The sheer energy of these boys running across a colour fall backdrop makes for a lovely depiction of the vibrancy of boyhood.
Friday, June 23
Friday, June 16
A dedicated Macro lens
Going back a little to what this blog was originally about today I'm going to talk about a lens I find quite useful that I've had for a bit.
Traditionally you bought your comera body with a so-called Standard 50mm lens adding in time a wide angle lens of 28 or 35mm focal length and then a moderate telephoto which in the era I started to put my kit together was a 135mm moderate telephoto.
Your aim was to cover most of the types of photographic needs bearing in mind some of restrictions of zoom lenses such as absolute quality and light gathering abilities typically spacing by about 1.4 times the gaps in the focal lengths of your lenses.
One you find handy is a wider aperture short telephoto for taking portraits with a more natural perspective with a wide maximum aperture to throw backgrounds well out of focus too.
The one I bought was the Tamron type 52B from the early 1980's which actually is a dedicated Macro lens that focuses close enough to give you half life sized (1:2) reproductions of your subject on film that by using a dedicated two times convertor takes to life sized.
It has all metal construction unlike the later type 52BB which is optically the same but uses more plastic.
If you look at the above picture you can see apart from the distance and depth of field scales, the actual reproduction scale is marked on the lens barrel.
Because the front element is very much exposed, to avoid the contrast reductions of flare from strong sunlight, I also got a lens hood for it that screws into the filter thread.
The image quality wide open is really good and the time one comes in a few F stops which for close up you're bound to, it is excellent with a crisp easy to focus image thanks to the f2.5 maximum aperture that you see when taking the picture.
As with all Tamron Adaptall 2 lenses, you attach a mount to it so it fully couples to your camera just like the manufactures own in my case, Minolta MD for shutter priority and Program auto exposure on the XD7 and X700 camera bodies respectively.
Traditionally you bought your comera body with a so-called Standard 50mm lens adding in time a wide angle lens of 28 or 35mm focal length and then a moderate telephoto which in the era I started to put my kit together was a 135mm moderate telephoto.
Your aim was to cover most of the types of photographic needs bearing in mind some of restrictions of zoom lenses such as absolute quality and light gathering abilities typically spacing by about 1.4 times the gaps in the focal lengths of your lenses.
The one I bought was the Tamron type 52B from the early 1980's which actually is a dedicated Macro lens that focuses close enough to give you half life sized (1:2) reproductions of your subject on film that by using a dedicated two times convertor takes to life sized.
It has all metal construction unlike the later type 52BB which is optically the same but uses more plastic.
If you look at the above picture you can see apart from the distance and depth of field scales, the actual reproduction scale is marked on the lens barrel.
Because the front element is very much exposed, to avoid the contrast reductions of flare from strong sunlight, I also got a lens hood for it that screws into the filter thread.
The image quality wide open is really good and the time one comes in a few F stops which for close up you're bound to, it is excellent with a crisp easy to focus image thanks to the f2.5 maximum aperture that you see when taking the picture.
As with all Tamron Adaptall 2 lenses, you attach a mount to it so it fully couples to your camera just like the manufactures own in my case, Minolta MD for shutter priority and Program auto exposure on the XD7 and X700 camera bodies respectively.
Friday, June 9
Waiting...
In so many ways this is almost a classic young boy resting on a bench waiting for the others image that so reminds me of my own boyhood where we wore a similar uniform with shorts but what is different is rather than using a clipboard with paper and pencil he appears to be using a tablet computer rested on his lap.
I know of schools that still use paper so I'm thinking why?
Friday, June 2
A right angle finder
Sometimes you think and weigh things up for ages and then you realize that's what you really needed.
The origins of this blog were a photography blog for my Minolta single lens reflex camera system that comprised of X500 and XD7 film bodies and matching nearly all MD system compatible lenses bar the MC series 300mm F5.6 from the mid 1970's before support for shutter priority and program modes on the XD7/5 and X700 came in.
That thing I bought recently is the Minolta Angle Finder Vn that came in its leather case and it gets around two basic issues.
The first is many of us don't have perfect eyesight so while we may be able to use the focusing aids such as the split image rangefinder in the focus screen and just about see the settings we can't see the image in sharp focus.
This has a diaoptic adjustment from minus 7 to plus 3 you can set it to match your eyes and put that right.
The other thing is the eyepieces comes out at a right angle making it easier to view when working with camera pointing downwards perhaps on a platform for photographing objects.
That thing I bought recently is the Minolta Angle Finder Vn that came in its leather case and it gets around two basic issues.
The first is many of us don't have perfect eyesight so while we may be able to use the focusing aids such as the split image rangefinder in the focus screen and just about see the settings we can't see the image in sharp focus.
This has a diaoptic adjustment from minus 7 to plus 3 you can set it to match your eyes and put that right.
The other thing is the eyepieces comes out at a right angle making it easier to view when working with camera pointing downwards perhaps on a platform for photographing objects.
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