Lens Porn!

SLR Magic HyperPrime LM 50mm T0.95 @ Steve Huff

2012-01-24T14:50:00.003Z

Steve Huff has gotten his hands on a copy of the new SLR Magic 50mm T/0.95 Hyperprime and within hours of recieveing it he has already updated his website such is his excitement with this lens! His initital impression is that it's superior to the leica Noctilux in terms of build quality and sharpness, that's astonishing news, if this lens costs any less than the leica (not difficult!) then it will automatically be good value! www.stevehuffphoto.com/2012/01/23/world-exclusive-1st-look-slr-magic-hyperprime-lm-50mm-t0-95-for-leica-m-mount/

Olympus OM-D incoming!

2012-01-21T19:05:00.001Z

Olympus has begun a teaser campaign for it's upcoming OM-D camera that will become the range topper for their mirrorless cameras. There was a time when Olympus themselves hailed the E-400 series of SLRs as the new OM so I think that speaks volumes about the future of that product line!

Details remain somewhat sketchy but it seems the high end camera will have a 16mp sensor, a high resolution EVF and a magnesium body. It's also certain to be weather sealed following the recent release of the new weather sealed zoom lens. I'm sure it will be a beautiful thing and I hope the sensor can do the rest of the body justice, I used to have an E-420 and while the sensor wasn't so great the camera was very well made and a joy to operate, the finish and perception of quality blew away equivalent Nikon and Canon bodies at the time.

There is a leaked image of the camera over at 43 Rumours which doesn't give away too much but you can see the camera will have a large amount of external controls and retro design touches.

Apparently the camera will be announced officially announced on the 8th of febuary.

Kenko (Tokina) display cool little 400mm mirror lens at CES - PLEASE be good!!

2012-01-13T20:57:00.000Z

Kenko/Tokina displayed a new T-mount 400mm F/8 mirror lens at the 2012 international CES that looks very interesting! The aperture is pretty slow but this helps the lens to be very compact and from looking at photos of the lens attached to a camera it looks small even by mirror lens standards and could possibly be the smallest 400mm lens I've ever seen! Having a T-mount this lens will be adaptable to just about any camera you can think of but will it deliver anywhere like decent IQ?

It seems a lot of people relying on google translate have come to the incorrect conclusion that the T-mount to Micro 43 and T-mount to NEX adapters were the big story when obviously the lens is the big deal! Likewise the $200-250 price estimate applies to the lens and not just the adapter! There is no current release date although it looks like they are aiming to have it on the market some time this year.

I'm very interested by this lens so hopefully it will perform quite well optically but I wont get my hopes up, there are some great mirror lenses out there but not many!

Photo from DC.Watch

Sigma to announce two new lenses for Micro Four Thirds AND Sony NEX!

2012-01-09T20:24:00.005Z

Tomorrow Sigma will announce two new lenses for the Micro Four Thirds system and the Sony NEX system, these will be the first third party autofocus lenses available to users of M43 cameras.

There's a 19mm F/2.8 and a 30mm F/2.8, neither of them are particularly exciting in terms of specs but we can forgive that considering how unique they are for the time being, no doubt they are designs that were relatively cheap and easy to make but there's nothing to say they won't give stunning IQ and at least Sigma haven't gone for a really safe bet with a superzoom like Tamron have done with their debut NEX offering.

Sigma make some really fantastic lenses so while I agree these don't look earth shatteringly impressive I have confidence they will combine good value with strong image quality so I'll be looking forward to some reviews and samples!

Canon unleash the PowerShot G1 X on the world, the world doesn't flinch.

2012-01-09T19:53:00.004Z

Canon has announced the PowerShot G1 X (what is the obsession with "X" at the moment?) and I'm not sure how I feel about it and it seems a lot of you aren't sure either.

It is based around a sensor that is between micro 43 and APS-C in size and the body is a larger version of the design utilized by the most recent G series cameras. It has a fixed lens with a 28-112mm equivalent range (why not 24mm??) and the maximum aperture range varies between a respectable F/2.8 at the wide end a somewhat slow F/5.8 at the long end.

The camera has a basic optical viewfinder, not and EVF or hybrid which is a bit of a disappointment. I have also noticed that the lens doesn't have a filter thread and that you have to fit an adapter before you can use filters, the PowerShot Pro1 used a similar system and it seems Canon haven't learned from past mistakes because just like with the Pro1 you cannot use the filter adapter and the lens hood at the same time because they both use the same fitting to attach to the lens, there must have been a way around this problem!

I think Canon really should have gone for an interchangeable lens model, I'm sure one is in the works but everyone knows they sell well by now so there's no need to test the water with a fixed lens model, it would help if the fixed lens allowed for a very compact camera but it's actually significantly larger than the Panasonic GX1 with the new pancake zoom attached so where's the benefit of having a fixed lens?

I am certain it is a very good camera but the competition is so hot at the moment that this camera seems a little underwhelming, it will be a very good photographic tool for sure but coming from Canon it should be the best of the best and I don't feel like it is.

Bye Bye Number 5, Hello 5N

2012-01-05T22:00:00.000Z

I sold my NEX-5 so that I can upgrade to the new 5N, I was considering the 7 strongly but the increase in resolution seems to be negated by higher noise levels and the sensor doesn't have offset microlenses like the 5N, I have no idea why they have omitted this feature on the more expensive camera by they have and as a result the camera is less suitable for using many manual lenses.

The touch screen on the 5N is also more useful than I realised, you can use it to pull focus during video recording and it actually does a pretty smooth job of it, certainly good enough for the type of videos I would be interested in making. Talking of videos there's the clicking issue some 5N owners have experienced but as Sony has offered a free fix this doesn't bother me at all because there is a Sony service centre in my town so I can even drop it in to be modified if I get one that doesn't have a factory applied mod!

At first I thought the benefits of upgrading to a 5N were almost non existent but there's more than I realised such as:

The sensor is only slightly higher resolution but has significantly better noise performance and also somewhat better dynamic range. It is considered by some to be the best all round APS-C sensor made so far.
The burst rate has increased from an already impressive 7FPS to 10FPS
You can record 1080P video at 60FPS meaning you can convert it to 24FPS and get awesome slow motion video!
The screen is a touch screen and helps to overcome the lack of external controls and also allows new features such as touch activated automatic focus pulling.
The video mode uses a much better codec and is sharper with less compression artifacts.
The video mode now offers full 1080p instead of 1080i
The video mode can now be controlled manually.
The 5N has a higher ISO limit at 25,600
The battery life is supposedly improved significantly which is good news as this is a major issue with the NEX-5
Shutter lag is reduced significantly thanks to an electronic first curtain.
You can use the optional EVF which is the same as the one found in the NEX-7 and is probably the best EVF made so far.
The ISO range begins at 100 vs 200 so you can use faster lenses in daylight without bumping into the shutter speed limit as easily.
The sunset image profile gives the impression of 10bit colour gradation solving one of the biggest issues with video enabled still cameras.

Fuji X PRO 1 Leaked!

2012-01-05T19:41:00.003Z

Fuji's new interchangeable lens camera has been leaked by a French magazine ahead of it's official announcement next Monday and it looks very nice!

It very much appears to be the "X100 with interchangeable lenses" that people wanted exhibiting the same high build quality and retro design. There's a hybrid viewfinder again too which changes according to the lens fitted, I have no idea if it will work with zoom lenses or not.

The sensor is supposedly some kind of new technology that utilizes organic materials and will offer image quality that will rival or surpass full frame sensors, I wont hold my breath but if it's true then it's very impressive! One glimmer of hope is that there will be no anti aliasing filter because the sensor design makes one redundant, this is at least proof that the sensor is using interesting technology, whether or not it will deliver in the real world is another matter!

There will be three lenses initially, an 18mm f/2.0, 35mm f/1.4 and 60mm f/2.4 all of which feature the same hi9gh quality metal construction as the camera body.

We'll have to wait for the reviews to see how it performs but it certainly looks fantastic!

Review: Canon EF-S 55-250mm F/4-5.6 IS

2012-01-01T19:31:00.000Z

I purchased this lens based on hearing good things said about it, it seemed to offer a lot of ability for the price and was also very small and lightweight making it an ideal for travel or just when you don't want to be weighed down with a bag full of heavy lenses. On paper the lens offers a lot for the money but does it deliver in the real world?

Build quality, finish and operation:

It's not an L lens but it's better made than the kit lens and the 17-85mm lens and even the 17-55mm lens! It feels surprisingly solid with smooth actions and the finish has that mottled effect that Canon is using more often nowadays, it's a small touch but it goes a long way to making the lens look better and feel better in the hand. The zoom ring is nice and big and the lens actually has a decent focus ring too unlike the 18-55mm kit lens which is possibly the worst excuse for a focus ring ever! The lens has a plastic mount but it's a light lens so I have no reason to believe this will cause problems any time soon. For the price I cannot fault the build and finish at all.

