These are the first shots from our cats to make it onto my Flickr account, but from here on out it'll be filled with hundreds upon hundreds of photographs of cats sleeping, cats talking, cats being cute... aiiii! It's the beginning of the end!
Oh look! I'm even using them for lens tests.
I haven't shot with the
Vivitar 28mm lenses in a bit, likely because of the fairly recent purchase of the DA12-24. I needed to reassure myself that they are, in fact, incredibly nice, so what better than a few kitten portraits.
These were taken with the very nice k-mount manual focus lens marked K01 in the
Vivitar Bestiary.
All the photos were processed with same settings in ACR and Photoshop, following my usual workflow. No colour adjustments were made, but exposure was normalised and some (minimal) sharpening added. The square crop was taken to maximum size from original 4:3 frame. These are not strict lab test shots, but rather illustrative of how the lens would be used in the real world. I find that more useful.
Schweppes at f/2 
Wide open the lens is quite sharp -- witness that cute nose! The out-of-focus areas are certainly not distracting, even though fur details pose a challenge. Instead of nervous bokeh we have the "creamy smooth" effect everyone seems to be looking for.
Schweppes at f/2.8 
Stopped down one there is more detail (the paw at the bottom left, for example) but still lots of lovely bokeh. Schweppes closes here eyes in boredom: "Oh,
another photo... sigh..."
Schweppes at f/4 
Stopping down two means a good deal more DOF is apparent. Unfortunately for consistency, Schweppes nodded her head forward, but still one can see the blanket coming into focus in the foreground. At f/4 this lens renders enough detail for any work I would put it to.
(For those of you concerned, the poor kitten is going to the vet in an hour to see about that weepy eye.)
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