Bargain Find

It's amazing what you can find in shops. I'd been looking on a well-known auction site for an old Tamron Adaptall-2 SP 300mm lens to use on both digital an film. Eveytime, outbid. Now the lenses on offer at the time were not in great cosmetic shape, so when I spotted this mint condition lens & case for only 30 pounds I knew that it would be money well spent.

Here is the lens:

And here are some samples (click to enlarge):

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Modelling Shoot with `Steferny' and an Old Lens

I've been wanting to try my skill at using some of my old manual focus lenses in a modelling shoot or for portraiture. Not wanting to have nothing to give the model at the end of the shoot, I opted to do half with my trusty Sigma auto focus and the other half with a 1971 Helios 44-2 (58mm F2) lens.

Being a 58mm lens and used on my Canon 40D, the field of view equates to that of just over 90mm making it a great focal lngth for portraits.

Anyway, here are some of the samples with the Helios lens.










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Adjusting Infinity Focus

I found that one of my wide angled lenses was not reaching infinity so I decided to have a go at fixing it myself. It wasn't an expensive purchase but the lens was in fantastic condition and is quite rare. Many lenses have a similar setup for infinity focus adjustment.

The following details how I set about rectifying the problem. The folloing is for illustration purposes only. I take no responsibility for any damage caused to your equipment. All repairs should be left to an experienced technician.

1. Remove the nameplate by unscrewing it. Often you can unscrew them by using both thumbs pressing in on the nameplate. If they are stiff, there is a rubber tool which can be used.




2. Remove the screws in the coverplate shown here.



3. Set the lens to infinity focus.

4. Slacken, but do not remove the retaining screws shown here. The focus barrel will now move independently of the focus ring (twist the focus ring to check that it is indeed free, as this should now not affect focus).




5. Ensure the focus ring is set to infinity, then twist the barrel a fraction and check focus on a far off subject on the horizon. Tighten one of the retaining screws and recheck focus.

6. Repeat #5 until the sharpest focus is obtained.

7. Reassembly is the reverse of the steps above
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PhoDOGraphy

I was supposed to be shooting birds of prey at a local falconry centre, but with my best lens for this task on loan (why did I give my wife my old DSLR?), I didn't have the right equipment for the job. Add to this the overcast lighting and it was obvious that this wasn't going to happen, so I started to look around for other opportunities.

However, in the centre there was a family of labradors. Knowing how they will do anything for food, I decided to bribe them with my sandwiches to get their attention.



The camera used was a Canon 40D and the lens is a Canon 50mm F1.8 which was used at F2.8 or wider to limit the depth of field (and focus is on the nearest eye of course).






Click here to see the rest from this poser.

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A View of Laycock

More home developed B&W film shots from a dayout at Laycock. The camera again was the Chinon CE-3 with the Ensinor 24mm lens attached and the film was Ilford FP4+.

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Corfe Castle

These were taken at Corfe Castle in Dorset. The camera used was a Chinon CE-3 Memotron equiped with a 24mm Ensinor lens and Ilford FP4+ black & white film and developed by me. I felt that these picture would be better suited to B&W which I think has worked.

1st view when entering the grounds: (click images for larger view)



The ruins within:

This is the view from the grounds looking down on the village. I changed the lens to a 50mm Pentacon for this:

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Bristol Strobists' 4th Shoot (at The Crown, St Nicholas Market

An August bank holiday weekend saw the increasingly popular `Bristol Stobists' on the streets of Bristol looking for locations to get some photos. After deciding against an outdoor shoot due to the weather and many people in party spirit (otherwise known as drunken idiots) we managed (through the negotiating skills of one of the group) to gain access to a basement bar of a local pub.

This 1st shot fetures Mario and is processed using one of my favourite methods to get a `gritty' look. The lighting was a single SB-28 positioned high and close to the model at camera left



A very simple pose was all that was needed for Tanith. This was lit using my Lastolite Triflash which held two Nikon SB-28s and a Canon 580exii. The light was softened with a shoot-thru umbrella. I have added a heavy vignette to draw the eye to the model.



The Triflash set up was used for this photo of Lucea, but this time set at camera left; I have a rule that my main light must aim at the model's chest with the addition of a (borrowed) Nikon SB-800 set behind me slightly at camera right one stop below the main light to act as a fill in. This was converted to black & white, a sepia tone added as well as a light vignette.





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Playing With Fire

A late summer's evening around a campfire when everyone else was relaxing and reflecting on the day that had almost finished, saw me (no surprise) looking for other opportunities to get some photos. I had shot a few candids using the glow of the bonfire, but I ended up concentrating of the flames.

For this shot, I set the drive to continuos (6.5fps) and selected this shot just as the hot ash was in mid-air.


All these shots were taken on my old Helios 58mm lens at an aperture of F4-F5.6. Iso was set to 400 to allow for a resonable shutter speed.

A simple adjustment of contrast was added to make the shadows darker to remove distractions.

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Portraits of Matthew John at Thornbury Castle

It's not often that I get to shoot portraits in such interesting locations, so this was a rarity that I couldn't pass up. Matthew had arranged with to use Thornbury Castle to kindly have the use of some of their rooms for us to use

It was early evening on an August day. The strong sunlight was coming in through the window so I used this as my backlight. My main light had an umbrella attached and this was set to closely match the ambient. A 2nd light was bounced onto the ceiling to act as fill.




The next shot used a slower shutter speed to capture the flames from the fire. The two lights from the 1st shot were set in the same way.



This was a tricky shot to get right. I had one light with an umbrella at camera right and a 2nd unmodified light at camera left at a ratio of about 1:1. A 3rd small light with an orange gell is used to illuminate the lamp behind Matt's head.


This last shot uses just one light. I added a simple black & white conversion add to the atmosphere.

For the full pictures, see : http://www.ms-imaging.co.uk/Portraits/Matthew-John/9374404_akwZc

For more details of Thornbury Castle, see: http://www.thornburycastle.co.uk/

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Photography With a Darkroom Enlarger Lens

I've seen a few of these on auction sites that often don't make the starting bids. This one was listed vaguely but I thought I would take a chance so I bidded £0.99 (gbp) and was successful.

The lens arrived and has a 39mm thread mount which I hoped for as I have an M39>M42 adapter and a set of bellows waiting. I tried it out on the bathroom window handle (one of my fav tests for new lenses) and was rather disappointed. There was a lot of haze inside the lens making the image look like this:

I'm not the most experienced at taking optics apart but for the cost and the risk I thought I'd give it a go. Both ends of the lens unscrew easily and no tools are needed. I cleaned both sides of each element with lighter fluid and a lens cloth and also the iris, which incidentally has 10 blades so it forms a fairly smooth circle at any aperture.

The next test shot looked like this (click on the images to see larger size):

Impressed with the progress I took it out across the fields with it mounted on a tripod. Unfortunately it was windy and getting dark so opportunities were limited. Anyway, here's a few examples:
1.

2.

Crop (I didn't notice the little bug until I was editing)

3. (just testing distance shots)

4.

5.

6.

7.

Finally a pic of the lens mounted on bellows, attached to my 40D:

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