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Forum: Lens Clubs
14 Hours Ago
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Forum: Lens Clubs
3 Days Ago
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The sky was intense this morning. I was up before sunrise and took some photos. I started with the Auto Sears/Sekor SX 55mm f1.8 that I just won on eBay for $8.50 (plus $8 shipping), but realized the scene needed a wider angle, so I changed to the Auto-Tak 35. This is the first shot that I processed, and perhaps the best one.
 A Wild Sky by William Bolton, on Flickr
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Forum: Lens Clubs
4 Days Ago
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Good separation of foreground and background here. You can sense the depth in the scene.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
4 Days Ago
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Thank you for the kind comment. I agree with you about the dimensionality that the lens renders. In fact I think I prefer it for close ups for that reason as well as the microcontrast in the center. Here's an old one taken in Cusco, Peru when I sampled the cuy (guinea pig), a delicacy in this part of the world: Cuy by William Bolton, on Flickr
My link disappeared and now is back.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
4 Days Ago
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I deleted the photos taken (accidentally) at f4.5 except for the one of the Volkswagon. Here's one taken at infinity and f11. The lens has two problems that I've noticed, chromatic aberration (not too drastic) that can be removed in Lightroom and some vignetting, even at f11, that I'm unable to remedy except by cropping. I did not crop this.  Down By the Riverside by William Bolton, on Flickr
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Forum: Lens Clubs
5 Days Ago
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I'll be very interested in your impressions of the lens.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
5 Days Ago
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Forum: Lens Clubs
5 Days Ago
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I always like the photos you take with yours, Paul. It is a fun lens.
---------- Post added 04-13-24 at 02:12 PM ----------
Great shots of these handsome little critters. There's one that comes to visit me here occasionally. They are actually fairly common here, but they're so small and so fast that you rarely notice them.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
5 Days Ago
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I went out this morning to re-photograph the scene I photographed earlier with the SMC Takumar 28 that I was unhappy with. I put the 20mm on the camera because it's one of my favorite lenses (that I rarely use) and I needed the extra width to get the shot. Unfortunately, I made the rookie mistake of not checking the Auto/Manual switch and only discovered later that most of the pictures taken, i.e. all those before I noticed it, were taken at f4.5. But the results were surprising wide-open bettering those of the 28 at f11. I'll post some in the next few days. In the meantime, this was the first shot of the day:  A Rally Bug by William Bolton, on Flickr
Oh, and I got a 7 element in 7 groups version of the Minolta MD 28 f2.8 lens today to replace the Tak 28.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-11-2024, 07:15 PM
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Good developing job here. I really like the tonality.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-08-2024, 06:37 PM
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I do look at the Pentaxforums lens reviews.I think the people generally give good reviews. I think they're interested in presenting a fair assessment of the lens in question. And I think they have more savvy than the point and push the button crowd. Besides there are often pictures posted taken with the lens and we know what a picture's worth. Pentaxforums and Dyxum are my main sources of information.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-08-2024, 01:39 PM
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I'm waiting for a sunny day to test some other 28s I have, a Macro Revuenon 28mm f2.8 made by Enna Munchen and an AF Sony FE 28mm f2. I'll be looking for rendering at infinity.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-07-2024, 07:03 PM
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Thanks, Paul, for your comments. When I took the first shot, the landscape, I was hoping to capture the crispness of the small sunlit area just above the right end of the house, a detailed, contrasty, colorful area that I could see and that was sort of balanced by the sunlit areas to the left. But that area was rendered as blurry and indistinct even at full resolution. (I was also hoping the sun would illuminate the corn and waited for quite some time but it never happened.) Maybe I'm expecting too much, too, but I don't think so. :-) Reading the reviews on Pentaxforums lens reviews, it seems I might be in a minority, but I'm not alone.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-07-2024, 03:55 PM
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In fairness, this was also shot today and is a good result I think. It was shot at f5.6.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-07-2024, 03:45 PM
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 Outside of Town by William Bolton, on Flickr
I said the other day that Takumars never fail to surprise in a good way. I spoke too soon. This is for me a disappointing lens. A lot of chromatic aberration and rendering at infinity is soft. It is capable of good results when photographing near objects but 28mm should be good for landscapes, too. I have two of these. I remember having the impression that one was better than the other and thinking the one with the higher serial number (819xxxx) would be better than the one with the lower one (458xxxx) I chose that one to put on the camera today. I should've tested beforehand because it's the other way around. But while it's better I don't know that it's significantly better. I'll have to test it. This was shot at f11 and infinity.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-04-2024, 10:38 AM
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Thank you. You're very kind. I never thought I would ever visit, let alone live in, South America, but from the time of high school geography, the only South American countries that interested me were the Andean nations of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. And here I am. Photography is a way to share, and I'm as interested in the gear as in the process as in the photos. There's lots of room for improvement, but it's a journey and certainly a fascinating one.