The autofocus is pretty quiet for a non USM system and not particularly slow either but accuracy and consistency can be a major issue which I will go into later but I will point out right now that it is this lenses biggest Achilles heel.

The image stabilizer was a brand new design at the time this lens was released and was designed to be cheap to produce but also highly effective and it is certainly that! Canon claim a 4 stop advantage which I'm sure is quite possible if you have steady hands, I have very unsteady hands but I can certainly see a strong advantage with the system activated, another impressive quality for the price.

Image Quality:

Optically this lens is very impressive considering the price, it's unusual for cheap tele zooms to be sharp at the long end especially wide open but thanks to the inclusion a UD glass element this lens manages it and also adds an additional 50mm reach over comparable models, the lens is actually slightly sharper at 250mm than it is as 200mm! This lens is really commendably sharp at 250mm, the edges are somewhat softer at some focal lengths but not terrible, sometimes there appears to be uneven sharpness at the edges of the frame which could be down to the stabilizer rather than decentring but overall, considering the price of the lens the sharpness is nothing less than astounding, you'll struggle to find anything as sharp in this price range by any other manufacturer.

The colour this lens produces seems to be in line with most other Canon lenses and is vibrant and well saturated. Contrast is also pretty good although it fades very slightly towards the long end but it's easily restored with post processing.

The bokeh is another pleasant surprise with this lens, overall it's commendably smooth and when the lens is used wide open highlights tend to be rendered quite attractively. It's not perfect and the aperture is not rounded so out of focus highlights will look somewhat angular when the lens isn't wide open and if you encourage it you can get the lens to produce ugly bokeh but overall it's really quite decent all things considered.

The lens suffers from only very mild chromatic aberrations in the most extreme circumstances and for day to day use it's pretty much a non issue, how do they manage it all at such a cheap price? There has to be something bad right?

Well as it turns out there are a few negatives, which is reassuring because I need every justification I can get for owning the 70-300mm L!

Firstly the lens vignettes like a mofo! The corners are VERY dark indeed when the aperture is wide open which can be very noticeable in some shots, it's not always a big hindrance and at the longer focal lengths subjects tend to be somewhat centralized anyway so it can be a non issue but it's worth mentioning because it is very strong and very pronounced in unfavourable circumstances. Some people don't mind vignetting at all and think it adds to a photo, I tend to agree a lot of the time but I would prefer to just add the effect in photoshop and have a choice! With this lens you will have vignetting if you use it wide open whether you like it or not!

Another issue I have found is that sometimes the image doesn't have consistent sharpness on each side of the image and whilst this could be down to a centering issue it doesn't happen all the time and only seems to occur when the stabilizer is active which leads to my crazy theory! I think the image stabilizer may play a role here because at this price point especially it's entirely possible that the corrective element/s show somewhat higher resolution in their centres than their edges so the harder the stabilizer works the more of the non optimum area of glass will be in use which could result in lower resolution in some parts of the frame, this is more a crackpot theory than fact although edge sharpness does appear to be more consistent when the stabilizer is turned off and it is a fact that the true optical path is interfered with when the stabilizer is active so who knows!

Those two problems although notable are rarely serious enough to spoil what is generally a sharp and punchy lens, what really spoils the party is actually not an image quality issue but something that can prevent you accessing that image quality which is the autofocus!

This lens seems to have a mind of it's own when it comes to focusing, sometimes it's fine and other times I can struggle to get one sharp shot out of a burst of ten! It doesn't matter if you're using AI servo or single shot there just seems to be a lot of inconsistency, I've stood at Cardiff bay with the sun nearly down and achieved good focus lock on speedboats going flat out in both single shot and AI servo mode and then on other occasions something as slow paced as my wife walking towards me at the beach has resulted in the lens missing focus almost every time regardless of focus mode!

Obviously some of this is just down to price, when I failed to get good focus with fast jets at an airshow it was obvious that I was expecting too much from the lens but when you have to take two or three attempts to get a photo of a building locked on you know there's something amiss. It's a pity because the focusing is actually very quiet for non USM and isn't too slow either but in terms of accuracy it's just not very reliable.

It's doubly maddening because a lot of the time the lens will get it spot on and often I sit at the computer going through images and the consistency is great until you get to that one perfectly timed photo that you've been waiting to check out on the monitor since you took it and you realise that was exactly when the lens decided to miss focus! I suppose I may have a bad one but I have heard similar stories from others so who knows?

In overall IQ terms this lens is a fantastic performer for the price but be careful of the autofocus, digital memory is cheap so take a few attempts at each shot and your chances of one being in focus will rise sharply but sadly this doesn't help when you have only a brief opportunity to get the shot where you will just have to hope for the best! The lens gets it right a lot of the time but there's definitely a higher than average failure rate so watch out! I think a lot of the time people just write this lens off as being cheap and soft when they are just experiencing focusing issues.

100% crop taken wide open at 250mm

100% crop taken wide open at 180mm

100% crop taken wide open at 250mm

100% crop taken wide open at 250mm

Conclusion?:

This lens has some flaws, it vignettes badly and the autofocus can be unreliable but overall the combination of image quality and build quality and overall performance is exceptional, the fact that the lens is sharp at 250mm wide open on an 18mp sensor is truly impressive, I can't think of any autofocus tele lens with image stabilization that comes close to performing as well as this for the price, it's genuinely unrivalled and represents value for money at it's most extreme!

Review: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 USM L IS

2011-12-29T01:17:00.001Z

It was never my intention to purchase this lens originally, I was quite happy with my EF-S 55-250mm lens in all aspects apart from the focus in terms of both speed and accuracy which could be frustratingly unreliable for things such as airshows where you don't have the opportunity to have a few tries at a given subject. My plan was to buy the Canon 100-400mm to use for such occasions, the idea being that the autofocus is faster and works better in AI servo mode and of course the lens goes out to a much more powerful 400mm. So I would have the smaller, much more portable lens for carrying around and the larger professional lens for things such as airshows when using a tripod wouldn't be a hindrance, these two lenses in theory would cover all my autofocus needs comfortably!

It didn't work out quite that way though, primarily because it seems there are about two decent copies of the 100-400 in existence, I literally went through four copies of this lens before giving up and the best one I ever got was sharp at the bottom of the image and soft at the top, I think the quality control is appalling with these lenses, especially considering the price which I am not too proud to admit is the kind of money that takes me many years to save. When you're dealing with an amount of money that takes you that long to save you tend to get panicked and stressed easily when things go wrong and by copy number four I had endured just about all the stress I could take and gave up on the idea completely.

I was tempted by the Sigma 50-500mm OS but reviews seemed to give inconsistent opinions on sharpness and while the Sigma may be a bargain in the scheme of things I expect a lens to be sharp and to focus well when it costs upwards of £1000! There was also the Tamron 200-500mm but this was a similar story.

The only other option left was to make a sacrifice on the tele end so I narrowed it down to two options, any lens that ends at 300mm was going to be uncomfortably close to the 55-250mm so it would really need to offer the best image quality and thoroughly superior autofocus to be worth bothering with which narrowed it down to the new Tamron 70-300mm SP and the Canon 70-300mm L, I was reluctant to try the Canon because in some ways I would be paying the same as the 100-400mm would have cost for a lens that was essentially 50mm longer so I gave the Tamron a go but it just wasn't as good as I expected it to be, it was somewhat soft at 300mm so it really didn't seem to offer enough over the 55-250mm to be worth buying. Eventually I gave in and tried the Canon, it costs a colossal amount more than the 55-250mm and yet only gave 50mm more reach so it was a really tough decision to make and my fingers were firmly crossed that it would be worth it!

This lens divides opinion a lot and it isn't helped by the fact that the focal and aperture range have until now been very much associated with "consumer grade" lenses, nobody has ever attempted to make a top of the line professional something-300mm lens before but that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, it is a very useful focal range and providing the image quality is exceptional then even carrying such a huge price tag this lens could be a very powerful and versatile tool.

Build quality, finish and operation:

All I can say is WOW! This lens is built like a tank yet isn't as heavy or as huge as it looks in photos. The finish is superb with the usual Canon L textured finish over an all metal body which is also weather sealed. Having spent so much I was obviously eager to feel that my purchase had been justified but this really is the most tightly assembled and smooth Canon lens I have handled so far and easily outclasses the 100-400mm.

The autofocus is of the ring USM type and is blazingly fast, silent and offers full time manual focus so is everything I could hope for, so far the price is being justified!

