[tuco]

Good advice. I gotta do it, but winter here in northern Ohio has been too drab to encourage much in the way of photography. Somtimes two or three days passes before I take any shots, waiting for spring gardening.

If you don't have a scanner maybe try DSLR scanning. I'm sure you already have old slides or negatives you'd like to digitize. That would be good practice to get that part of the workflow working.

[tuco]

Last year I picked up a Takumar 600/4. Apart from testing it with a roll in my backyard, here is trying it out for the first time last Fall.

Pentax 67, Tak 600/4, 400H

[barondla]

Last year I picked up a Takumar 600/4. Apart from testing it with a roll in my backyard, here is trying it out for the first time last Fall.

Pentax 67, Tak 600/4, 400H

I've always wondered about the image quality of such a fast old telephoto lens. This image looks fantastic. Lens doesn't appear plagued by ca. You must have an incredible tripod to hold this combo steady? Have you ever hooked it to a K-1 or 645D/Z? Just wondering how it performs with digital?
Thanks,
barondla

[gofour3]

Last year I picked up a Takumar 600/4. Apart from testing it with a roll in my backyard, here is trying it out for the first time last Fall.

Pentax 67, Tak 600/4, 400H

That turned out well, nice work with the old beast!

Phil.

[rdenney]

Kennecott, Alaska, 2018. 645z, DFA 55, f/11 at 1/200.

Rick “inspired by Sculptormic” Denney

[tuco]

I've always wondered about the image quality of such a fast old telephoto lens. This image looks fantastic. Lens doesn't appear plagued by ca. You must have an incredible tripod to hold this combo steady? Have you ever hooked it to a K-1 or 645D/Z? Just wondering how it performs with digital?
Thanks,
barondla

Thanks. I haven't tried it on a K-mount. Maybe this year I'll give it a try on a K-1. If I recall correctly, back when the 645D came out, someone reported it as being only satisfactory or something to that effect on that camera.

But film or digital, this is not a lens you want to carry around. My god, it is a beast. Too much in fact. I can see I'm not going to take pictures too far from the proximity of my car with this lens. I used a tripod and a monopod (camera body). For tracking that balloon it was inconvenient repositioning the monopod on the uneven ground. The balloon moved by time I got all that done.

The lens desperately needs a handle. It is a smooth, glossy lens that you have to hold coupled with both your arms like holding a baby while trying to use your third hand to get it on the tripod mount. It's prone to slipping out your arms and being dropped. I'm going to sew one up using nylon webbing and velcro. If you want this focal length on a D/Z, I'd say look for a smaller format lens just from the end use perspective.

That turned out well, nice work with the old beast!
Phil.

Thanks Phil.

[BorisKolo]

[Bonner04]

October 6, 2019
FujiFilm GW690III, Fujinon 90mm f/3.5 EBC
Kodak T-Max 400
T-Max Developer 1:4 7 Minutes
Epson Perfection V550 Photo Scanner
Yellow Filter

[tuco]

More 600mm trials. This one is a little fuzzy. Nothing in the foreground is as sharp as the hot air balloon so in addition to heavy, dense atmosphere I suspect some camera shake.

Pentax 67, Tak 600/4, 400H, Tetenal

[rdenney]

I’m not seeing camera shake, but never underestimate what turbulence can do. The print size of this image (Kiev 60, 180mm Zeiss Jena Sonnar, Bogen 3051) is limited because of turbulence. And more’s the pity.

Aquarius Plateau with Rainbow, Utah, 2001. Kiev’s 60, CZJ 180/2.8, well stopped down, Fuji Reala (ISO 100), scanned in, I recall, a Minolta Multi film scanner (1128 spi). The turbulence was a bigger problem after scanning again at much higher resolution in my Nikon 9000ED.

With the 645z, I’d have cranked up the ISO to get a much faster shutter speed, which helps with turbulence (and camera shake).

Rick “limited to about a 10” print” Denney

[RICHARD L.]

[tuco]

I’m not seeing camera shake, but never underestimate what turbulence can do. The print size of this image (Kiev 60, 180mm Zeiss Jena Sonnar, Bogen 3051) is limited because of turbulence. And more’s the pity.

Rick “limited to about a 10” print” Denney

I think you're right after looking at it again. I usually record some basic exposure with new gear but I didn't on this roll (too busy with the lens). And the problem of waiting this long to develop the film is I don't remember now. But I think it's also softer because of the wider aperture I used too.

So my HTTP client is complaining about some unofficial certificate where your images are hosted and doesn't display them. What's up with that?

