Cleaning time

The new photopictomania family members; "28 Prime" (28mm), "Mini" (35-70mm f/4 mini-beercan), and "Beery" (70-210mm f/4 beercan) are looking a bit, well... gross. The rubber rings are faded (except on Beery), and the lens bodies need a bit of a clean.
Look at Mini:
I read on a flickr discussion that the fading could be reversed:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sony_alpha/discuss/72157623404240115/
I tried the toothbrush, soap and armorall.
15 minutes later, Mini is looking good:

Macro Monday

It's a holiday today, so I had some leisure time. While testing out the new Minolta Beercan , I took a shot of a purple daisy. I was very surprised to see little blue and yellow star shaped florets. I thought I might brush off the Pentax bellows I bought a few months ago and see of I could get a better image.
This is the original picture that inspired the macro work.

After attaching the bellows and I changed the lenses a few times. I tried a Fujitar 50mm, but could not get a good focus. Next came the Takumar 135. I could focus but the DOF was so narrow it was pointless. Finally I tried a Helios 58mm. The Helios lens would focus consistently. This lens usually disappoints me and this was the first time I have used this lens and enjoyed it!

The other problem was the wind, the flower kept moving, and I had to wait for a lull to get a good photo. I ended up shooting with the bellows extended to about "8X" at f6 and 1/50s.

I've got to say I was very disappointed with the process as it was very very fiddly. The images didn't look very nice either. - Oh well, off to photoshop to see how they develop.

First some sharpening... then cropping...

more cropping...

and still more...

Much better than I had hoped! The Helios have certainly proven themselves. While not a perfect image, I can see a lot of detail.

pictures I like 3

One sunny and windy day down in Sorrento Vic...
Taken with the Osawa 28mm at f11+. A little bit of Photoshop here (to lighten with house) gives this picture an HDR look.

28mm repaired.

I decided that I could not justify the cost of professional cleaning, so I would attempt to repair the lens myself. For cleaning I just undid the 4 external screws that secured the mount and then unscrewed the back lens assembly by hand. I wet a cotton "ear bud" with methylated spirits and cleaned the aperture with a circular motion (following the iris ridges). then ran a dry bud over the aperture to clean. I opened and closed the aperture about 20 times during the process to distribute the metho. I was very careful to keep the iris vertical so that if I did have an accident, nothing could drip onto the lens.
I had to repeat the process three times letting the assembly air dry for about 10 minutes between cleaning. It was important to let the aperture dry before checking the stiffness because the dampness of the metho made the iris stick a little bit.
I should point out that I have opened lots of lenses in the last couple of years (and destroyed a few in the process). This was a simple fix, but if you have never opened a lens before, I recommend you get some practice first.


It worked! Finally the iris movement was like a feather! I reassembled and confirmed everything was working as expected. Here are a few sample shots...

28mm Disaster!!

The new Minolta 28mm f2.8 wasn't metering right... Looking inside the lens, I can see the cause - oil on the aperture. This looks like a big big problem. I will need to decide to if I will attempt the fix the lens myself, pay a pro, or just resell as-is on eBay.
Rats! I have really be looking forward to this lens.

The Photopictomania Family gets a boost!!!

The Photopictomania Family gets a boost!
I have been very happy with my manual focus lenses, especially the awesome Osawa 28mm, but 100% Manual Lens has been giving me some trouble when I am shooting at parties, events and sports.
Two nights ago I got a great deal on an orginal Minolta set:
70-210 f4 Beercan
35-70 f4 mini Beercan
28mm f2.8 prime
Now that it's the weekend I finally have a chance to look at the set - Wow!!! Looks good - lots of fun in store...

Pictures I like 2

Looking into the Melbourne Opera rehersal room. Shot with my Osawa 28mm, f/2.8 1/25 Sec.

Pictures I Like 1.

I will be posting pictures that I like - along with a few comments.
This was just a test shot one day - 50mm Takumar at f/1.8.
I like like casual relaxed feeling the natural lighting gives the picture.

Mystery of the Fotar Variocolor...

I received a Fotar Variocolor R-Y filter as an unexpected bonus with a camera lens that I received. The filter somehow olarizes the light and applies a variable color filter (from Red to Yellow) as the knob is rotated.
A red filter (in B&W film cameras) is used to darken the sky. Unfortunately, it was so cloudy that I did not see much effect.

The yellow filter made the world, well... yellow. The look of aged film.

Converting the red image to B&W gave a very film like style to the photo. The Vario color appears to have a polarizer in it, so the effect may not be able to be simulated in photoshop.

I'll take the lens out next weekend and give it a test.

Supa Nova - Melbourne

Supa Nova Melbourne 2010 was quite an event - I went there mainly to see my "author hero" Scott Sigler and see the sites. I took the a550 and my low light Minolta 50mm f1.7.
Everyone was friendly and all were keen to have their piture taken.

The 50mm worked fine, but... a crowd + 50mm + an APS-C sensor meant things got a bit squished sometimes. Funny though, I came back and did alot of cropping!
Star Wars was out in force...

And so was Anime!
My Favorite photo was the Pro wrestler with the title belt.

Biggest lesson learned... 50mm is too close. By the next event my 28mm f2.8 will have arrived - should be perfect.

Thistle seed

A thistle seed went floating by today - not wanting to miss an opportunity to use my Accura "close up" lens set, I grabbed it and brought it inside. This is the image through my Takumar 55mm f1.8.

It looks OK, but the 100% crop shows is so-so. The biggest problem is that the minimum focusing distance on the Tak is 0.45 metres...

I have three of these close up lens, labelled +1, +2, +3. I got them off eBay for $9. They came in an ancient leather zipping pouch. (I think that build quality of everything went downhill after 1964.) After screwing on the Accura +1, this is the result. Much better - but can it be improved?

This is the 100% crop from a picture using the +3 lens. The detail is much better than I could get with the Tak by itself. I'll try a few macro shots when I get the chance.

If you haven't seen a "close up" screw on lens before:

Movement through car trails

Last night I decided to try capturing some car trails.

I decided on the corner of Nepean Highway and North Road. I assumed (incorrectly) that there would be quite a bit of traffic at 9:30 on a Friday night. To get enough trails I hard to time my exposures with the lights turning green.

I read somewhere that you should choose a reasonable exposure and adjust the aperture from there. I started with 10 seconds and settled on f/16. I was surprised at the white balance because the the sodium lights. Everything was orange!

There wasn't much traffic but I could not make the exposure much longer as I was already at f/16 and ISO200. I grabbed about 20 pictures. I felt pretty isolated on the road. No problems, but it was a bit creepy. The police set up a booze bus a block away and I got breath-alized as I left.

Light Room 3 Beta 2 did a good job of post processing. I ended up manually setting white balance to get white headlights. Fortunately, it's wasy to copy and paste settings, so it did not take long to process all of the pictures.

I was happiest when the images that showed movemvent in different directions. Also, the best images were taken with the tripod fully extended - this put the camera 2 and a bit metres into the air. This gave some seperation to the left and right lights. I was using my 4 dollar sony remote, so I did not have to worry about shaking the camera.