Black & White Pictures from Old Lenses

I have noticed that most old, uncoated lenses have very nice tones, especially when converted to black and white, there are just so much details. These old lenses were designed for black and white film, so it kind of makes sense.  The lower contrast of these lenses gives the pictures smoother tonal transitions. If you are a lover of black and white pictures, you may want to give these old lenses a try.

Relaxing by the lake - NEX-6 & AM 8 Inch f5.6 @ f5.6. Click for larger.

Willow - NEX-6 & AM 5 Inch f4 @ f4.

Air Ministry [Ross Xpress] 5 Inch f4 More Samples - Part II

This is the second part of the sample pictures from the cheap but wonderful Air Ministry (A M) 5 inch f4. All taken with the NEX-6 and the lens mounted on the converted Vivitar 2X Focusing Teleconverter.

Air Ministry [Ross Xpress] 5 Inch f4 More Samples - Part I

I have been shooting with the Air Ministry [Ross Xpress] 5 inch f4 lens for the last few days. I am very taken by the interesting rendering style of this lens. As I said before, wide open the contrast is low, but is very sharp. Pictures taken at any aperture show an amazing amount of details and it's very "malleable" in post processing.  By f8, the lens is extremely sharp with excellent definition. Who would have thought that a lens about 60 years old, and so cheap, can produce such nice results? I am enjoying it immensely. This is part one of the samples. I will post more next time.

One thing I want to stress, if you are going to make this lens useable, is to use a very long lens hood. Without the hood, the lens is very prone to flare and you will get "white out" effect. The hood should be at least 120mm long to be effective. Try it. Take some pictures with and without the hood. You won't believe they come from the same lens.

Birds of a feather - NEX-6 & AM [Ross Xpress] 5 inch f4 @ f4. Click for larger.

Bokeh - NEX-6 & AM [Ross Xpress] 5 inch f4 @ f4. Click for larger.

Ferry - NEX-6 & AM [Ross Xpress] 5 inch f4 @ f8. Click for larger.

Another Bokeh sample - NEX-6 & AM [Ross Xpress] 5 inch f4 @ f4.

The Love of Old Lenses

People who use auto focus lenses exclusively have a hard time understanding our obsession over seemingly useless old lenses. What's the point? My usual answer is "it's fun!"

Yes it's fun, but there is something more fulfilling and tangible - the unique characters that some of these old wonders wove into the images that make them so enticing and attractive to look at. They provide an alternative to the modern, sharp, contrasty, and highly corrected images that look perfect, but lack characters. Many very old lenses are usually full of "faults" of one kind or the other. They vignette badly, they flare like crazy, they have low contrast, they may have horrendous distortion, they have bokeh so horrible that make your skin crawl, and so on. Well, is your partner perfect?  Do you want a partner that looks/acts the same as everyone else? We like our partners because they have characters and traits that stand out from others.

So yes. It's worth the time to make those odd-ball lenses usable on the digital cameras; to endure the disgusted look of some people looking at my ugly Franken Lenses. Because we love our old lenses and the kind of pictures that they can create.

Sailboat - NEX-6 & AM [Ross Xpress] 5 inch f4 @ f5.6.

Your Favourite Photography Place

While reading Thom Hogan's description of his current picture on his bythom.com site, and I can't help but smile.  I think most people have favourite objects/place/person etc to photograph, but don't even know or think about it. I have a few favourite places that I take pictures of whenever I go there. I am sure you see recurring pictures of the same place often in my blog.  One particular place I always seem to have an urge to photograph is the front garden across from my sister-in-law's house. I often have to pickup/drop off her kids for swimming/music lessons, and when I do, I usually bring my camera with me, in case the lighting is good.

The garden is not just wonderful to look at, but  is also harmonious with its environment. The choice of tree, shrubs, flowers, etc, arranged in a way that reflects the beauty of the changing seasons.

I am particularly attracted to the white birch.  The bark, with interesting texture, often peels and curled, creating shapes, when combined with the light, that just makes me get out of the car to photograph it. Next to the tree is an old garage with rusty sheet metal on the outside. From certain angles and lighting conditions, they look so good together. The interesting thing is that it looks different depending lighting and season, so even though I have photographed it many times, I still find that I haven't photographed it enough :)

White Birch - NEX-6 & AM [Ross Xpress] 5 inch f4 @ f4. Click for larger.

Winter Colours - Panasonic G1 & Canon nFD 50mm f1.2 @ f2. Click for larger.

Curled Bark - Sony NEX-5N & Schneider-Kreuznach Componon 50mm f4. click for larger.

Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f1.4 Classic - Couple of Samples

By most people's standards, the Cosina Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f1.4 Classic in M-mount is a desirable lens; small, sharp, well-built, and good looking. It is especially well suited for mirrorless cameras like the Leica Digital Ms, NEX and Micro 4/3 (sorry Samsung NX, your designers really screwed up by designing the sensor to lens register just slightly too long for M-Mount lenses).

Dillon has had this lens for a while, but I doubt he used it much. It's really a shame the lens is not used more often. After the death (at the moment any way) of the EF 200mm f1.8L, I have a new appreciation of manual focus lenses; it's better to invest in good quality manual focus lenses than AF lenses, in the long run, unless your must have AF do to the job. The mechanical nature of these lenses are far more likely fixable than AF lenses decades hence.

