[danlam]

Hi all,

Currently I have a Soligor 1:2.8 28mm lens but it seems to be a hit and miss when I try to take landscape shots. I find it very hard to focus and most photos come out blurry.

Can anyone recommend a good wide angle lens for these older spotmatics?

Cheers

[chris667]

I would wonder if there was something wrong with the lens or the camera. Magazine tests are not like the real world; you should find any prime lens capable of good sharp photos if it is healthy.

[Wild Mark]

I would try a hood if you have not already. Also, UV filter too. Perhaps a polarising filter???

Lastly, Soligor is not the 'best' brand, so, you may be suffering from that legacy too. Coatings on the lens elements will be a big factor in contrast (hence apparent sharpness) so going for Takumar SMC coating will do you good.

[Dartmoor Dave]

On a Spottie I'd go for a Takumar every time (on a DSLR I go for a Takumar most times too).

The 28mm/3.5 can be picked up quite cheaply and will give great landscape results stopped down. The 24mm/3.5 is more expensive but gives you a usefully wider field of view, but also needs stopping down for landscapes. The 20mm/4.5 costs a whole lot more and needs stopping all the way down on film to get sharp corners, but it gives a massive field of view and beautiful rendering.

Don't worry about the recommendation to stop well down for landscapes. Any lens of the screw mount era will need the same thing.

[danlam]

I would try a hood if you have not already. Also, UV filter too. Perhaps a polarising filter???

Lastly, Soligor is not the 'best' brand, so, you may be suffering from that legacy too. Coatings on the lens elements will be a big factor in contrast (hence apparent sharpness) so going for Takumar SMC coating will do you good.

Cool thanks. Looks like a 28mm SMC Takumar would be the best bet- Finding a cheap one will be a challenge though.

---------- Post added 11-22-16 at 02:46 AM ----------

On a Spottie I'd go for a Takumar every time (on a DSLR I go for a Takumar most times too).

The 28mm/3.5 can be picked up quite cheaply and will give great landscape results stopped down. The 24mm/3.5 is more expensive but gives you a usefully wider field of view, but also needs stopping down for landscapes. The 20mm/4.5 costs a whole lot more and needs stopping all the way down on film to get sharp corners, but it gives a massive field of view and beautiful rendering.

Don't worry about the recommendation to stop well down for landscapes. Any lens of the screw mount era will need the same thing.

Hey thanks for the reply. I am quite new to photography, what do you mean by stopping down?

[Dartmoor Dave]

With the Spotmatic you've picked a great camera to start out with. Stopping down simply means using the lens at something like f/8 or f/11 for better sharpness, particularly in the corners, rather than "wide open" at f/3.5 or f/4.5 on the lenses I mentioned. Stopping down physically reduces the size of the aperture (the hole that lets light through to the film), so you need to use a longer exposure, which means a tripod is very useful for landscapes.

My best recommendation is to get hold of a good used book from the film era that will explain it all much better than I can. I learnt most of what I know from books by a guy called Michael Freeman.

[Lowell Goudge]

Can you scan some images and tell us what settings and shutter speed specifically you are using.

Also are you focusing wide open,M then stopping down, or trying to focus stopped down?

[danlam]

Hi Lowell,

I will post some images tomorrow - they are pretty horrific

[Lowell Goudge]

Hi Lowell,

I will post some images tomorrow - they are pretty horrific

Don't worry about what you post. You learn lessons much better out of failure than success

[dsmithhfx]

Hi all,

Currently I have a Soligor 1:2.8 28mm lens but it seems to be a hit and miss when I try to take landscape shots. I find it very hard to focus and most photos come out blurry.

Can anyone recommend a good wide angle lens for these older spotmatics?

Cheers

I recommend the Adaptall 24/2.5, probably my favourite lens with my Spotmatic.

[goatsNdonkey]

I look forward to seeing the pictures, because it could be that the problems are not with the lens necessarily--unless you have gotten much better results using a different lens taking pictures of similar subjects in similar lighting using similar camera and lens settings, and the same film.

Even if the lens has some issues, seeing what results you got could help us suggest ways of getting better pictures from it. Then also if it is a matter of learning more about using the camera and lens settings, spending money on a different lens could still give you the results something like you are seeing now. It could just be that you need to know more about what can go wrong in one or two kinds of situations to have better pictures.

[danlam]

Hi these are some pictures of the same scenery. Some of them are blurred and some are okayish.

[goatsNdonkey]

While you are learning, it will be a good idea to keep a record of the film speed (ASA or ISO setting), the lens, the shutter speed, the aperture setting, what you focused on in the image, and even whether it was windy and things in the scene were blowing around.