The Image stabilizer is also very impressive and is Canons latest version offering up to a 4 extra f stops if you have steady hands and probably at least 2 stops if you have hands like mine which offer about as much stability as a bowl of jelly, once more the lens puts in a first rate performance!

Image Quality:

The good news continues when it comes to image quality too, it starts off blisteringly sharp at 70mm and stays that way all the way to 300mm, there may be tiny reduction in sharpness at 300mm but it's still absolutely pin sharp and offers resolution that has never been seen on such a lens before, the contrast is also superb all the way out to 300mm, the lens gives sharp, bright, colourful and punchy images at all apertures and all focal lengths, I have never felt the need to stop the lens down at any time! The lens produces only a negligible amount of chromatic aberrations throughout the zoom range which really helps to make images look super sharp. Furthermore, the lens appears to display absolutely no longitudinal chromatic aberrations (known as bokeh CA or bokeh fringing) at any aperture/focal length.

To top things off the lens even delivers very smooth and attractive bokeh including out of focus highlight discs that remain round thanks to the 8 curved aperture blades and suffer from no outlining effect.

I'm sure you get the idea by now but this lens is just a phenomenal performer at all settings and is easily the best zoom lens I have ever used and also comfortably beats many prime lenses. There is frequent discussion on the internet including the dpreview.com forum where it has been confirmed that this lens is as sharp as the Canon 70-200mm F/4 where the lenses overlap, the 70-200mm f/4 is considered by many to be the sharpest zoom lens ever made which I think says it all!

Conclusion?:

This lens is very expensive but it is absolutely fantastic in every aspect, the build quality is superb, the image quality is stunning and the focal range is versatile. While it may appear to be a consumer grade lens on steroids with a price to match the truth is that this is easily one of the finest zoom lenses Canon have ever made and I can say that without reservation! Yes it's expensive but it's sooooo worth it, this really is an exceptional lens in every way. The only thing that might make me give up this lens is the new version of the 100-400mm that is apparently waiting in the wings, it uses a conventional zoom action instead of the old fashioned push/pull "trombone" style mechanism and should be a far superior lens but it will have to be REALLY special for me to consider choosing it over the 70-300!

Review: Fujian 35mm F/1.7 C-Mount CCTV Lens

2011-12-18T19:45:00.004Z

This now famous lens is a very cheap and basic CCTV lens that can be bought for very little on ebay and with an adapter can be fitted to Micro 4/3 and Sony NEX cameras among others. It's unusual for a CCTV lens in that it casts an image large to cover the APS-C sensor in the Sony NEX although originally it was intended to work with much smaller sensors hence the "interesting" rendering around the edge of the frame.

The obvious appeal of this lens is a combination of the cheap price, the fast maximum aperture and the fact that even in a world where adapting manual focus lenses has become popular it's still something a bit different!

A highly modified version of this design is sold by SLR Magic and I once wrote a blog entry criticizing SLR Magic because like many I assumed the lens was simply plucked off the mass production line and sold at a huge mark up however after speaking to Andrew at SLR Magic it was explained to me that many changes are made to the lens both cosmetically and optically so whilst this lens and the SLR Magic version share the same ancestry the SLR Magic version is no doubt a superior lens all round so the results of this review do not apply to the SLR Magic lens.

How this lens compares to the SLR Magic version in terms of image quality I do not know but I think it's safe to assume that their version is somewhat superior and if you want to avoid the risks of poor quality control it might be a better choice, it also has a native mount fitted from the factory so you won't have to endure the hassle and even potential risks of buying an adapter. If this sounds appealing to you then I would suggest you buy their version. If, on the other hand you get a kick out of doing things as cheaply as possible you may be interested in buying the basic Fujian version but make sure you buy a decent C-mount adapter otherwise you may find you cannot focus to infinity or worse still the adapter could get stuck to your camera.

Build quality and finish:

Well it starts off well in as much as the lens is made from metal but it's not very well finished and the rubber grips for the focus and aperture rings are terrible. The focus ring is somewhat gritty and the aperture ring tends to stick if you turn it hard against the internal stop. If this was an expensive lens I would be disappointed but it's not an expensive lens by a long shot and when the price is put into consideration it's not that bad, the finish is poor but it's a fairly solid lump of metal so I'm not going to be too hard on it!

Image Quality:

Interesting is the operative word with this lens, you are initially greeted with a tiny circle of sharpness in the centre of the frame that just refuses to grow no matter how much you close the aperture! The sharp part gets sharper on stopping down but does not increase across the frame! There's a very extreme case of field curvature going on which tricks some people into thinking the lens cannot be focused on objects towards the edges of the frame when it can, it's just that the field curvature is so bad that you simply cannot have the centre and edge of the frame in the same plane of focus no matter what! Even when taking a photo of a brick wall you cannot have uniform sharpness across the frame at any aperture, this is related to the fact that the lens was only designed to give a flat plane of focus on sensors much much smaller than those in digital cameras.

Does this mean it's a bad lens to use? Not at all! I have an absolute wail of a time using this lens, it's so fun and quirky and the images are full of character, the colours are very saturated, fringing is surprisingly low all things considered and the bokeh is actually quite smooth apart from highlights which can look busy but I like the look a lot, it works great with out of focus city lights etc. The lack of sharpness across the frame can often give the impression of a lens with an even faster aperture and make the depth of field look really paper thin! This is probably one of the cheapest lenses I own but might very well be the most fun to use! I thought I would get bored of the quirkiness eventually but I still enjoy taking the lens out for a spin, it just seems to get the creative juices flowing!

All the pros and cons apply equally to making video as they do taking still photos.

Sample video:

Fujian 35mm F/1.7 CCTV Lens On Sony NEX-5 from David Joyce on Vimeo.

Conclusion?:

What this lens lacks in build quality and optical consistency it more than makes up for in terms of being fun and interesting to use, for the money it's an absolute blast and I can't help but recommend it! And if you want the same thing but with better quality then you know where you can get it!

Latest Panasonic GH2 hack unlocks mind blowing ISO 12,800 Video!

2011-12-17T21:29:00.000Z

Unless you've been living under a rock you'll no doubt be well aware of the fantastic work Vitaliy Kiselev has done unlocking features in both the Panasonic GH1 and GH2 and the latest version of his firmware for the GH2 has taken things one step further!

It was this article at EOSHD that bought the fact to my attention, the noise at iso 12,800 is obviously somewhat high but when combined with one of the high bitrate modes of the hack it is rendered like a fine film grain instead of being smudged by the high compression of the standard bitrate. The result while slightly gritty is very film like and amazingly attractive to watch, it also means that you can film under incredibly dark conditions!

The GH2 is a great camera on it's own but Vitaliy really turns it into something amazing, I never cease to be amazed at how far this little camera can be pushed! I can't imagine any of the expensive professional digital video cameras could give this kind of quality at ISO 12,800!

Just take a look at the amazing video! Credit to the talented Andrew Reid at EOSHD

Darkness Seeker from Andrew Reid on Vimeo.

Then Take a look at this video using the same hack by John Twigt shot in colour at ISO 10,000 with some mild noise reduction applied, it's iso 10,000!!!!!! Not 1000, 10,000!!! Amazing!

Gh2 Color footage 10.000 ASA ISO test from John Twigt @ Workstation.nl on Vimeo.

Sony NEX-7 on Ebay, How much will it go for?

2011-12-17T20:46:00.001Z

It looks like someone had the right idea for making a quick profit, an NEX-7 has shown up on ebay and only has a few hours to go now! The price is already over $2100!! How much will it finish for? I don't even want to guess, some people have a lot of money and not a lot of patience! Click here to view the auction! UPDATE: Found another one, also pricey! Click here.

Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 Di III VC for Sony NEX System Out Now?

2011-12-16T17:02:00.000Z

It's good to see Tamron putting their support behind the Sony NEX system and whilst they have gone for what is obviously the most commercially safe lens they could have released it's still good to see a third party company offer an autofocus lens for the system.

Obviously this lens will suffer from optical compromises due to it's design but the new 18-270mm lens Tamron have out is very acceptable considering the huge zoom range so providing this lens is a new design and not a variant of the existing SLR version then there's potential for it to offer surprising image quality, if it can combine some of the technology of the 18-270mm in a slightly less ambitious design there's no reason why it couldn't offer acceptable performance and best the overpriced Sony 18-200mm.

There is speculation that the Sony branded 18-200mm is made by Tamron anyway so this lens should offer at least equal IQ and hopefully will be significantly less expensive!

It's also a nice touch that the lens is offered in both black and silver finishes, something you could quite easily do too Sony!

Apparently the lens is available from this weekend in Japan so I look forward to seeing how it goes down!

