Night at the Shrine...

I took a few pictures last night at the Shrine of Remembrance. Everything was very orange until I came home and did a white balance to adjust for the sodium vapour colour cast. The result is surprisingly colourful!

Photos taken with sony a550 +Osawa 28mm @f9 RAW

Typical before:

After:

This photo taken with Sigma 21-35 @ f9

Night in Brighton

On a whim I took this photo with my daughter...
Nothing too odd, except that I took it 3 hours after sunset!
Minolta 50mm@ f/4, 10s, auto levels, white balance and noise adjusted in LR3b3.

Pinhole no. 1

Not Quite Zeiss.

I made a pinhole in a bit of metal cut from a can of coke, stuck it on a body cap and had daughter #1 hold still for 15 seconds. What did this prove?

1. It's hard to get a small pinhole. I used a pin, but I should have used a needle. A smaller hole would have produced a sharper image.

2. Any dirt on the CCD shows up after a 30 second exposure. I had to clean up at least 20 spots in lightroom.

3. The irregular bokeh (especially visible in the white background) means that my hole must be irregular.

Helios 44M gets a repreive

I've never been thrilled with my Helios 44M. Focus isn't smooth, the body creaks... not a patch on my Takumars and Rokkors. I have two copies, one with a 6 blade aperture and one with a 10 blade aperture. I've been considering selling them on eBay.



Then I take a picture like this.

Morning shade, 58mm at F/4, 10 blade version.



Nice Sharpness (note the 10 blade diffraction in the reflection)...Nice Bokeh...

I guess I won't be getting rid of it too soon.

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.