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| 01-24-2018, 01:20 PM | #11461 |
 Originally posted by ivanvernon  I am happy to receive a competitively priced Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 120mm f 2.8, No. 5893785, complete with both caps but no hood. I have the zebra version, and I owned the 80mm Biometar MC. Apart from flare resistance, the best one should be the version you got. The earlier versions with leather ring that predate the CZJ zebras were assembled with more care and with tighter quality controls, according to connoisseurs. Can't say if it's true, but I really love the way they look. cheers Paolo | |
| 01-24-2018, 06:27 PM | #11463 |
| Originally posted by MikeyBugs95 I just got a SMC Pentax-A 50mm f1.4 in. Bought it for about $68. | |
| 01-24-2018, 06:33 PM | #11464 |
| 01-24-2018, 07:55 PM | #11465 |
| Last edited by timw4mail; 01-24-2018 at 08:13 PM. Reason: Uploading brighter image | |
| 01-24-2018, 08:36 PM | #11466 |
| 01-25-2018, 05:44 AM - 4 Likes | #11467 |
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Somewhat against common wisdom, I buckled and bought a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 Art at a very discounted price. It has a reputation for unreliable AF accuracy, poor border performance and significant CA in high contrast areas. Well, I must have been very lucky (or the firmware in my copy might be more recent?), as mine is spot on with the K-3's PDAF using centre-spot AF-S - no fine adjustment needed, it matches Live View focusing perfectly. And, in half-decent light or better, it focuses accurately every time. I've taken many test shots and I've yet to have a single miss. Border performance at wide apertures isn't great, though not unusable - and stopped down, it's pretty good. Centre performance is excellent, even wide open. Out of focus rendering is really lovely. As for CA, yes... there's some lateral CA resulting in green and magenta fringing in very high contrast areas, but I'm used to shooting some old, fast Soviet lenses that are far more challenging in this respect - so it's not a serious problem for me, and it's easily removed in post-processing. I bought the lens expecting to be a little underwhelmed, but prepared to accept the shortcomings in return for a fast, inexpensive lens at this focal length. So far, though, I'm really impressed with it  Attached photo cross-posted from "Cats" forum... taken at f/1.4...  Last edited by BigMackCam; 01-25-2018 at 05:49 AM. | |
| 01-25-2018, 07:01 AM - 1 Like | #11468 |
| Originally posted by BigMackCam Somewhat against common wisdom, I buckled and bought a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 Art at a very discounted price. It has a reputation for unreliable AF accuracy, poor border performance and significant CA in high contrast areas. Well, I must have been very lucky (or the firmware in my copy might be more recent?), as mine is spot on with the K-3's PDAF using centre-spot AF-S - no fine adjustment needed, it matches Live View focusing perfectly. And, in half-decent light or better, it focuses accurately every time. I've taken many test shots and I've yet to have a single miss. Border performance at wide apertures isn't great, though not unusable - and stopped down, it's pretty good. Centre performance is excellent, even wide open. Out of focus rendering is really lovely. As for CA, yes... there's some lateral CA resulting in green and magenta fringing in very high contrast areas, but I'm used to shooting some old, fast Soviet lenses that are far more challenging in this respect - so it's not a serious problem for me, and it's easily removed in post-processing. I bought the lens expecting to be a little underwhelmed, but prepared to accept the shortcomings in return for a fast, inexpensive lens at this focal length. So far, though, I'm really impressed with it Attached photo cross-posted from "Cats" forum... taken at f/1.4... | |
| 01-25-2018, 08:33 AM - 2 Likes | #11469 |
| Originally posted by BigMackCam Somewhat against common wisdom, I buckled and bought a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 Art at a very discounted price. It has a reputation for unreliable AF accuracy, poor border performance and significant CA in high contrast areas. Well, I must have been very lucky (or the firmware in my copy might be more recent?), as mine is spot on with the K-3's PDAF using centre-spot AF-S - no fine adjustment needed, it matches Live View focusing perfectly. And, in half-decent light or better, it focuses accurately every time. I've taken many test shots and I've yet to have a single miss. Border performance at wide apertures isn't great, though not unusable - and stopped down, it's pretty good. Centre performance is excellent, even wide open. Out of focus rendering is really lovely. As for CA, yes... there's some lateral CA resulting in green and magenta fringing in very high contrast areas, but I'm used to shooting some old, fast Soviet lenses that are far more challenging in this respect - so it's not a serious problem for me, and it's easily removed in post-processing. I bought the lens expecting to be a little underwhelmed, but prepared to accept the shortcomings in return for a fast, inexpensive lens at this focal length. So far, though, I'm really impressed with it Attached photo cross-posted from "Cats" forum... taken at f/1.4... First, the focus issues... I'm sure people have them but they have that with most new Sigma lenses. I had to adjust my K-S1 with a +4 and it works very well now. With the K10D I focus manually... which