Here is a capture of Lucas with a 55mm f/1.8 Super-Takumar wide open. The shot was made with the Sony A7Sii with in-camera black and white conversion.
After a week working in the field (and a buttload of travel), I am home for the weekend. This morning (I need another coffee) I am catching up a bit on email and other things.
I decided to put a new-to-me 55mm f/1.8 Super Takumar on my Sony A7Sii and make a couple of images. Of course, The Girl is involved. But Lucas is often a test subject because there are lights in the background.
This Super Takumar is a very good lens. I like its sharpness and background blur. It will be fun to take out on a walk and see what it can do.
Shot of Aloha Liquor Store with the Asahi-Kogaku Optical Company 58mm f/2.4 at f/8 with the Sony A7Sii and Vivid Creative Look.
This (very) vintage lens came to me a couple of weeks ago. It is from an Asahi-Kogaku rangefinder camera, probably made in the 1950s. I had to order a M37/M42 adapter so I could mount the lens. Then I got busy with field work and did not take time to shoot it.
Well, I decided to reprovision my stock, so I took The Girl and we drove down to Aloha Liquor. She waited while I did a little shopping. Then I made this capture of the store front.
The lens is certainly sharp at f/8. The colors are not quite as nice as the Hexanon 40mm f/1.8 produces. But they are good.
I made a second capture in black and white, below, of my Lucas plushie. This one was shot wide open (f/2.4). It is also quite sharp and there is a hint of swirly bokeh in the background. It looks like this lens will also produce some soap bubble bokeh balls as well. I need to play with it some more.
One more thing — this lens is heavy. There is a lot of metal in the lens.
This is a shot of Lucas using the Asahi-Kogaku Optical Company 58mm f/2.4 wide open. Captured with the Sony A7Sii and the Black and White Creative Look setting.
Lately I have been shooting normal(ish) lenses during my daily walkies with The Girl. Yesterday I carried an old Hanimex 135mm f/2.8 along and shat a few frames with it. This one I like, captured with the Sony A7Sii with in-camera black and white conversion at f/8. I did post-process a bit in Iridient Developer, made some contrast adjustments and added a bit of sharpening.
Over the last month or so, with the exception of two outings, my images were captured with normalish lenses. The two exceptions were some captures with the Nikkor 85mm f/2 and the Zuiko 85mm f/2. On a full-frame camera, like the Sony A7Sii (which I carry a lot), 85mm is a short telephoto focal length. It is most commonly used for portraits.
I start to see the telephoto effect (compression of distance, shallow depth of field) at a focal length of about 105mm. Yesterday I carried a Hanimex 135mm f/2.8 in the bag. The Carl Zeiss Jena 50mm f/2.8 Tessar was on the camera (Sony A7Sii) during most of our walk. Near the end of walkies, I decided to mount the Hanimex and see what that gave me.
The Hanimex was reviewed and recommended by Nigel (Zenography channel). It is not an expensive lens. They are quite common (East German Cold War era). But, they are also quite sharp, good quality, and have good contrast. I picked one up off fleaBay a few weeks ago for not much money.
Nigel is right — the lens is quite sharp, even wide open. It has good image quality. And I quite like the telephoto look of this shot of River Road from the Silver Saddle Ranch gate staging area.
The Girl and I had a good walk. The weather is cool, very much fall-like. We have had some rain and I am hopeful that keeps the wildfires away. My thought for today is that maybe we will drive up to our current favorite portable operation site this morning. We can walk some and I might set up a station and see if the bands are better (yesterday they were poor). I think I will take makings for coffee or tea.
Whatever we do, it will be good. I am grateful The Girl is strong and healthy. I do not mind that she is a bossy-bitch. Life is good.
While on walkies a few days ago, I captured The Girl announcing to the (doggie) world “Sera was here!” Photograph shot with a Sony A7Sii and a Zuiko 85mm f/2 at f/8 or so.
The Kamera Store has a lot of film cameras (and others).
David duChemin is a Canadian photographer and teacher. He is good at both.
Fujifilm’s digital film simulations changed my way of looking at digital photography. There is a longer entry in this idea (I will get to it), but there is also science behind what some might think is a gimmick. Dave Etchells explains some of the technical background of creating a film simulation.
This Vistek video looks into the Fujifilm film simulations in a video (with reference to the above article) and is worth a watch (and a sub).
Reggie Balesteros offers his take on a Kodak Portra film simulation for Fuji cameras. (Note: There is also a YT video for this film simulation.)
And then Reggie offers an Acros-based (a Fuji film stock) (video) black and white simulation for his documentary photography that is also worth a look at.
Experiment in bubble bokeh with the Sony A7Sii and a Meyer-Optik Gorlitz Oreston 50mm f/1.8 vintage lens. The lens needs to be cleaned, but I see no fungus, just a bit of dust and haze.
