Über Bokeh Monster..

This lens has gained a bit of a cult status and is sort after by both still and video photographers. Its the Russian built Helios 40-2 m42 mount lens.

Originally designed to be used as an oscilloscope lens, I don't know who started to use it on a camera but what a discovery !

Its has an 85mm focal length with a minimum aperture of f1.5, yes, I'll say that again, f1.5 ! That makes it a really, really fast lens and the focal length is just perfect for portraits (for example). But really what is all the fuss about. Well, we arrive once again at something called 'bokeh', and the popular opinion is that this is one of the best. Bokeh really is a personal thing but this lens really does have some wonderful abilities.

Here are a couple of images to give you an idea, and what you will see is that depending on where the highlights are you will get one effect or another, from buttery smooth to crazy swirls.

You've probably guessed it already that the club has managed to get its hands on one of these fine lenses. However, lets get a few things straight, its manual focus, you have to set and 'activate' the aperture manually, and f1.5 means that depth of field can be measured millimetres at close distances, and it has an m42 mount which probably doesn't fit any of the camera's we own, and its heavy.

I know, I know, before you all start shouting at me for such a stupid purchase, we also have two converters for both Canon and Nikon mounts (now all the Nikonians can't start complaining theres no lens for them this year !). The Canon converter does have the advantage that the central focus point will flash when the lens is correctly focussed (neat no !?). The Nikon convertor doesn't have this (because I couldn't find this functionality anywhere), but it is specially built such that the lens can be focussed at infinity.

We are really lucky to have picked one up, and in such good condition, and personally I absolutely love it, I'm having a great time using it, you have to take your time and think a bit more, but the results are really worth the extra effort.

Canon's widest lens for Digital SLR's...

Having a APS-C sized sensor in your digital SLR always means your going to have difficulty finding a lens wide enough due to the crop factor. 

Enter the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 USM lens stage left. With the 1.6X factor of Canon camera's this gives an equivalent focal length of 16-35mm which is pretty wide by anyones standards.

Bear in mind though, that this is an EF-S lens and consequently will only fit on APS-C camera's made from 2003 onwards (the EF-S mount was actually introduced with the 300D). I don't think anyone in the club has such an old digital SLR, well with the exception of me :-(, so everyone else should be OK.

Why do I mention this... it's because the club now has one of these lens for all the Canon users to try out.

But what about image quality, well there are many reviews on the web and lens comes out favourably in all of them, and the image above gives you an idea of its abilities.

This lens is without a doubt a welcome edition to the equipment cabinet.

Canon's little known super telephoto...

Super Telephoto lenses start at 400mm, there heavy, there big, they require beefy tripods with specialised heads and there damn expensive right... errrrrrr... well not always.

Here you see the Canon 400mm f5.6L lens, this is the slowest (and cheapest) of the three 400mm's but it doesn't skimp on image quality, which after all is said and done is the most import aspect of any lens.

Its not so heavy and its slim profile allows for 'easy' handholding making it a firm favourite with many Bird Photographers, especially those that enjoy taking pictures of them in flight.

The club is now in posession of one of these lenses, which should give all the Canon users the opportunity to try out this wonderful piece of equipment.

Tilt-Shift Lens...

I know that no one in the club has a Phase One medium format camera (yet !), but this highly entertaining video from Adrian Weinbrecht regarding the newly available Schneider-Kreuznach Tilt-Shift lens for this camera system; very nicely explains the use of these sorts of lens and I thought would be of interest to all of us.

Latest Camera Technology...

This has popped up on quite a few web pages recently and is the new 'light field' capturing camera from Lytro. Apparently all you have to do is take the picture and then you can select the focus point later on (click the image above wherever you like to see what i mean).

Maybe a few of our Scientist members could gives us an insight into what exactly are light fields and their potential uses ?

Studio for 70 Euros...

This is not the first time we have featured Bert Stephani on our blog.

This time the photographer from Belguim shows us that with a couple of halogen working lights, shower curtains and old blankets you can produce shots like the one over on the left.

What are the disadvantages, you may ask.... for a start the lights generate a lot of heat, so you have to be a bit careful about placement and in the end the amount of light you have to play with is not that much, so expect to be using a tripod and slow shutter speed.

Well, in the end thats not so bad, the fact that you are forced to use a slow shutter speed along with a wide aperture is something I really like, it just gives a look that is more analogue and it this case fits the moody portrait perfectly.

Anyway, I'll handover to Bert to explain further in his video below and you can always check out his blog which is an absolute goldmine of information (and yes, if you like the idea of using an iPad to see each image instantly after its taken, he has a blog entry for that as well !)

Holga and the New York Times...

Came across this nice article in the New York Times 'Lens' section about the Holga, a 120 film, medium format plastic toy camera made in China.

The camera has a cult following due to its ability to give you results that you weren't quite expecting, say goodbye to digital perfection and hello to light leaks, soft edges and a complete lack of control..... all very liberating don't you think ?

Randy Smith of Holgamods fame gets a mention for his inventiveness when it comes down to modifying these cheap plastic cameras. I bought mine with a waist level finder from him a number of years back. Real nice guy to deal with, honest and open, does it because he loves it not because he is on some sort of get rich scheme.