is a delight to do with that lens. At some point I'll get me the USB dock... Second, yes there is CA... but only in very demanding situations (at least with my copy) and it's nothing compared to other lenses, and easily fixable. The flip side of that is that since it's not over-corrected like other lenses, the bokeh is absolutely gorgeous! Much better (I think) than the much-celebrated and sought-after FF 35 1.4 Art that Sigma makes. The Sigma's bokeh is smooth as butter, no frog egg bokeh, nothing harsh, just delicious bokeh and the in-focus to out-of-focus transition is also beautiful. At f/5.6 the edges are sharp enough (for my uses even f4 is good enough) and they're very sharp by f/8. For an APS-C system, a good 30 to 35 1.4 lens is an absolute must, I think. I'm very, very glad Sigma makes this lens. Their design philosophy with this lens was different from their other lenses (correcting mostly through glass without any low dispersion elements to preserve excellent bokeh) and I'm very glad they did it. It has a more "classic" look to the pictures while still having pretty good coatings and color and contrast. I'm very happy with mine! | |
| 01-25-2018, 12:13 PM - 1 Like | #11470 |
| Originally posted by WPRESTO You didn't comment that the bokeh looks about as good as it gets. Originally posted by ChristianRock I've written before about how I think this lens is dismissed by some people but I celebrate the fact that it exists and that I own one... First, the focus issues... I'm sure people have them but they have that with most new Sigma lenses. I had to adjust my K-S1 with a +4 and it works very well now. With the K10D I focus manually... which is a delight to do with that lens. At some point I'll get me the USB dock... Second, yes there is CA... but only in very demanding situations (at least with my copy) and it's nothing compared to other lenses, and easily fixable. The flip side of that is that since it's not over-corrected like other lenses, the bokeh is absolutely gorgeous! Much better (I think) than the much-celebrated and sought-after FF 35 1.4 Art that Sigma makes. The Sigma's bokeh is smooth as butter, no frog egg bokeh, nothing harsh, just delicious bokeh and the in-focus to out-of-focus transition is also beautiful. At f/5.6 the edges are sharp enough (for my uses even f4 is good enough) and they're very sharp by f/8. For an APS-C system, a good 30 to 35 1.4 lens is an absolute must, I think. I'm very, very glad Sigma makes this lens. Their design philosophy with this lens was different from their other lenses (correcting mostly through glass without any low dispersion elements to preserve excellent bokeh) and I'm very glad they did it. It has a more "classic" look to the pictures while still having pretty good coatings and color and contrast. I'm very happy with mine!  The focus ring action is especially nice. I find a lot of modern AF lenses rather twitchy to focus because of the overly-light action and short throw, but the damping and resistance on this Sigma is superb. Your statement that images have a more "classic" look resonated with me. As I mentioned, I shoot a lot of older Soviet glass, and in terms of rendering this almost feels like a modern-day upgrade to those. I don't own the USB dock yet. I imagine I'll hold out for a while and see if I run into many problems first. If I do, then I'll pick one up too... but so far, it seems promising | |
| 01-25-2018, 04:15 PM - 3 Likes | #11471 |
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I have no idea why some stores drop their prices this much when they're clearing stock but I'm not complaining...  2€ each for the 32s & 64s, 25€ for the 128, 36€ for the 200 and 60€ for the SSD. I can use the 200GB card in my MP3-Player (which is full of flac files, a large chunk are 88.2-192kHz/24bit), not quite sure what I'll do with the rest yet. I'm sure someone will take them off my hands if I end up not needing some of them... The Toshiba cards seem to be pretty good for their price range, I unboxed one of the 64s to test it and 95/30 MB/s sequential read/write speed is quite decent. The 200GB Sandisk is quite impressive at 95/75 MB/s but the speed is probably going to drop after a couple GBs for heat reasons. EDIT: Yep, after a couple of GBs (of the first chunk, ~40GB with +20MB average file size) the write speed dropped to ~15MB/s. Copying all my music over from the current 128GB card will take a while... Last edited by Boris_Akunin; 01-25-2018 at 04:30 PM. | |
| 01-25-2018, 11:00 PM | #11472 |
| Originally posted by Boris_Akunin I have no idea why some stores drop their prices this much when they're clearing stock but I'm not complaining... Attachment 385075 2€ each for the 32s & 64s, 25€ for the 128, 36€ for the 200 and 60€ for the SSD. I can use the 200GB card in my MP3-Player (which is full of flac files, a large chunk are 88.2-192kHz/24bit), not quite sure what I'll do with the rest yet. I'm sure someone will take them off my hands if I end up not needing some of them... The Toshiba cards seem to be pretty good for their price range, I unboxed one of the 64s to test it and 95/30 MB/s sequential read/write speed is quite decent. The 200GB Sandisk is quite impressive at 95/75 MB/s but the speed is probably going to drop after a couple GBs for heat reasons. EDIT: Yep, after a couple of GBs (of the first chunk, ~40GB with +20MB average file size) the write speed dropped to ~15MB/s. Copying all my music over from the current 128GB card will take a while... | |
| 01-26-2018, 05:35 AM | #11473 |
