearly closest focus, the depth of field is very thin, trailing off into blur rapidly, while the shot is nothing special I like how I can control what is in focus and what is distracting. Even wide open the in focus parts are reasonably sharp. Another bonus point.

Shooting telephoto after the sun has gone down is a chancy proposition, I was able to get this shot with plenty of shutter speed to spare due to being able to shoot wide open. While not as sharp as putting the camera on a tripod would have allowed, it is sharp enough for what I am doing here. Does that shock you? So many photographers want sharpness at all levels, where is "sharp enough" for you? 

Just a few more fun shots taken quickly at the local train station. 

This shot is a 5-6 shot panorama taken from my front sidewalk, handheld. Yeah I am gonna like this lens, especially once I really learn how to make it sing.

Self Portraits... A staple of bored photographers!

Cold winter days and the need to rest make for a photographer that shoots fewer images. I'm OK with that though as it gives me time to rejuvenate, and time off the computer to play with other things, like flashes for instance. I have some stands and umbrellas but seldom make use of them, maybe I should use them more? I am hoping to take photos of my camera shy daughters for their birthday, so I set up my equipment and decided I needed to test it to get the exposure right.

I used an old 50mm manual focus lens and a simple two light set-up. One light high and to the subjects right (1/2 power), and another a little lower and on the subjects left (1/4 power). F4 and a shutter speed chosen at random to eliminate most of the ambient light from two CFL's in a fixture on the ceiling, and some light coming through a window to the subjects left.

The first photo is the same image as the second, just converted to B&W. I think I rather like the B&W more, which is why I went on to process the third one as well. I was mildly more heavy handed on the last frame's processing, I am not as enamored of the skin tones I produced, but... I think it is an acceptable shot.

So there you have it. This is what a photographer looks like on a Saturday morning with nothing better to do.

Revisiting Photos... HDR possibilities.

 Alrighty... I seldom do this as it gets aggravating, but I went back and revisited a shot from last summer. This one in fact:

Why revisit it? Well, I was going to print it on metallic paper and hang it on the wall. Hoping to have the detail is the shadow pop up under nice lighting. Upon further evaluation it was just simply too dark.

So... I had another whack at it last fall.... too blue and much too gaudy. BLECH!!!!!

Letting the field lie fallow it took until the end of the year that I remembered to try it again. This is my third and hopefully final try. It looks more like I remember it looking, except a little more.... vivid? The camera just cannot capture what the eye sees in reality. I wanted to forget that reality of what I saw and simply create the image I WANTED to see. Minus the black borders and copyright/title of course... 

I feel satisfied with this shot as is. Still not sure I am going to print it though, I am a cheap cuss and I am coveting a couple lenses, and 16x20 gallery wraps are not cheap!

Now for the interesting, or not so interesting part, depending on your perspective. Here are my original three shots as they looked when I imported them into Photomatix. (These are 8-bit JPEG's taken from the 16-bit TIFF's.) In my RAW converter (ACR whatever the version is that is attached to CS 6) I adjusted the WB to taste, brought the shadows up 100%, and the highlights down to whatever level eliminated the clipping indicators, and bumped the clarity and vibrance 25 each.

-2 EV (2 stops under exposed)

0 EV compensation (exposure the camera chose )

+2 EV (2 stops overexposed)

Looking back I probably could/should go a little warmer with my RAW conversions, but I was able to adjust the WB in CS 6 to a reasonable spot. I could go back and do it again but frankly I get kinda tired of messing with photos after awhile. Looking at the same image just makes me a little buggy!

Last light of 2011

Just found this from LAST YEAR!!! Never got it published, Will try to back date it. FYI it was written for 2011!!!!

I was determined to get out on New Years Eve and take some photos. I have been wanting to get up on the shore of the lake by my home for awhile and see what I can get up there, so the two desires dovetailed nicely. I delayed a bit more than I really wanted too in getting up there, but still beat the sunset.

Christmas Eve and Day in Utah!

To start with, let me wish all of my readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Some Dude With a Camera... that would be me. I often am.... sparse with my words and I am maybe not the most engaging guy in the world, but I do appreciate those of you who take the time to drop by my blog. I am often amazed at the places that come up on my gadget that tracks who has been here. You come from all over the world and I am gratified to have such a large audience for my photography. Wherever you come from, you are welcome here, welcome to look around and comment, or run away if my photography doesn't meet your taste. Whatever religion or culture you are part of, I respect that, here where I live we just celebrated Christmas, and are approaching the New Year. Whatever tradition you follow, and whatever holidays you celebrate, I hope they are and have been enjoyable for you!!!!

