New Member Registered: August, 2023 Location: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Posts: 5 | Review Date: August 23, 2023 | Recommended | Price: $70.00
| Rating: 9 |
Pros: | very lightweight, rather sharp, works handheld with good light, smooth focus, small minimum distance | Cons: | manual focus, takes practise, shallow depth of field, bokeh is donut (this is taste) | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 7
Value: 9
Camera Used: Pentax K3
| | Got this lens used and thought it worth trying. Overall it's a keeper. What do I use it like:
- put the camera on "catch in focus" (use a straight metal adapter without paint for this to work)
- set ISO high enough to get at least 640's and better
- use shake reduction (if not on a tripod)
- use it in sunshine
- adjust automatic exposure down because images tend to be too bright.
The reason I gave handling a 7 is because it is manual. Other than that it handles fine with a smooth and fast focus. using "catch in focus" gives me better results than pure manual focus. In some conditions I switch it off though to be able to shoot faster or where the autofocus is disturbed by something.
For processing the photos I do the following in GIMP:
1) Adjust contrast and lighting (exposure, blackness)
2) Use G'mic-QT with "sharpen (deblur)". This filter is optimized for mirror lenses. Raise smoothness though to avoid artifacts. Do this on an extra layer.
3) On another copy of the pre-sharpened layer use normal sharpening with unsharp mask
I will not describe here, how to work with layers while sharpening, that would lead too far.
With this I get quite nice results even though it rarely will work for a 100% crop.
With the setup described I successfully shoot flying birds ;-)
I'll upload some pics for you to see. The stork is sharpened and un-sharpened for comparison. The lapwings are a 50% crop. | |