[yorik]

Love the light!

[Jacquot]

A few from the NY Botanical Garden, 31mm ltd.

[dunerunner]

A few from the NY Botanical Garden, 31mm ltd.

LIke that shadow!

[LeRolls]

A few from the NY Botanical Garden, 31mm ltd.

Yeah, I like that first shot too.

[arv]

Love the light!

Thanks! It was taken at the western coast of Kos island (Greece), and I painfully miss that place...


A.

[ivanvernon]

My photography is mostly flowers and landscape. This winter I have spent hours going back over photographs taken over the past three years. Something popped out to me in a very obvious manner. All my very best photos came from two lenses only--the Pentax-FA 77 mm f 1.8 and the Canon-FL 55mm f 1.2 (permanently converted to K-mount). Both stood well above any other lens in terms of naturalness of rendering, clarity and detail, bokeh, and 3-D effect. By 3-D I mean how the flower or front object stands out from the background. The two lenses are a little different, however, in ways that are difficult for me to describe, but I will try. The 77 is buttery smooth with artistic gradations from foreground to background, while the Canon-FL is less subtle, sharper to the point of painfulness in some instances. I often wind up using the Canon-FL 55 because my wife prefers the 77 limited, which she calls the magic lens, and she likes the automatic focussing feature, whereas I prefer manual focus for our kind of photography. If I were using music as the analogy to differentiate between these two lens, the 77 limited would be Mozart, smooth and beautiful, and the Canon-FL 55 would be Beethoven, sharp, penetrating, and more in your face. The Canon-FL is more like my Pentax-D FA 50mm f 2.8 macro, but with larger aperture and without automatic focussing and macro. Wondering if any of this makes any sense to anyone else. My knowledge of lenses and the language to describe them is not really adequate to the task of fully describing what I see, but I would be very interested in comments from others who may have experience with either or both of these lenses.

I am including four photos, two for each of the two lenses, and for anyone interested perhaps you might wish to look at all the photos and see if you can guess which is the 77 and which is the Canon 55 before checking EXIF data.

[Jacquot]

Thank you Dunerunner and LeRolls. I'm so happy I saw that tree and shadow. I think it was the best of the day.

[LeRolls]

FA77

[ntrao]

Winter lens assessment

FA77 is a winner.

[monochrome]

FA77/1.8 Limited. Handheld natural light. Increased shadows 35%





In the original file the pollen grains are visible as distinct, sharp dots. Having trouble loss of fidelity on uploads to Pbase and hotlinks to PF.

[ivanvernon]

FA77 is a winner.

Yes, that is generally what I think too, although looking only at photos from the Canon-FL 55 1.2, I would not find fault with them, only in a comparative sense with the 77.

[bpv_UW]

A friend's dog. FA 31

Great shot. You have a signature look to your images that I always recognize before I see who posted them - something about the toning, desaturation, and contrast. It really works.




Fa 77



Fa 77



Fa 31



-Brandon

[yorik]

Thank you, I appreciate the comment.

[LeRolls]

Had the week off so I've been a busy bee. So many pics to edit.

FA77 & FA43

[waterfall]

Excellent as always. Really like the FA43 shot with the young woman looking out from the beach to that wonderful light show. Perfect portrait as landscape!