There are mentions of a number of photographers who actively use this camera and I have to admit I liked a lot the work of Richard Sintchak whose image you see above.

The Holga world is a big one and there is a lot to explore, if you are tempted to buy one, get it from Randy who will make sure you get something just to your liking.

Mark Tucker and his latest project...

We've seen Mark's work in the past and I recently dropped by his web pages, just to take a look at what he's been getting up to.

He images still continues to amaze and inspire me and its great to see he still maintains his passion for homemade camera's. In this case, not made by himself but by John Minnicks, whom I'm trying to find out more about, but if like me, you don't have a Facebook account your going to be out of luck.

You can see the camera in action above and its a custom design using as its base, the Graflex RB Camera from the early 1950's. You may also notice that the lens attached is the famous Kodak Aero Ektar often used by David Burnett.

I have to admit that I really want one of these camera's as the thought of having a 4x5 reflex camera (meaning that you don't lose the viewfinder image of your subject when you load the film into the back) is really appealing, and it looks like a quite compact package as well.

Anyway Mark has set up a new blog to show the results of his new project to photograph special people in the Nashville area.

If you don't remember Mark from our past blog entry his web page is here and his 'normal' blog here.

Phase One IQ180 Back...

With an incredible 80Megapixels the Phase One IQ180 Medium format Back will be available in May this year and once again raises the bar for image resolution and quality.

I would really love to have one of these for the club, but its slightly out of our price range at more than 30,000 Euros.

However, if you do have the means for such an item, you may want to head over to the Luminous Landscape for a hands on report to tempt you even further and it will also give you the perfect excuse to upgrade you computer as well, handling 480Megabyte 16bit TIFF files is not something to be scoffed at.

Anyway, the video above which shows Jens Honoré on the Sitges Terramar Racing Circuit with an IQ180, is worth a look (check out what happens around 0:55 for a good example of photographer/subject trust !)

There are some more 'In Action' videos over on the Phase One site if you also want to see what Fashion and Architectural Photographers have to say.

DIY Beauty Dish...

The Chinatown Special: The Best DIY Beauty Dish from The Browyoungs on Vimeo.

The Beauty Dish gets it name for a very obvious reason... the quality of light it produces is very flattering in portrait photography.

The above video, gives a quick overview of how to build one and here you will find one of the best and most detailed tutorials I ever seen.

This is one for that weekend when you can't find anything to do :-)

FujiFilm FinePix X100...

This little camera is causing quite a stir at the moment and looks like being one of the hottest sellers in 2011.

It's retro on the outside and cutting edge on the inside.

For more information go here and for a pre-release review check here.

GIGAntic PANoramas

Panoramic photography is surely one of the areas having gained most from digital photography. Some people push it to the limit - or beyond, regarding the capacities of normal PCs. At the GigaPan website one can find images with hundreds of gigapixels, stitched together from thousands of individual images. Via the Web interface one can zoom into the images and find details invisible in the full image. See, for example, this nice panorama of Prague at dawn or this (relatively low resolution) sunset shot of Madrid.

These photographers are helped by the hardware sold by GigaPan which moves the camera around automatically. Should we consider a GigaPan EPIC Pro for the Club to create such special images ourselves? Since Neil is now with Gaia, he should soon know everything about dealing with enormous datasets :-)

Latest Leica...

Leica M9 Titanium Special Edition.

500 only.

Price €23,400.

Ouch !!!!

Newly released film camera !?!...

Just to show you all that film is not dead quite yet, Cosina/Fujifilm have brought out a new film camera based on a design from the 1930's.

A folder no less !!!! that means you can fold it up and put it in your pocket (well almost ;-))

It will go on sale under the Voigtlander Bessa III brand and of course the design has been brought right up to date with a mechanism for switching between two different film formats (6x7cm and 6x6cm) and auto focus.

It is fitted with an 80mm f/3.5 fixed focal length Heliar lens and weighs 1kg and measures 178x109x 138mm when opened. The body is cast in magnesium alloy with aluminium parts, and the camera can be fitted with a hotshoe flash.

Its quite pricey at around 1700GBP, but hats off to Cosina/Fujifilm for making such a bold move no the less, I'll be interested in how well it sells...

Question on macro lenses

One question:

I am interested in start playing with photography with macro, but the lenses are quite expensive considering it is just a trial. On the other hand I have seen in the web macro-rings, but don't know how easy or dificult to use they are, how they work and, the most importat, how good or bad the results are.

Any one with experience with them, any general hint, any one willing to give away his/her nikon macro?

Cheers

Lens Hoods...

Lens hoods are good... they keep that straylight out of your lens and prevent something called 'flare', which is even more important to prevent if you permanently have a UV filter stuck on the end of your lens (we'll leave the filter or no filter debate for another time)...

If you lens comes with one already... great... make sure you use it... but with a lot of lenses nowadays its an optional extra... and often an expensive one... well.. lenshoods.co.uk comes to the rescue with free printable lenshoods which you can make out of paper or thin plastic... I'm certainly going to give it a try... I'll let you know how I get on...