This old Meyer-Optik Görlitz Oreston 50mm f/1.8 arrived in the mail yesterday. It is a classic lens that can produce some interesting images. My copy came attached to a Praktina 35mm SLR, which is a decent vintage camera (all mechanical except a light meter) but I have use for.
I affixed the lens to the Sony A7Sii for walkies this morning. I missed the focus on a few images and will have to reshoot them. There is also a bit a trick to using this lens and that will require some repetitions.
The lens needs to be cleaned because there is a little dust and haze on the inside of the front and rear elements. The aperture is clean. If I can figure out how to get the front element out, I will clean it. Otherwise I will have to send it out and have it cleaned.
Post was with Color Efex Pro 4, which I am also experimenting with.
I shot this with the Sony A7Sii and a Zuiko 85mm f/2 at either f/2 or f/2.8. The jpeg is out of camera using the Sony Vivid recipe, with some minor adjustment in Iridient Developer for contrast, color, and sharpness.
On walkies this morning, I carried the Sony A7Sii with an adapted Olympus Zuiko 85mm f/2 that I am testing. I will make a more complete review later (already have the test shots done), but thought that this sunflower with an out-of-focus bee was fun. The shot was captured at f/2 or f/2.8. I did a little post-processing in Iridient Developer (a recommended program, especially for Fuji X cameras) that included increasing the color saturation and vibrance a bit, adjusting the contrast to better cover the scene (and look my filmic), and bit of sharpening.
The lens is soft wide open. This is not unusual for vintage class and especially fast glass, like the 85mm f/2. It sharpens up nicely stopped down a stop or two. I like it.
The liquor store I’ve patronized for years. Captured with Sony A7Sii in raw format using a Konica 40mm f/1.8 at f/8. Slight post-processing with Iridient Developer (contrast, saturation/vibrance, a bit of sharpening, and a resize for the web).
I am currently busier than a one-armed paper hanger with a backlog of work. I am not complaining; it is a blessing to have work and I am deeply grateful for God’s provision.
I am examining my use of the Internet. I bought my first smartphone, an original iPhone, not long after they were released. My intent was to combine two devices — an iPod and a mobile phone. I thought this might be a smart thing to do. Now, I am not so sure.
As time passed, developers realized they had a substantial handheld computer available. Then came social media1. And, as it is said, the game was on.
I have little use for Facebook. I might have been compulsive about it some years ago. But I am not. I will check sometimes twice a day, usually only once in the evening as I settle down. I like to see posts from my friends and family (a limited number of said) and respond to comments on my posts. I do not post a lot. What I do post is links from this weblog and sometimes music from YouTube.
Instagram was wonderful when I first found it. There were lots of content creators, some of them wonderful photographers, and I both enjoyed seeing their art and I learned from it. Then Facebook bought it and the algorithms took over. Now it is a mess of stuff I do not necessarily want to see. But I find myself doomscrolling looking for the dopamine hit when I find something interesting or amusing.
A month or two ago I deleted the app from my iPhone. When I thought I was over my addiction I reinstalled the app. Meh… nope, I am not over my addiction. Worse, the algorithm seems to be biased towards the base and I have no interest in that.
Now, enter a book by Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism. I am not sure where the connection occurred, but I found myself with a sample on my Kindle and started reading it. I am the point where I am considering (for the second time) selling my iPhone and buying a Light Phone 2. I will have more to say about that later.
I am not interested in what the Facebook algorithms want me to see, mostly. I am not interested in spending more time than necessary with the Internet. It can be a useful tool, but it is more likely to be a tremendous time sink that provides little value for the time invested.
Reenter Cal Newport’s book. Once again, I deleted the IG app. I deleted the Reuters news app. I deleted several other apps from my iPhone. I no longer keep a browser tab open to my YT subscription feed. I plan to cull my YT subscription feed, when I go back to watching YT again. (However, I would note that I generally do not doomwatch YT videos. Plus, videos that are more than about 15 minutes in length do not get watched either.)
I did not delete my Vero app from my iPhone. I DO NOT doomscroll Vero. My Vero feed is exactly what I want it to be — those photographers that make images I want to see. It is not a problem and I check it only once or twice a day.
I expect to finish Digital Minimalism next week sometime. I began my digital detox this week. I plan to stick to it for a month. There might be other sites and apps that I delete, now that I deleted several that I used too much.
Why am I doing this? I have written here many times before, but I want to be more intentional about my use of the Internet. Music, photography, reading, and writing are far more satisfying than having Instagram pushing titties at me2. So, it will be an interesting experiment to see if I can reset myself and get to the point where I waste much less time on the Internet and spend more time with creative work that will be so much more satisfying.
1Or as I often call it, antisocial media. 2I did say that the IG algorithms seem to be biased towards the base.