[kaseki]

I’m not seeing camera shake, but never underestimate what turbulence can do. The print size of this image (Kiev 60, 180mm Zeiss Jena Sonnar, Bogen 3051) is limited because of turbulence. And more’s the pity.

Aquarius Plateau with Rainbow, Utah, 2001. Kiev’s 60, CZJ 180/2.8, well stopped down, Fuji Reala (ISO 100), scanned in, I recall, a Minolta Multi film scanner (1128 spi). The turbulence was a bigger problem after scanning again at much higher resolution in my Nikon 9000ED.

With the 645z, I’d have cranked up the ISO to get a much faster shutter speed, which helps with turbulence (and camera shake).

Rick “limited to about a 10” print” Denney

Rick is providing good advice here; turbulence limits optical performance over distances that can be as short as a 100m. The US (and Soviet) governments spent vast sums on measurement and mathematical characterization of atmospheric turbulence. Here are some take-aways that might help in planning.

• Turbulence intensity, measured by a parameter denoted Cn^2, is lowest around dawn and dusk.
• If much of the path is at a higher altitude than along the ground, the integrated effect along the path is lower than if the path is just above ground level. Ex. Rick's mesa shot.
• For a static camera and low cross wind, the power spectral density of the turbulence rolls off by 100 Hz, so shutter times of a few milliseconds or less generally "freeze" the atmosphere. More cross wind velocity and the PSD starts spreading toward higher frequencies.
• Root mean square directional distortions of 40 or more micro radians can be expected at longer ranges. This distorts the shape of distant objects. 8000 pixels across 18 degrees is of this order. Hence more magnified optics with tighter fields of view can easily be turbulence limited.
• Also, focus changes over paths passing through different parts of the optics. Astronomical telescopes with sodium line phase detection driving mirror element position and tilt correction may be the only optical scheme that can deal with this. Some computational effort commensurate with other post processing "improvements" could also help given multiple exposures. (By this I mean that instead of stitching together zones of a series of photos to create an image where focus is good from near to far, patches of images could be examined for best focus and stitched together. I don't know if LR or other post processing software can do this at the time of this writing.)
• As the father of this subject, V. I. Tatarskii, once mentioned at a presentation to the Massachusetts Optical Society, long ago and far away, sometimes the statistics of the turbulence allows it to briefly help such that the image in a small area improves. This might only be helpful if a series of images are taken without changing position. Eventually, the eagle's eye will have been in best focus in one of the exposures.

[barondla]

Rick is providing good advice here; turbulence limits optical performance over distances that can be as short as a 100m. The US (and Soviet) governments spent vast sums on measurement and mathematical characterization of atmospheric turbulence. Here are some take-aways that might help in planning.

• Turbulence intensity, measured by a parameter denoted Cn^2, is lowest around dawn and dusk.
• If much of the path is at a higher altitude than along the ground, the integrated effect along the path is lower than if the path is just above ground level. Ex. Rick's mesa shot.
• For a static camera and low cross wind, the power spectral density of the turbulence rolls off by 100 Hz, so shutter times of a few milliseconds or less generally "freeze" the atmosphere. More cross wind velocity and the PSD starts spreading toward higher frequencies.
• Root mean square directional distortions of 40 or more micro radians can be expected at longer ranges. This distorts the shape of distant objects. 8000 pixels across 18 degrees is of this order. Hence more magnified optics with tighter fields of view can easily be turbulence limited.
• Also, focus changes over paths passing through different parts of the optics. Astronomical telescopes with sodium line phase detection driving mirror element position and tilt correction may be the only optical scheme that can deal with this. Some computational effort commensurate with other post processing "improvements" could also help given multiple exposures. (By this I mean that instead of stitching together zones of a series of photos to create an image where focus is good from near to far, patches of images could be examined for best focus and stitched together. I don't know if LR or other post processing software can do this at the time of this writing.)
• As the father of this subject, V. I. Tatarskii, once mentioned at a presentation to the Massachusetts Optical Society, long ago and far away, sometimes the statistics of the turbulence allows it to briefly help such that the image in a small area improves. This might only be helpful if a series of images are taken without changing position. Eventually, the eagle's eye will have been in best focus in one of the exposures.

Fascinating information. Someday we will have computational image correction to defeat atmospheric turbulence. Makes sense. There are already many programs for focus stacking. Hope it happens soon.

Thanks for sharing,
barondla

[tuco]

In late Fall at this picture location, condensation will form on things pretty fast once the sun sets. That's how humid the air can get. I'm sure warmer and less humid conditions would be better. A 600mm on my 67 is about equivalent to a 300mm on small format. Is that a focal length prone to a lot of atmospheric disturbance, I wonder.