Olympus announces the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 EZ lens to mixed feelings

2011-12-14T23:20:00.001Z

Today the financially uncomfortable Olympus announced an interesting weather sealed zoom lens that seems to be dividing opinion. The most interesting aspect is no doubt the weather sealing if only because it is now inevitable that a weather sealed body is somewhere on the horizon! Another interesting feature is the power zoom similar to what has been seen on Panasonic's "X" range of lenses, this is a very welcome feature or those who shoot video as the zooming should be very smooth. From reading the press blurb it also seems this feature can be deactivated and that full manual control of the zoom ring can be activated, if this is true it's good news! In keeping with the traditional abuse of the term, the lens is advertised as having "macro" functionality and with a maximum reproduction ratio of 0.72X it can hold it's head pretty high among the "macro lenses that aren't really macro" crowd! The final feature I like the sound of is what Olympus refer to as the L-Fn (Lens Function) button, this temporarily disables auto focus which is great for preventing the camera hunting for focus if the subject is momentarily blocked by a person or obstacle moving through the frame whilst recording video!

There is some bad news and it's somewhat significant, the maximum aperture at the tele end is somewhat pathetic! This isn't going to be a particularly cheap lens and I can't really think of any reason why it couldn't have been at least f/5.6! This is not only going to result in slower shutter speeds but also diminish the ability to use shallow depth of field to isolate the subject from it's surroundings which is a shame because on paper at least this lens gets so many other things right.

Overall the pros (Good zoom range with a very wide starting point, weather sealing, power zoom, non rotating front element and good "macro" performance) outweigh the cons (sloooow aperture at 100mm)

As long as the image quality is high then it could become a popular lens even with the F/6.3 curse. It could go either way at this point, we'll have to wait till the reviews are in!

It looks like the lens will be out in January and will cost $499.99 so expect a suitably exchange rate ignorant conversion into your native currency soon!

Review: Samyang 18-28mm F/4-4.5

2011-12-13T22:32:00.001Z

So, I'm sure some of you have seen this lens before, it was manufactured by Samyang and released under many different names, off the top of my head I can think of Phoenix, Vivitar, Sirius, Falcon, Cambron and in the case of the lens in this review, Centon!

This lens sparked some interest at the time of it's release because it was uncommon to find such a wide lens at an affordable price, and almost unheard of to find a zoom this wide at an affordable price. The lens has what I would consider a mixed reputation but I will be open minded because this lens was and still is an affordable option among manual focus lenses.

Build quality and finish:

This lens is pretty well put together, it's all metal and the finish isn't too bad although the inner lens tube suffers from a very slight wobble which brings the perception of quality down slightly. I would say for the money it's a pretty well made lens, in summary perhaps quality parts loosely assembled would be the best way to describe it. The lens has a72mm filter thread even though the front element is relatively small, this sudden trumpet like extension at the end of the lens basically form a built in hood which is a wise move on the lens designers part as you will discover in the next section!

Image Quality:

I only really tested this lens stopped down because even wide open the aperture is useless for any kind of shallow DOF effect and for landscape work there's no reason not to stop a lens down for optimum sharpness so my findings are based on using the lens between f/5.6 and f/8.

The good news is that the lens really delivers in the colour department, it's not often that the standard set of adjustments I apply to every image have to be tamed back but it was certainly the case with this lens, the colours are very vivid and appealing.

The sharpness of this lens is also respectable, both on micro 4/3 and APS-C sensors there is decent sharpness quite far into the edges as long is the lens is stepped down, I had heard this lens suffers from very poor edge performance but it honestly wasn't bad in my experience, this suggests that the lens only really shows it's flaws in this regard when used on a full frame camera.

Contrast was generally pretty good although it was effected by the flare resistance which can be pretty poor, if the sun or other light source is close to the frame but still outside then the resulting loss of contrast can be bought back with processing but if a strong light source is inside the frame you sometimes get an unsightly flare that can be time consuming if not impossible to remove. It doesn't always happen but when it does it's a real pain and can make attempting some shots pretty much impossible. It doesn't help matters that the flare itself is unattractive, it's not bold or even interesting to look at but rather indistinct and blotchy so it can't even be used as a creative effect, at least not in my experience.

The biggest problem with this lens which has an effect at all times is the distortion, it is severe especially at the widest setting and can be quite tricky to correct fully, this is the biggest weakness of the lens and can make landscape work quite difficult, especially when man made structures are involved.

Conclusion?:

Overall I think the lens puts in a decent performance when cost is factored in, the distortion is bad and flare can be a problem but the sharpness is decent and the colours are absolutely fantastic. It's by no means a high quality lens but for the price it costs there's little to compete with it in the manual focus arena. If you have a digital camera and already own a kit lens then I would probably avoid this lens as it would probably be a downgrade in some areas but if you're a manual focus nut or don't already own a kit lens then it's a cheap way to get wide!

NEX-7......Now I'm not so sure...

2011-12-13T00:53:00.002Z

I was really excited about the Sony NEX-7, it seemed to be the perfect camera for using legacy glass, lots of external controls, EVF, great body and what I hoped was going to be an excellent sensor but I can't help but feel the NEX-5N would be a better choice in some ways.

There's some differing of opinion about the NEX-7 sensor vs the NEX-5N sensor. The 5N has a cleaner chip, there's no doubting it but many are quick to argue that downscaling an image from the 7 to the size of a 5N yields similar noise performance but then what's the point of buying a camera with a 24mp chip? Obviously you can potentially make larger prints from an image from the 7 but 16mp should be enough for most people anyway, a 20x30 inch print from that chip would look fine as long as you didn't press your nose against it!

The other disappointment is that the offset microlenses on the NEX-5N sensor appear to be absent on the 7!

This feature is desirable because it goes some way to fixing the major problems when using wide angle lenses with short registration mounts such as rangefinder lenses. Because the rear of the lens is so close to the sensor the light rays hitting the edge are at a very oblique angle and this causes optical defects, offset microlenses account for this and cause the light rays to hit the photosites at a less oblique angle which improves resolution and reduces colour casts. This is the main thing that makes me no longer want this camera!

Obviously the 7 is better made than the 5N and has better external controls and is more sophisticated and has more features but it seems for someone who has an interest in using adapted lenses that the 5N is the better choice, it has the potential to deliver better image quality with legacy glass!

I have an NEX-5 and I want an NEX-5N but I cannot afford one for the foreseeable future! Babies are expensive so I guess I'll have to start saving!

I have considered adding some small ads to this site but let's be honest, I'm not exactly world famous and I think finding out my annual advertising commission is £5 would just be a depressing reflection of how little my blog gets seen!

SLR Magic Update: I was wrong!

2011-12-10T14:21:00.006Z

So in a previous entry I was somewhat sceptical and cynical about the company SLR Magic and accused them of selling cosmetically modified CCTV lenses at a huge profit when they could be had for much less by buying cheap ebay equivalents.

I have recently been in touch with product manager Andrew and I have to say he has opened my eyes to some of the mistakes I have made about criticizing the lenses, at first I was defensive and prepared for the typical generic responses but it turns out that Andrew is very much a lover of photography and speaks in great depth and with a passion that is rarely seen from company representatives nowadays.

The first good point was that while the 26mm "Toy Lens" and the 35mm F/1.7 do indeed originate from CCTV designs it is unfair to compare them to the dirt cheap Fujian versions in several areas. The most important is that the lenses are made to the specifications requested by SLR Magic, I have always been somewhat doubtful of these claims but I was shown a very stark comparison between the vignetting characteristics of the SLR Magic 35mm and the original Fujian CCTV version.

The 26mm lens is also unique in that is actually has a STRONGER swirly effect on the image periphery and again will give a different effect than the generic Fujian CCTV lens.

Although the real world differences might be subtle it remains a fact that these lenses have been tweaked both cosmetically and optically.

Another important factor is quality control, when you buy the cheap CCTV version of these lenses they are produced in enormous numbers and because they are not intended for photography the quality control is nowhere near as stringent, I am all too familiar with the process of going through a few copies of even expensive lenses to find a good one so this is something I should have put into consideration. SLR Magic have a very stringent quality control process, the lenses are made to much tighter tolerances and this improved consistency is passed on to the customer.

This factor also applies to the C-mount adapters on ebay, some are very poorly made and do not allow for infinity focus and even the expensive metabones C-mount to micro 4/3 adapter has been known to get stuck on camera bodies, none of this is an issue with SLR Magic as all mounts are made to very precise standards.

The choice is simple, you can buy the cheap versions from ebay and run the risk of all the associated problems or you can buy from SLR Magic and receive an item that has been built to take photos, has been subjected to very high quality checks and that has superior performance. A lot of people are very happy to pay slightly more to get a product that works first time, straight out of the box and a lot of people will be willing to take the associated risks and achieve a similar result for a lot less money, what you choose is up to you, I'm the kind of person who would generally go for the cheap CCTV versions but you certainly get a lot of assurance and extra quality for your money when you buy the SLR Magic toy lenses.