This is a picture of my home in the Christmas Eve snow it was decorated with, I decided to make a postcard of holiday wishes rather than shovel the snow off the walks. The white balance was very tricky with this, the snow reflects all the light, and with the mixed lighting of different streetlights and the neighbors Christmas lights I had to compromise a bit. I think I may have kept too much magenta, but pulling it down when processing the RAW file in ACR gave me a bit too much green. This was taken on a Tripod, of course, with my Sigma 17-70, I like how the aperture blades gave me a nice star effect with stopping down a bit.

Christmas morning I went to try for a shot that I have been wanting to get for awhile. Although I have been wanting to get it with maybe a little more heavy snow that is sticking on the trees and completely covering the cars I still like what I got. This view is one of my favorites of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. I simply can't get enough of it. Temples are special places in the Mormon Church and having one so close to me is awesome and exciting pretty much all the time.

This was taken at 150mm with my Pentax 55-300 lens. Infinity focus at that focal length is not one of the lenses stronger points but it does OK for a consumer zoom. Next time I plan to zoom in more and put the camera in portrait orientation and shoot a panorama. That will allow me to print it larger and have it be sharper. That lens is REALLY strong in the 200-300mm range as you get out to infinity focus. At the shorter Focal Lengths it does better at medium distances.

For you tecchies, this is a mild HDR just for the added contrast I can get from that process. I can get it pretty close from one shot, but I like the punch that HDR gives me.

Just a few minutes later I shot this house that is just down the street. They do the most amazing light displays for Christmas. I just never seemed to have the time and motivation at the same moment to go and photograph the home. Again, processing this in HDR with three bracketed shots helped to make up for the light and give me more drama and saturation without looking gaudy. Really need to give these folks a copy.

Close to the home I grew up in is a park, it has changed a lot over the years, but I love that the city has kept it up. The last three years they have done a really good job of putting up lights on several trees, and on a small bridge over a creek. This year they added a few trees and rebuilt the bridge to be a covered bridge. They did a good job of lighting it too. These required a bit of work to get the WB correct again. Snow with colored lights is just HARD to figure out!

I won't comment on all the photos, you can tell me which ones you think are better. I like them all!

Thanks for dropping by, and have a happy holiday season!

Novembers Catch......

Alrighty... November is done with, I really haven't blogged, sorry about that! Life is just plain busy, the holiday season, busy time at work, etc...  So I haven't shot many pictures, or processed many, there is nothing here of import, if you are looking for significant photos you probably won't find much here. That said, here are the shots I liked the most from November.

I find myself wondering exactly what this entails, and which patients get to go there.....

Playing with old Manual Focus lenses is always a joy, this is my recently acquired Vivitar 28mm f2.5 a bargain bought for $15. The DOF is not deep but what is in focus is sharp. I am still not in love with the 28mm field of view, preferring 24-20mm but for what this lens delivers I can deal with it! (FYI, that is my wifey's hand and the Claddaugh I gave her as an friendship/engagement ring. Best choice I ever made!)

There are some lenses that people tend to look down on because they have a relatively modest aperture wide open. This shot was taken with a lens that is NOT looked down upon.. for a reason! The Pentax K35mm f3.5 may not be "fast" but it is Sharp wide open. You may not be able to get that one feature isolated and fuzz everything else out but the in focus stuff is stellar and the lens is small. Nearly a pancake lens in size it is really handy to carry around. This is an area that I walk past every Monday on my way from TRAX to the University of Utah Medical Center. I love the texture of the peeling paint and rust, but just in places.

Liked the reflection really don't know why. Again I see this image all the time. Guess I like the details.

Another common everyday scene for me.

I really liked the leaves on the snow from an early season snowfall.

I have been waiting for winter to work on shots of my local temple with snowy mountains behind. I need to get out there just after sunset and shoot a wider bracketing series. I like the detail and lightness in the mountains behind but I totally lost the brighter areas where the lights illuminate the exterior of the building. Now that I have a better idea of What to shoot and when I can try again. Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

You may have seen these guys in earlier posts if you have been following me for any length of time. I find the creativity of these weathervane's delightful.

So there you have it. Hopefully December and January especially will afford me more opportunities to take some rust off of my photo skills.