Pic 1 -- The focus seems sharpest on the black gable end of the building, where the writing is. Things closer look less in focus, things farther away look less in focus, this can be called shallow depth of field. Perhaps the lens aperture was at its widest setting (smallest number on the aperture scale), which you earlier said was 2.8. Setting the aperture to 4 or 5.6 or certainly 8 would improve the overall sharpness if the problem is the amount of depth of field.

Pic 2 -- This one might look different from the first one mainly because the clouds floating over changed the amount of light on different parts of the picture.

Pic 3 -- Nothing looks in sharp focus, so a few things could be the problem: the focus ring was accidentally moved so that nothing in the field of view was in proper focus, the photographer didn't hold the camera steady enough for the shutter speed being used, what the photographer was standing on moved, atmospheric mist was blowing in between the the photographer and the subject matter, the front of the lens got dirty or smudged..... If only the tree's had become blurry, that could be from wind.

These are my first guesses. Others' observations might be better. Do you know what film speed, shutter speed, aperture settings you were using for these pictures?

On the positive side, the exposure (brightness and contrast) of the first picture especially is decent. THAT isn't always easy for someone starting out with a film camera with manual settings!

[danlam]

While you are learning, it will be a good idea to keep a record of the film speed (ASA or ISO setting), the lens, the shutter speed, the aperture setting, what you focused on in the image, and even whether it was windy and things in the scene were blowing around.

Pic 1 -- The focus seems sharpest on the black gable end of the building, where the writing is. Things closer look less in focus, things farther away look less in focus, this can be called shallow depth of field. Perhaps the lens aperture was at its widest setting (smallest number on the aperture scale), which you earlier said was 2.8. Setting the aperture to 4 or 5.6 or certainly 8 would improve the overall sharpness if the problem is the amount of depth of field.

Pic 2 -- This one might look different from the first one mainly because the clouds floating over changed the amount of light on different parts of the picture.

Pic 3 -- Nothing looks in sharp focus, so a few things could be the problem: the focus ring was accidentally moved so that nothing in the field of view was in proper focus, the photographer didn't hold the camera steady enough for the shutter speed being used, what the photographer was standing on moved, atmospheric mist was blowing in between the the photographer and the subject matter, the front of the lens got dirty or smudged..... If only the tree's had become blurry, that could be from wind.

These are my first guesses. Others' observations might be better. Do you know what film speed, shutter speed, aperture settings you were using for these pictures?

On the positive side, the exposure (brightness and contrast) of the first picture especially is decent. THAT isn't always easy for someone starting out with a film camera with manual settings!

Thank you very much for your reply.

I know that these were:

*ISO 200 Film
*Not Taken with a Tripod
*I think Shutter Speeds were 500 and 250? I'v never gone any slower than those.

In terms of Aperture - I tend to set it to the most open so I can focus in and then set it down to which I think will suit the shutter speed? I don't know if that's a correct way of doing these things or if that makes sense.

[goatsNdonkey]

Thank you very much for your reply.

I know that these were:

*ISO 200 Film
*Not Taken with a Tripod
*I think Shutter Speeds were 500 and 250? I'v never gone any slower than those.

In terms of Aperture - I tend to set it to the most open so I can focus in and then set it down to which I think will suit the shutter speed? I don't know if that's a correct way of doing these things or if that makes sense.

Usually shutter speeds of 1/250th or 1/500th of a second would freeze effects of camera movement, especially with a short lens such as the one you are using. Some people would be successful handholding a 28mm at 1/30th second, 1/60th of faster should be fine if you aren't sure.

While wide-angle lenses seem to have more focal length than longer lenses, they will still have limited depth of field at their widest aperture, just like any lens. If you are taking a picture of a face, a pet, a flower blossom, shooting wide open lets you throw distracting things in the foreground or background out of focus so that the main subject stands out. But that's not normally the approach we want when taking a photography of a broad and sweeping landscape--unless there is something in the middle of that scene that deserves all of the attention.

If the aim is to have a clear view of the entire scene, then you need to use a smaller aperture setting, not necessarily the smallest (what is that on your lens 16? or 22?), but probably somewhere around 8 or even 11. When you stopped down from wide open, after focusing, you might not have gone to a small enough aperture to get the whole scene in focus. Find that aperture BEFORE setting the shutter speed. It might be that selecting the shutter speed before the aperture was a big part of what kept these pictures from being as sharp as they could have been,

As for focusing, since there's nothing very close to you in the scene, setting the focus on infinity (the symbol that looks like an 8 on its side) would probably be fine. If you want to combine things that are close and far, you need to learn about the hyperfocal setting, but that probably wouldn't be a factor in these pictures.