I was also wrong about the macro extension ring, VERY WRONG!! Firstly the tube is not C-mount but comes in Sony E Mount and Micro 4/3 mount meaning they can be used with any lens and not just the SLR Magic lenses but there is something else! The tube has a "zoom" ring and extends meaning that the magnification ratio can be altered without having to attach different sized rings! I literally couldn't have been more wrong about this product and I feel I owe an apology to SLR Magic for badly misrepresenting this item!

So what about the Noktor? The f/0.95 prime lens that has been accused of being a rehashed CCTV lens? Well it turns out this lens is available as a C-mount CCTV lens made by Senko but there's two problems:

1. It only costs slightly less than the Noktor, some claimed it was a $150 lens but this simply isn't true, $800-900 is closer to the going rate!

2. The lens will not screw into a C-mount adapter fully and will not achieve infinity focus, the SLR Magic lens is manufactured with a Micro 4/3 or Sony NEX mount already in place!

I think it also says a lot that the lens has been already been altered since SLR Magic acquired the Noktor brand, the design has already been altered from the original to provide increased contrast, more saturated colours and to fix the inaccurate focus scale. While the "toy" lenses may give real world results that aren't too far removed from their basic CCTV ancestors the Noktor displays much better results than the Senko and the relatively small difference in price is very much justified.

I would still be tempted to go for the Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.1as my first choice but there's no denying the lens is unique and is certainly more than just a CCTV lens with a different badge.

We also discussed the 12mm hyper prime lens, in my last entry about SLR Magic I mentioned that this lens was getting good reviews and I am still of the opinion that this is a major step up from anything SLR Magic has produced before both it terms of finish and image quality. It is the best lens they have produced to date by a considerable margin. Andrew assured me that the lens did not have a wide angle adapter bodged onto the front and I have to admit the performance the lens gives seems to back this up, a quick glance at the distortion test over at photozone.de shows a remarkably low distortion figure for such an optically ambitious lens design. Andrew explained that a lot of profit had been invested in this lens and that it was designed from scratch and not made from off the shelf parts. The lens was made in response to user suggestions from different photographic forums where SLR Magic asked users what kind of lens THEY wanted, I find this approach to product development very refreshing!

In conclusion, I have to admit I was somewhat wrong about the company in some ways and I found Andrew's passion and enthusiasm for the subject of photography to be very refreshing. Whilst it is true that some of the early lenses have origins in CCTV lenses they are very much built for the purpose of taking photos and have been optimized and built to a higher standard. While I would personally be inclined to purchase the cheaper CCTV versions there is no doubting that the extra money buys you extra quality and piece of mind.

SLR Magic invest their profits heavily into R&D and the results are products like the 12mm HyperPrime lens which is truly a unique product designed from scratch and which offers genuinely impressive image quality, there is no cheap CCTV version of this lens in existence because it is a purpose built original product.

Only yesterday SLR Magic announced their latest product, a 23mm F/1.7 lens for the Sony NEX system, I never thought in a million years that I would say this but if the lens is as impressive as the 12mm HyperPrime I may well be investing in one!

It's a bit embarrassing to realise how wrong I have been about so many things but I feel I have an obligation to set the record straight so this is why I have made this post.

SLR Magic are a unique company and are run by people who have a passion for all things photography and they are beginning to release some very interesting and high quality products onto the market!

While there may not be huge difference between the SLR Magic lenses and their CCTV ancestors in terms of real world results it is very wrong to just assume they are the exact same lenses as you can get on ebay for next to nothing because they are not, weather the difference in price is worth it is open to debate but you certainly do get a substantially different product for your money.

I thought SLR Magic went against the spirit of adapting weird and wonderful lenses to modern cameras but with the Toy lenses they are just giving people a safe option with a higher level of quality and consistency and with the new 12mm and 23mm HyperPrimes they are offering truly unique products that you just wont find anywhere else!

2011-11-09T10:53:00.002Z

I have so far invoiced two companies for unauthorised use of my photos and yesterday one of them paid ₤250 and removed the photo! I have a feeling It won't be this easy every time!

Graduated Filters

2011-10-29T14:28:00.002+01:00

Although I have been using digital cameras since 2003 and undertook a college course in photography in 1999-2000 (which I failed miserably!) it's important to know that I am a ridiculously shy and awkward person and that until the past couple of years I have seldom braved to outside world to actually take photos. I have been making an effort to reverse this situation in the past couple of years and where I once might have gone out less than once a month I try to take photos at least once a week. I would say without hesitation that I have improved and learned more in the past two years than I have in all the years prior put together and I am still very much learning!

One situation I have only recently begun to look at is using graduated filters and multiple exposures to balance the sky and land in sunset scenes. Before now I have mostly just settled for well exposed skies and tried to find silhouettes in the foreground well aware that attempting to expose both simultaneously without the aid of additional equipment is an exercise in futility. As with most things in life once I made one serious attempt at using graduated filters I find I have quickly become very interested in perfecting the technique and while I am far from what I would consider to be accomplished I am still pleased by the results so far.

Currently I have a couple of Kood filters which are excellent value for money and the quality in my opinion matches or exceeds that of Cokin branded filters (which isn't saying much I'm sure some of you are thinking!) and I also have some cheaper brandless filters from ebay which much like the cheap CP-L filters I have talked about in the past actually perform pretty well as long as you keep things wide angle! I found with my Sigma and Canon wide zooms that resolution was unaffected up until around 50mm where a slight softness became apparent but the majority if not all of my landscape shots tend to be taken at 35mm or wider so it was not really an issue in the real world although I will most probably by a set of three Hitech filters soon as I am taking this more seriously and they are about as high quality as anyone would ever need but are still priced very reasonably.

Among the cheapo ebay filters there are some coloured grads which I am somewhat afraid to use because they are generally considered cheap and tacky but I find they are sometimes quite effective if used in the right circumstances, it helps to use them with sunsets where there is a lot of contrast in the lighting, I find the eye tends to believe what it is seeing more if you use them in a scene where we are used to seeing bright and vibrant colours in the sky, all too often on flickr I see people using them on a dull overcast day and the results are ridiculous whereas when they are used in more suitable circumstances they results are at least slightly more believable!

I will hold back on the coloured grad photos for now but here are some taken using the Kood and Ebay graduated ND filters stacked on top of each other:

Image Theft!!

2011-10-24T14:35:00.001+01:00

When it comes to sharing my photos I am pretty easy going, I mention on my flickr account that people are free to repost, reblog and share my photos as long as a link back and credit are provided which I think is pretty generous.

The following websites are all using my images without a linkback or credit and to make matters worse several of them are very large corporate websites!

Needless to say that once a body of evidence is gathered I shall be issuing some invoices and take down notices!

Tip: Metering for looooong night exposures!

2011-10-21T16:20:00.008+01:00

Most of us who have attempted night shots will no doubt have encountered that point where the camera refuses to meter for exposures longer than 30 seconds or so, you can easily shoot longer than this in bulb mode but the camera will no longer help in terms of metering. You can get around this with an external meter but this can be expensive. You can also use an exposure table but this will never be 100% in tune with the scene you are looking at so it can be unreliable but do not despair!

There is a very very simple workaround to calculate exposure times using the cameras built in meter!

With the camera set at ISO 100 the required exposure time quickly exceeds the maximum 30 seconds the camera is willing to offer but WHAT IF we set the camera to ISO 1600 or even 3200 or basically the highest standard ISO your camera will go to before you have to enable software expansion? Whatever shutter speed your camera gives at ISO 3200 for example you can just multiply by 32 and that's the exposure you need when you turn the ISO back down to 100!

So let's say you set your aperture to F/8 and the camera is set to ISO 3200 and the camera meter gives you an 18 second exposure, all you do now is turn the ISO down to 100 and multiply 18 by 32 and you will get 576 seconds.

Next you divide 576 by 60 and you get 9.6 which you round up to 10 minutes.

So to recap:

Set your camera to a high ISO
Get a meter reading
Multiply the reading by the ISO (reading x 32 for ISO 3200, reading x 16 for ISO 1600 etc)
Divide the number by 60 and then round up.

Obviously this only works if you intend to shoot at ISO 100, if you shoot at 200 then halve the exposure time and so on....

This also assumes that you have taken your meter reading already stopped down to your desired shooting aperture.

Slightly more advanced options:

The above method should be just fine for most people, if your camera only goes to ISO 1600 then you should still be able to calculate exposures of 7-8 minutes with the lens set to F/8 which should be enough to get a correct exposure with just the full moon as your light source but there are occasions when much longer exposures are desired or lighting is darker and you can push things further by taking the meter reading with the aperture of the lens opened up and then factoring that into the maths.