Old, New, and Newer - Sony NEX-6 & Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f1.4. Click for Larger

PINEGLEN the ship - NEX-6 & Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f1.4

The L Tower

The L Tower is one of the more unique building designs I have seen in Toronto recently.  Most other new high rises are traditional looking, but this one is eye catching, even before it is completed. The picture below does not show the true uniqueness of the building as it's looking at the flat side. From other directions you can see the interesting shape of the building. The official site for the L Tower gives you a better look with a rendered picture. Note the construction crane is outside of the building, whereas almost all other buildings the crane would sit where the elevator shaft would be.

The L Tower as seen from the 17th floor - Sony NEX-6 & Sigma 30mm f2.8 @ f9.

Sigma 19mm f2.8 - Another Look

Despite being extremely cheap for a wide angle lens, with auto focus to boot, the Sigma 19mm f2.8 for Sony E-Mount has garnered some good reviews from its users. I fully understand there are some with clear distaste for Sigma lenses, and Michael from Austria comes to mind :)  Seriously, Sigma is winning me over with their new company direction. Excellent optics at very reasonable prices. What's not to like?

Sometimes I forget that my camera is capable of auto focus, because I use mostly manual focus lenses on it. It's a nice surprise once in a while I shoot with a lens that focus itself. No need to worry about checking focus; even a slight focus error for this lens would not cause too much concern, as the the lens of such wide angle has lots of depth of field to cover minor focus errors. The aperture is set on f8 or f9 and I just composed and shot. It's not as sharp at the corners as the 30mm f2.8 but good enough for me. I have decided not to complain or even mind about the slightly softer corner, given it's low price, compactness and light weight. I just want to enjoy it, and make pictures with it.

I visited Canada's Sugar Beach today. It's a little oasis in the city. Sugar Beach is a small man made beach, converted from a parking lot. Its name was derived from the next door Red Path sugar refinery. There are beach umbrellas and beach chairs available for anyone to sit and enjoy. I intend to take advantage of it in the coming months when the weather is hot, I would spend half hour of my lunch there to soak up some sun and Vitamin D as byproduct :) It's only a few minutes away from my work.

Relaxing in the sun - Sony NEX-6 & Sigma 19mm f2.8 @ f9. Click for larger.

Beautiful path along the lake - Sony NEX-6 & Sigma 19mm f2.8 @ f9. Click for larger.

The Corus Building - Sony NEX-6 & Sigma 19mm f2.8 @ f9. Click for larger.

Sugar Beach - Sony NEX-6 & Sigma 19mm f2.8 @ f9. Click for larger.

Note Red Path sugar refinery in background - Sony NEX-6 & Sigma 19mm f2.8 @ f9. Click for larger.

Downtown Toronto - Sony NEX-6 & Sigma 19mm f2.8 @ f9

Infrared Black & White Photo Set

I got tired of false colour infrared pictures, so I decided to do a series of pictures in black and white. The infrared filter used in my Canon 20D is not the deep black type, and it allows some false colour to go through. I normally like some false colours in IR but I think a change once in a while is good.          

Captain John's - Canon 20D IR & Pentax-M 20mm f4 @ f8. Click for larger.

Truck - Canon 20D IR & Pentax-M 20mm f4 @ f8. Click for larger.

Air Plane & Boat - Canon 20D IR & Pentax-M 20mm f4. Click for larger.

Shadows - Canon 20D IR & Pentax-M 20mm f4

Soligor 105mm f2.8 T-Mount - Sample Pictures

Over the years, I have had quite a few Soligor lenses, but nothing really exotic except, maybe the 200mm f2.8 I had at one time. In general, Soligor didn't make anything unique, like Vivitar did. Most of the Soligor lenses are average performers, in line with the price the sold these lenses for.

This particular 105mm f2.8 is actually quite a nice, compact lens. It has pre-set apertures and as the usual with pre-set apertures, it's circular at any aperture. This lens also seems to have multi-coating. In actual use, it's quite nice. The lens is well made and focuses smoothly. My copy has a T-Mount to M42 mount installed.

The lens is reasonably sharp wide open, and it surprises me with its sharpness when stopped down. At f8, the lens is very sharp. The bokeh looks nice to me, no doubt helped by the circular aperture blades.

Would you buy one? The 100-105mm lenses don't seem to be very popular focal lengths. Personally, I like it just fine, especially my Canon EF 100mm f2 and EF 100mm f2.8 IS, both are exceptionally good lenses and great as a portrait lens on full frame. The 105mm focal length gives you just a bit more reach and nice, tighter head and shoulder shots, than the 85mm, which for some reason, always seems to be way more expensive than other portrait focal lengths. As for the Soligor 100mm f2.8, I think $10 is a good deal, and even $20 is still ok. I think it would make a nice portrait lens.

Bokeh - Sony NEX-6 & Soligor 105mm f2.8 @ f2.8. Click for larger.

Window Seats - Sony NEX-6 & Soligor 105mm f2.8. Cick for larger.

Untitled - Sony NEX-6 & Soligor 105mm f2.8 @ f2.8. Click for larger.

The power of nature - Sony NEX-6 & Soligor 105mm f2.8. Click for larger.

Cleaning up - Sony NEX-6 & Soligor 105mm f2.8.