My real name is Bill. "Andrew_Oid" is a play on "android" (no doubt obvious to most) and was chosen for fun a decade or so ago. This and Flickr are the only social media I participate in. If you don't know it and want to see more pictures from my new home, William Bolton | Flickr . Thanks again.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-04-2024, 05:15 AM
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Takumars never fail to surprise (in a good way). It was late and the light was failing and I noticed a lone pigeon in the rain which was coming down cold and heavy. I decided to try and get a shot with the 55 to crop later, so I set the aperture to 5.6 and focused on the bird. This was the result (1920x1080):
This is a crop at full resolution:
The credit has to be shared with the camera, a Sony a7II, without whose focusing aids, I couldn't have gotten such a good result, but the lens is as important.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
04-01-2024, 06:35 PM
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Thanks for the encouragement!
---------- Post added 04-01-24 at 06:37 PM ----------
Have fun with it.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
03-31-2024, 06:05 PM
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I've been thinking for the past few days that I really should get an m42 Asahi Pentax camera to cheer up my collection of Takumar lenses. My affiliation with Pentax began with Spotmatic cameras back in the seventies, but when I began shooting with digital I sold all my analog cameras. So I went looking and most of the cameras offered online seemed to be a bit rough, with a few exceptions. One of the exceptions was a "near mint" SV camera with the Super Takumar 55mm f1.8 from a Japanese dealer offered at a reasonable price and with free shipping. I didn't know anything about the early (pre-Spotmatic) cameras so I had to do some research. I was really surprised at how many very positive reviews of this all manual, meter-less camera there were. Owners, past and present, seemed to have a very strong bond to the device. Before I finished reading the first such review, I made the purchase. Now I'm eagerly awaiting its arrival. I don't know if there's anyone in South America who still develops film, but I have four rolls of Kodak Gold 400 in the freezer, and as they say, "where there's a will, there's a way".
This is that first review: https://casualphotophile.com/2016/06/29/pentax-sv-camera-review/ |
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Forum: Lens Clubs
03-30-2024, 06:04 PM
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Forum: Lens Clubs
03-26-2024, 07:23 PM
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Forum: Lens Clubs
03-07-2024, 12:15 PM
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Forum: Lens Clubs
02-25-2024, 08:42 AM
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I put the "new" 55 f2.2 auto-Tak on the camera today for a test. It will need to be compared to the other copy to see if it's better or worse. The lens was prone to flare when pointed in the direction of the rising sun even with a hood on.
 Auto-Tak 55 f2.2 lens test by William Bolton, on Flickr
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Forum: Lens Clubs
02-23-2024, 05:34 PM
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This is an unprocessed photo taken today with the auto-Tak 35 f3.5. Have you ever wondered what you were looking at? Look at the patterns in the mud/clay/whatever? They look like an impression. The picture shows an area about three or four feet across. The edge of the river is six or seven feet away. And the flecks? They glint with a gold color, but whether they're gold or pyrite I can't say.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
02-23-2024, 02:54 AM
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I did do a few test shots directly into the sun. The expectation is that with its single coating it would flare like crazy, but . . . The sensor can't capture the full dynamic range, so there's a fair amount of noise in the dark areas, but I can't fault the lens. I cropped the image a bit because of the vignetting in the upper corners. I'm wondering if the use of the Asahi UV filter that came with the lens might be partially responsible. It's not a "thin" filter. More testing is called for. Last night I swapped the filter for a thin one (and a hood), but haven't tested the setup yet.
I just found that the image of the hot sauce bottle was chosen for Explore on Flickr. It's a testament of course to the quality of a great lens.
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