I'm not going to go into half stops etc but let's just say you should double the exposure time for each stop you will be closing the aperture so if you take a reading at F/4 and the camera gives 8 seconds and you want to shoot at F/8 then use 32 seconds as the start point for calculating the exposure!

There's also the matter of fine tuning, light meters are by their very nature intended to measure light so in environments where there isn't much of it they can struggle. My suggestion here is to take some test shots with the ISO turned up high, that way you can get a quick preview without having to do a full lengh low ISO exposure and you can then tweak the exposure as necessary, if you're camera suggested 8 seconds and you find 10 seconds gave a better result then use 10 seconds as the basis for your low ISO calculation!

Now grab your remote and go and try it out! All you need is a remote that can activate the bulb mode of your camera and a stop watch, you may well even have one built in to your phone!

Pentax Q and C-mount Lenses = A predictable disappointment!

2011-10-20T23:31:00.002+01:00

I did have my doubts about using adapted lenses on the new Pentax Q and they have just been confirmed by DC Watch.

Whilst the very small sensor promises full frame coverage with most C and D-mount lenses it's important to remember that the photosites on the sensor are incredibly tiny and most lenses simply cannot resolve enough detail to keep up. One combination in particular that had me salivating was the Q mated with the Pentax 8-48mm F/1.0 which would equate to a 46-267mm F/1.0 (in terms of light gathering) but it just isn't going to deliver any sort of usable image quality.

The camera does better with SLR lenses that tend to be capable of much higher resolutions so there is still some potential for interesting combinations, a 200mm F/2.8 would become an 1100mm which could have some interesting applications although even with SLR lenses I suspect only the very sharpest would be up to the job. If you're not interested in extreme telephoto then you're still best off using SLR lenses with 4/3 or larger sensors with all the associated benefits such as lower noise and shallower depth of field.

I would expect that modern megapixel CCTV lenses would perform somewhat better but they cost as much if not more as native Q lenses so what's the point? It's a shame really but I was expecting it to happen, there's just no way these old video lenses can deliver enough resolution to feed the tiny pixels in the Pentax Q It's still a cute camera and I know that the native lenses are very decent but it terms of using it for all those c and d-mount lenses that won't work on your 4/3 cam I'm afraid it's a no go!

Here's the link to the DC Watch article where they test several lenses all with disappointing results.

http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/review/special/20111020_484895.html

Tokina RMC 28mm F/2.8

2011-10-20T23:10:00.004+01:00

I've been updating more frequently but it's been a while since there has been a lens review so without further ado here is a review of the Tokina RMC 28mm F/2.8. In my last entry I was somewhat critical of the SLRmagic 28mm lens which costs £100 so let's see how this legacy lens does bearing in mind that if you're lucky you can drop a zero off the price of the SLRmagic lens!

Build quality and finish:

Perfect pretty much, it's not a Leica but it's solid, well damped and feels like it will never break, you can't really ask for more from a lens in this class. Tokina have always had a reputation for build quality which persists today with their modern AF lenses.

Image Quality:

The lens puts in a very decent performance with great central sharpness at F/2.8 which does fall off somewhat at the boarders but not too much. Once the lens is stopped down to F.5.6-F/8 there is impressive sharpness across the image frame. The lens gives very nice saturated colours and contrast is good and punchy as well. Bokeh whilst not the first thing on people's minds with such a lens is commendably smooth for such a lens and certainly doesn't spoil a picture when it rears it's head!

Conclusion?:

This is a great inexpensive lens that is well made and gives nice punchy images. If you shop around you can get it for very little money although they are starting to creep up in price. If you have trouble finding one then look out for rebranded versions of the same lens, the Mitsuki 28mm F/2.8 for example is the exact same lens except it has an auto/manual switch!

SLRmagic = How to get the same lenses for less.

2011-10-20T01:49:00.002+01:00

I'm sure a lot of Micro 43 and even some NEX users out there have caught on to not only using manual lenses but also using manual C-Mount lenses made for motion capture such as movie and TV lenses. Some of you will also be aware that many CCTV lenses can be used as well, specifically most lenses with a focal lengh over 25mm should give usable coverage on m43 cameras and many 35mm and longer lenses will even cover the APS-C size sensor in Sony NEX cameras. These lenses are rarely designed to cover sensors this large but are "over engineered" or at least project an image circle large enough even if the image quality becomes "interesting" towards the image boarders!

One of the main perks for me with using adapted lenses is the potential for a bargain and usually this is never more true than with using a CCTV lens however there is a company out there that appears to be selling very cheap CCTV lenses that have been lightly breathed on cosmetically and then sold for an immense mark up. Admittedly these lenses do give very unique and interesting results but it seems somehow unfair to charge such a huge premium for no reason.

This is NOT the SLRmagic toy lens!

The first example is the Fujian 24mm F/1.4 which is a very cheap CCTV lens that offers great low light ability, shallow depth of field and a nice swirly bokeh effect to backgrounds when the lens is used for portraits. It's not a high tech lens but it is very fun and can delivery surprisingly good results and certainly encourages creativity! I purchased this lens last year for under £20 and was delighted. Subsequently SLRmagic released a "26mm" lens with some decorative rubber bands, the result was the "toy lens" coming in at a grossly inflated £80! despite claims to the contrary, extensive examination and image analysis seems to indicate that the lens is optically identical and gives exactly the same results! It's up to SLRmagic what they charge for their products but I just wanted to point out that you can get the exact same lens for a lot less money! In fact you can now buy the same lens complete with rubber bands for £16.62 with free delivery! (you'll have to buy an adapter but it will cost less than £10) Which one would you choose?

SLRmagic: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Toy-Lens-26mm-f-1-4-lens-GF1-GF2-GH2-EP1-EP2-EPL1-/250752008080?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item3a61fbff90

Alternative: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/25mm-F1-4-CCTV-Lens-Set-Olympus-Micro-4-3-M4-3-Sony-NEX-E-Mount-/390354310005?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item5ae2ee1375

PS: SLRmagic also sell a version with an extension tube for an additional £60!!!!!! Yes that's right, £60 for a C-mount extension tube!

The next release from SLRmagic was the 35mm f/1.7 which can be yours for £102.48 or for ONLY £51.15 extra you can have that amazing extension tube that.....well it's just an extension tube, seems a bit steep really doesn't it? Despite their best efforts to disguise the lens with a new name ring and a splash of silver it was obvious to many that a seemingly identical lens made by, you guessed it, Fujian was already available at a greatly reduced price! Once again after extensive testing it was found that the cheaper version performed exactly the same and gave the same results and can be found for prices as low as £18.50 including shipping! A quick search of alibaba confirms that if you order a sufficient amount of these lenses from the manufacturer you can pay £3 or less a piece!

SLRmagic: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SLR-Magic-35mm-f-1-7-MC-lens-EP1-EP2-EPL1-GF1-G1-G2-/250673066577?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item3a5d477251

Alternative: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/35mm-f1-7-2-3-C-mount-CCTV-lens-Micro-4-3-M43-NEX-/350474061881?pt=UK_Lenses_Filters_Lenses&hash=item5199e1c839

Again, a tough choice I'm sure you'll agree!

Some of you might remember back at the beginning of the year that a company called Zhongyi Optics was on the verge of releasing a 28mm f/2.8 manual focus lens for m43 and NEX cameras. It was a simple but attractive lens with a cool rotating aperture mechanism instead of blades meaning that a round aperture could be used regardless of F stop. The lens was intended to go on sale for £50 but nothing came of it. Suddenly, a seemingly identical lens bearing the SLRmagic name has arrived on the scene costing £100 or even better you can have an extension tube for just an additional £60!

I'm sure I don't have to say this but for £160 you could buy a fantastic legacy 28mm lens, adapter and extension tube and have change to spare! The choices are endless with lenses from Olympus, Canon, Konica, Tamron and Tokina to name just a few! For £50 this lens would have been good value and interesting but again SLRmagic have spoiled the party!

There are more examples including the Noktor 50mm F/0.95 which sounds impressive but yet again, a seemingly similar CCTV lens is available for less money!

The latest endeavour from SLRmagic appears to be a CCTV lens with wide angle added to the front! Early reports suggest it is actually fairly good although I tend to be cautious of some reviewers who are all too eager to put their SEAL of approval on SLRmagic gear. You're thinking great!, they have made a fast 12mm lens with decent IQ and being derived from CCTV components it will offer fantastic value for money......well actually it's going to cost around £350.

