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Monday, January 26, 2009

Lens Report: Takumar 1:4/300

I recently scored four Takumar lenses of various vintage with a Spotmatic body on ebay, and one of them is a Takumar 300mm f/4. Based on info from the defunct m-fortytwo.info site (available via the wayback machine), I believe this is the second version of this lens which began production in 1962. The manually actuated aperture is not far behind the front element unlike the more traditional placement on the later Super and SMC Taks...




The aperture has 18 blades... it's a beaut...





The focus travel from close focus to infinity is about 355° which really allows for precise though not fast focusing. The closest focus distance marked on the ring is 18ft/5.5m, but the ring stops slightly past that for probably about 15ft minimum focus distance.

Today I had a chance to take a few sample shots on a tripod... Nothing interesting photographically here, strictly putting the lens through it's paces on a digital body (K20D). For these shots, the lens was tripod mounted and the camera two second timer was on (so SR was off). Initial metering was with the green button, and then manually adjusted for most shots. I shot a frame at f/4, f/5.6, and f/8 for each scene. Photos were captured as RAW files and converted in Lr with no changes (other than one set where auto exposure was applied to balance the exposure across the three shots).

I'll post the wide open shot, followed by 100% crops for comparison, all the originals are available for download in this gallery (up to full size - huge).

General findings: Wide open the lens tends to be somewhat soft, and display quite a bit of CA. Sharpness and CA both improve with one stop, and by f/8, IQ has increased significantly.

click pics below to see the larger version...
f/4




f/5.6




f/8



100% crops...





f/4





f/5.6






f/8






100% crops...





another from the broad side of the barn... (out of order - bad photoshoping - f/8 is the middle shot)

Sunday, January 18, 2009

High Desert Panorama...

Shot from the top of the hills in the center of this map, the pano looks northeast across the western end of the Antelope Valley,
which is the western end of the Mojave desert.

The town of Tehachapi is about 30 mi. northeast behind the mountains center-left, and
downtown Los Angeles is about 50 mi. away behind and to the right of the camera.

click the photo to see a larger version (do it - it looks better)


To create this shot I took 15 shots hand-held with the DA*16-50 @ 16mm f/8 1/200 iso 100. Initial PP (curves, vignette correction) applied in Lr,
then individual shots exported and stitched w/ Hugin and then the final tiff was edited in PS for color and contrast.

Pollen Doom...

So... I have some lovely big old trees in my backyard (I'm sure one of you will tell me the type when you see the pictures - my dendrology knowledge is lacking), which apparently produce pollen this time of year... I didn't know this before, because normally in winter, we get storms through the area on a regular basis, and between the wind and the rain, the pollen either gets blown away or washed away, and doesn't just hang around getting in my eyes and sinuses. However, since California's drought has decided to come back and the high pressure demons are just camped on top of us, I now know about this pollen nightmare... Touch a branch, and an explosion of yellow pollen comes billowing out... You'll see...

Here's a tendril lurking...



Threaten it with a bat, and it keeps it's cool...

but give the branch a little tap, it retaliates...









And if you throw a stick at the tree, it releases a full dose of it's pollen weapons...







Gah, my eye's are itching just proofreading my post.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Alien Robot Flowers?!?!?!?!?!

Ok, I suppose they're just wind turbines...

Taken near Tehachapi California today.

K20D, Tamron 70-200/2.8, converted in Lr. I don't know how I settled on this tone for the monochrome conversion, but I kinda like it...






Sunday, January 04, 2009

Sea of Clouds...

Shot this today on my way to socal for work... Actually, I took a fair drive out of the way up into the mountains to find an overlook where I could shoot back into the sea of low clouds which is the San Joaquin Valley of California in winter. I found the view from this point looking essentially north.

Shot handheld with K20D and the Tamron 70-200/2.8 @ 200mm.