| Originally posted by Boris_Akunin .... EDIT: Yep, after a couple of GBs (of the first chunk, ~40GB with +20MB average file size) the write speed dropped to ~15MB/s. Copying all my music over from the current 128GB card will take a while... | |
| 01-26-2018, 06:39 AM - 3 Likes | #11474 |
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Just received the KMZ Helios 44 2/58mm chrome (M39, 8 diaphragm blades), and the Pentax-A 4/200mm. I'm positively impressed by both. The early 44 differs enough from the 44-2 to justify its purchase. Maybe too much glow wide open, the 44-2 has a better balance between sharpness and uncorrected aberrations. The 200mm is, as expected, a very good lens. It goes against the tendency that saw the number of element decline from K to M/A series. In this case the Pentax-A has more elements than both the K and M version.It works in Auto, with a PTTL flash, and has a nice sliding hood. Tested it against an old 4-elements Komura 4.5/200mm shooting the moon surrounded by tree branches, and the Komura, poor thing, got crushed  In the meantime I found another very nice Komura 2.8/135mm with M42 UNI mount. From Japan, very cheap, seems to be in great condition, but what I really care for is the UNI mount. Finally I will be able to mount any compatible Komura lens on any Pentax DSLR camera!   Then I succumbed to my other recent craze: Altix mount objectives. Three separate purchases. The first is a very nice Primagon 4.5/35mm, in great aesthetic shape. It's a 4-elements wide angle with great bokeh and very old-style rendering. The second is a complete Altix-n putfit, with original accessories/boxes. The macro rings could be converted to ready-to-use NEX, Fuji or M4/3 adapters, to use all the (IMHO wonderful) lenses in Altix mount. I don't think there would be any collector interested, but many Ebayers would be happy to buy a well made adapter or use the part for a DIY project. The third is another Altix-n with another Trioplan 2.9/50mm I will probably convert at least one Trioplan to PK mount, and probably I'll do the same with the Primagon. I have already converted one (plus a little Tessar and a Telefogar), and I like so much these lenses, especially the Trioplan and Telefogar, that I'm willing to test two or three of them, keep the best, and eventually sell the others.        The more I play with very old lenses, the more I believe that while some are forgettable, others are simply invaluable! It has been a weekend of crazy bidding, cause there were many lenses on auction that were at the top of my "want list". I missed an 8-elements Super Takumar, a Zeiss Ultron (concave front lens) and a Zeiss Skoparex 3.4/35mm (all M42). Lost the auction, on all of them, with a rather small margin. The price of the Ultron 1.8/50mm was great (just 175 euros). I'm almost sure that if I had raised my bid to slightly higher level I would have lost anyway. Some people pay 400 and more! I'm curious if any of the three objectives has landed on this forum Also missed a very nice Samyang 20mm looking like new... in this case my max bid was very far from the winning one (80 euros ca.). EDIT: If anybody got curious about Altix lenses, here is why I like them. All the objectives in Altix mount have the kind of rendering that you can't find in any modern lens. Call them creatively defected The tiny 50mm Tessar is the sharpest, but all the others have a sufficient level of sharpness stopped down, and i like them very much wide open. The Trioplan is the most interesting, but the Primagon and the Telefogar 90mm can be actually used in certain conditions with full satisfaction (both are good for B&W with extended grayscale, or when bokeh is important). Conversion to M42/PK is rather easy but destructive, but it's possible to use the body of a battered Altix camera to build an adapter for micro 4/3, Sony E mount, or Fuji. Of all Altix lenses, only the rare Lydith can be found easily (and for cheap) in M42 mount. The Trioplan 50mm is also available in Exakta mount (problem with register), while the Telefogar and the Primagon 4.5/35mm are both expensive and difficult to find in M42. Finding them in Altix mount is the best option. cheers Paolo Last edited by cyberjunkie; 01-26-2018 at 07:06 AM. | |
| 01-26-2018, 06:54 AM | #11475 |
| Originally posted by Jonathan Mac Wow, that's dirt cheap. Are you sure they're genuine? I buy only 64gb cards these days and they're not available here for less than €24 each. I picked them up at the local branch - they had cleared them off the shelves because they're no longer stocking Toshiba cards and these stores don't exactly have a bargain bin - and performance is as expected, I don't think there's much to worry about. Originally posted by jeallen01 Had a 7-Day Shop (a sort-of UK-based supplier - it's based on the island of Jersey in the English Channel but just off the coast of France) branded USB 3.0 32GB flashdrive get warm and then very hot when I copied a lot of data to it - and then it just died! 7-Day Shop replaced it with another one, which did exactly the same thing - and so I asked firmly for a Kingston one as I didn't want another failure, and that's been OK. Especially among microSD cards and USB sticks, there seems to be a lot of crap out there even under reputable brand names (e.g. Lexar, they've been selling a lot of badly designed crap in recent years). The first test I do on all NAND-Flash after buying now is filling them to capacity in one go and seeing what happens. Last edited by Boris_Akunin; 01-26-2018 at 07:15 AM. | |
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