UPDATE: The reviews are in and the lens is actually very good, kudos to SLRmagic for making a quality product, the build quality is high and the optical performance is impressive, they appear to have made a giant leap in quality and value with this lens, maybe they aren't so bad after all!

If I come across as bitter I apologise and I know companies exist to make profit but there's just something about SLRmagic that doesn't feel right. Maybe it's because they have turned something that was cheap and fun and fascinating into something that is overpriced and represents bad value for money. Some time in the past few years somebody tried these lenses and reported their findings online for all to see and if it wasn't for this nameless individual SLRmagic wouldn't have seen an opportunity to cash in and I think that goes against the very spirit of trying weird and wonderful lenses on modern cameras.

I never did know when to stop.

2011-10-18T12:55:00.002+01:00

I never did know when to stop., a photo by fatdeeman on Flickr.

I never did know when to stop.

That's the company director no less!

2011-10-14T15:00:00.001+01:00

That's the company director no less!, a photo by fatdeeman on Flickr.

That's the company director no less!

Some shots from a lovely sunset the other day plus one of our new baby!

2011-10-09T21:24:00.001+01:00

Heol-y-Cyw

Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

Sarn

Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

Sarn

Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

Seren And Mummy At The Beach

Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

Voigtlander APO-Lanthar 90mm f/3.5

2011-10-09T19:54:00.004+01:00

I recently purchased this lens having admired it from afar for quite some time! It's not particularly fast but the image quality is beautiful, the bokeh is buttery smooth and there's hardly any longitudinal chromatic aberrations (bokeh CA) I haven't used it enough for a review yet but I certainly like what I see so far, it's a great match for my Sony NEX-5.

Canon EF-S 17-55mm IS USM: Still not there!

2011-10-09T18:59:00.001+01:00

So how is copy number 5 of the Canon 17-55mm holding up? Don't ask.

Well I suppose I'll have to tell you because this is a blog! Well after some use I have realised this lens has a centering problem, it's not terrible but the very left hand of the image is noticeably softer when the centre is sharp and when the left hand is sharp the centre is soft, great. I really cannot believe how hard it is to get a good copy of this lens.
My options are the same as always:

Put up with it: It's not really bad but then again why should I have to deal with this issue on such an expensive lens?

Try another: Can I really go for a sixth copy in the quest for a good one? It feels like a step too far.

Try another brand: I've already been through a few copies of the Sigma 18-50mm EX, I still have a macro version now and it is much better at the wide end than the Canon but it just refuses to focus accurately beyond about 28mm which is infuriating because at the wide end it is absolutely fantastic from edge to edge! It also has warmer colours than the Canon and smoother bokeh! I could also try the newer Sigma 17-50mm with OS or the two variants of the Tamron 17-50mm!

I honestly believe that all of these lenses have great potential, I think when it boils down to it the one I decide to keep will be the first one that doesn't suffer from quality control issues!

2011-10-09T18:49:00.003+01:00

MV Arcadia

Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS

California Highway

Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

MV Arcadia

Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS

MV Arcadia

Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

Bristol Balloon Fiesta 2011

2011-10-08T23:50:00.005+01:00

These are my favourite images from the 2011 Bristol Balloon Fiesta, you can view the full Flickr set HERE

Bristol went well, 17-55mm No5 is FAIRLY good and oh something else happend too!

2011-09-01T23:03:00.005+01:00

Well it's been a wild ride since my last update! I apologise for the delay in updating but I will explain all later in this post!

As I mentioned before all my gear turned up in time for the Bristol balloon fiesta and the Canon 17-55mm IS, my FITH copy works better than the previous four although it still doesn't get the focus right every time! I have to be honest here and say that although it is a good lens it is no better optically than similar non IS offerings from Sigma and Tamron, naively I was expecting the poor quality control I have experienced with Sigma to be absent with the Canon but it's just as bad if not worse! I went through a few copies of the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 and they all produced better colours than the Canon and the newer macro version was sharper at the wide angle end and had better bokeh as well! The only issue I had with the Sigma versions was unreliable autofocus but after spending twice as much on the Canon I found the same problems so at the moment I'm considering using the Canon for the time being whilst either hunting for a macro copy of the Sigma 18-50mm that focuses well or even the new Sigma 17-50mm OS which is still cheaper than the Canon whilst being better built. I really thought that I wouldn't have to repeat the continual process of going through different copies of the same lens by sticking to Canon but that has turned out to be the case so why pay more when I could do the same with Sigma lenses for less money?

Another lens that arrived in time was the Samyang 8mm which performed very well, such a cheap lens and yet such consistent image quality over such a wide angle of view, obviously the lack of autofocus simplifies things but even so I was very impressed by this lens compared to the offerings from some companies I have used recently costing up to four times as much!

I got quite a lot of good photos at Bristol both for personal and business use and had a great time overall!

Now this is where the wild ride I mentioned comes into play! Just four days after returning from Bristol my wife suddenly went into labour some 5 weeks early and within 9 hours our baby daughter Seren had arrived! Although she came early she is in good health and both mother and child are now home safe and sound, to say it came as a shock is an understatement! It was also a relief that it didn't happen while we were at Bristol! Needless to say the past 2 weeks have been chaotic and my head has been a mush of various emotions, worries, joys and white noise! The pessimist in me tends to worry I will no longer have time for photos but the realist tells me that I will learn to be much more resourceful with my time plus of course there will be more family outings!

I will try my best to keep on updating this blog at the slightly more prolific rate that I have adopted recently even though I find myself often tired and with a brain often functioning at half it's normal speed!

My next update will be some photos from the balloon fiesta!

That's more like it!

2011-08-09T22:37:00.000+01:00

It seems I have had a change of luck! Today in the mail I got the following items:

1x replacement Canon EF-S 17-55mm IS

1x replacement Hoya Pro1D CPL

1x Samyang 8mm Fisheye

1x Transcend 16gb SDHC

I also received an email from ebay informing me I have been refunded in full for the Canon 70-300mm L that I was having trouble with!

Even more amazingly the Canon lens is the best copy out of the 5 I have had so far, focus still isn't perfect but it's the best I've tried, it gets it right a lot of the time and when it doesn't, recomposing the shot normally does the trick. At the very least it's better than no lens at all! Hopefully at least one day at Bristol balloon fiesta will result in some sunshine so I can really put the lens through it's paces!

The Samyang 8mm is quite remarkable, it's very sharp at f/5.6 and has excellent edge to edge consistency despite the incredible 180 degree angle of view! It's such a cheap lens in the scheme of things especially considering the ambitious optical design so I am very impressed that the quality control appears to be so good! It's not going to be a lens I can use every day and the novelty would quickly wear off but I get the feeling it will be well suited to taking photos of hot air balloons.

The Transcend is a great memory card and I already have one which has worked flawlessly for the past 8 months, they may be affordable but in my experience they are rock solid unlike Patriot and several other cheaper brands!

I'm still waiting for a spare battery but I will have access to mains electricity so I could probably cope in a worst case scenario, on the whole I am much better equipped for the trip to Bristol.

Now it just remains for either the weather or riots to ruin everything!

Get your shoes on NEX-5, this could be your chance to shine!

2011-08-05T23:37:00.003+01:00

I explained earlier that it's starting to look like I may not have a decent lens to put on my 60D when I go to the Bristol Balloon Fiesta next week so I have been giving thought to the fact that I may have to rely on my NEX-5 instead so this morning with the sun blazing I decided to make sure it was in fighting shape by taking a few photos of this old art deco cinema that is currently being torn down in my town. The building did not have listed protection and the owner wanted to build something new so unfortunately this is the result. There is some controversy over the circumstances of this happening, it has been stated that the building was not legible for listed protection because it has undergone too many alterations inside over the years however once demolition had begun it was clear to see that most if not all of the original interior was intact and original. There is a long tradition of knocking down historic buildings in Bridgend with the case of the highly attractive town hall being flattened to make way for offices being a notable example!

As sad as all this is, the photographer in me was attracted to the complex shapes and textures and with a clear and sunny morning sky these were only enhanced by the long shadows. Another benefit of the clear sky is the fantastic contrast between yellow and blue!

For these photos I used the 18-55mm kit lens that comes with the NEX-5. It's not a perfect lens, it has soft boarders at 18mm, it has field curvature at 55mm and can suffer from (easily correctable) chromatic aberration at the image boarders but despite all that it's not a bad little tool, centre sharpness is excellent at all apertures, colours and contrast are first rate and the image stabilization is great. The lens is very well made with a metal finish and the front element does not rotate. I tend to set this lens to f/5.6 and put a circular polariser on the front and this normally delivers very punchy and usable images.

The second image was shot using the "sweep panorama" feature built in to the NEX-5 which I find to be a very useful addition, it doesn't give extremely large images but for web use or moderately sized prints it can save a lot of time and effort by removing the need to use computer software to stitch the images, it has done an excellent job here apart from the stunted car that the eagle eyed amoung you may notice but otherwise I never fail to be impressed by this feature!

Losing the will to live!

2011-08-05T23:14:00.003+01:00

It really starting to look like I won't have a decent lens to put on my 60D for the Bristol balloon fiesta at this rate! In my previous post I explained that I was having trouble with trying to buy a few high quality lenses.

My fourth copy of the Canon EF-S 17-55mm got sent back last week as it had a front focusing issue, I have just been informed the lens is out of stock and I will have to wait for a replacement to arrive which means only a 50/50 chance of it arriving on time and even then there's no guarantee it will be a good copy but anything at all would be better than nothing, I could use contrast detect AF in liveview if necessary I just need the lens to turn up in the first place!

The second lens is an even worse story, I purchased the new 70-300mm L lens from a supposedly UK based ebay seller who appeared to have a good track record but it turned out the lens was in HONG KONG! But that turned out to be the least of my worries, the lens arrived and was faulty, the zoom ring was almost seized solid and the image noticeably soft. I informed the seller who provided me with a UK return address. I paid a high price for express delivery with insurance however the next day the tracking informed me the delivery had failed as the recipient was not at the address! I messaged the seller again and they replied saying their UK agent was "in the process of relocating" !!!! What a complete joke! They seller than asked me to WAIT until the lens was returned back to me and then pay to send the lens back to HONG KONG!!!! I just cannot believe the absolute incompetence! It's also worth noting that the seller paid for the original import duty themselves but deliberately under-declared the value of the lens by some £700 to reduce the costs! I also discovered that the sellers ebay name is just a facade and that the supplier is actually one of ebays largest Hong Kong based sellers! They have no actual presence in the UK apart from someone to accept returned items but they are in the process of moving house! The worst part is that they charged what would have been a competitive price for a UK product but I ended up with a Hong Kong sourced item at a price that was much greater than any of the legitimate sellers in Hong Kong who are up front about where the item is!

Needless to say I had run out of patience so I escalated the ebay case I had already opened, it was obvious trying to settle the matter directly with the seller was completely futile. I now have to wait 48 hours for ebay to make a decision, fortunately if the seller provides the UK return address I can already prove I have tried to send it back, if the seller provides a Hong Kong address I am under no obligation to return the item because the seller misrepresented it's location in the first place! I get the feeling the seller was fully aware of this and that they were trying to stall for time until they had a genuine UK address for me to send the lens to so they could avoid a situation where I was not obligated to return the item.

It has been nearly three weeks since I first purchased the lens and there is no way on earth I will have a replacement in time for Bristol next week and even if I get refunded I would probably not have sufficient time to buy a lens from a different seller and receive it in time! I will have to use the trusty 55-250mm which has great image quality but the focus isn't quite perfect especially with fast moving targets, this was less of an issue with the 350D where a slight misfocus was not as noticeable but with the 60D and all it's pixels hungry for high MTF levels it's a lot more noticeable, I took the lens to an airshow last month and the shots that were in focus were fantastic, the lens delivers simply amazing sharpness for it's price but more often than not the images were just slightly misfocused, this was the main reason for purchasing the 70-300mm L!

Those two were just the main hair pulling frustrations of the month! In addition I bought the excellent Samyang 8mm fisheye, I thought it would be a great lens to use with hot air balloons and the price is very reasonable so I went for it only to be told "we apologise but this lens is currently out of stock and will be dispatched direct from the supplier in Poland" and guess what? That's right it's now due to arrive AFTER I leave for Bristol!

I was also optimistic enough to buy a CPL filter for the as of yet non existent 17-55mm, a relatively expensive Hoya Pro1D to be exact, that arrived the day after I paid and you can't go wrong with filters can you? Well you can if they arrive sealed but once opened have dust, smudges and a scratch on them! I can't even image how that happened unless the filter was a retuned item they tried to palm off as a new one! Needless to say it was another return case with the replacement due to arrive the day BEFORE I leave for Bristol, I wonder if it will arrive? I wonder if I will even have a lens to put it on?

I'm starting to get the feeling I might just take my NEX-5 and kit lens at this rate, it's not a prefect lens but it always focuses accurately so I would at least be able to concentrate on taking photos and not worrying about technical problems!

I will update you on my situation as soon as I have anything new to add!

A general update

2011-08-02T23:35:00.002+01:00

As usual it has been a while since my last update! I'm going to make this a general update just to make up a post!

A few changes have gone on recently and I made the decision to offload a few cameras that it made no sense for me to keep any longer. I also wanted to save some money to buy some decent autofocus lenses. There is a child on the way and I wanted to get a few killer lenses to last me a long time because money will surely be going elsewhere in the near future! This sounds simple but in reality it has turned out to be very complicated!

I sold my beloved Canon PowerShot Pro1, I really have no need for a prosumer digicam, especially when it is no more compact than a mirrorless model with a smaller sensor. It was and still is a highly capable camera with a great lens but I just never use it anymore, it was just pointless keeping it any longer so I sold it on ebay where it fetched a surprisingly good amount of cash, that L badge is still unique among Canon compacts and it shows in the resale value which is incredibly high for such a dated camera, it made twice as much as my Olympus E-410 which I sold last year!

I also Sold my Panasonic G1! This camera was almost perfect for using manual lenses and the kit lens was about the best on the market too, the external controls were amazingly comprehensive, the EVF is still impressive and the overall handling is excellent but there was just no escaping the poor sensor performance which to be honest has put me off the idea of ever owning a m4/3 camera again. My former Olympus E-410 was a noisy camera but the G1 was something else! I often found RAW images taken at ISO100 became very noisy after a little PP, admittedly my RAW converter of choice CaptureOne tends to bring noise out in any file in the quest for amazing detail but to have so much noise at base iso was still a shock. To make matters worse, noise seemed to be worse when using legacy lenses, we all know micro 43 cameras perform in camera lens corrections even to RAW files but I soon discovered the level of noise was different when using the kit lens too, I found photos taken at iso 400 with the kit lens contained no more noise than photos taken with manual lenses at iso 100 but had as much detail even at identical exposure settings, quite why there should be a difference in noise handling depending on if a legacy or native lens is attached was a source of bafflement and frustration. The nail in the coffin for the G1 came in the form of an excellent offer I saw online for a Sony NEX-5, I knew the camera had less manual controls and no EVF but reviews pointed to a far superior sensor so I couldn't resist trying it out and I was no disappointed, the Sony handles noise just as well as my Canon DSLR which means I can dare to go above base ISO and still have relatively clean images to show for it. Just about everything about the G1 is better than the Sony except for the image quality which to me happens to be the most important thing so reluctantly I decided to let it go and keep the Sony. Now I need a camera that combines the features of the G1 and the image quality of the Sony, the NEX-7 has just been leaked and it appears to be that very camera! I just hope it doesn't cost too much!

So earlier I was saying how buying a few good lenses hadn't turned out to be as simple as I had hoped, the key phrase here seems to be quality control! I swear every time I try to buy a more expensive lens I get a cheap experience in regards to quality control! In the past few months I have been through four copies of the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 and am currently awaiting the fith! The first was de centred, the second had extremely soft edges, the third front focused at all focal lengths and the fourth which I have just returned focused fine at 17mm and 55mm but front focused severely at 28-40mm! I am currently waiting for my 5th copy! I have also tried the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 both macro and non macro and have had no more luck with those, excellent image quality when if focus but all of the three I have tried have had focus problems! I'm going to Bristol next week for the hot air balloon fiesta which is probably the highlight of my year in regards to taking photos and at the rate I'm going I won't even have a reliable walkaround zoom to take! To say I'm pulling my hair out is an understatement! I even bought a 17-85mm as a stop gap which focused absolutely perfectly but I should have read the reviews, I had no idea the corner sharpness was so poor at the wide end! I have two options at the moment, hope the next copy of the 17-55mm is a keeper or buy the 15-85mm which whilst having a slower aperture is apparently a match for sharpness whilst having a more versatile range!

The other lens I was looking for was a long zoom for airshow and nature photography, again I chose a lens and proceeded to go through four different copies before giving up, the lens in question was the Canon 100-400mm L, the closest I came to a keeper was pin sharp wide open at 400mm, but only on the bottom half of the image, the top half gradually degraded to mush as you got to the top of the image! In the end I decided to compromise on focal length and try the 70-300mm L but when that turned up the zoom ring was almost seized solid so that one is currently on the way back too, I'm dreading receiving the replacement because I have literally gotten to the point where I expect a dud copy every time. I also tried two copies of the Tamron 70-300mm SP but neither were as sharp as reviews led me to believe! I'm getting sick of sending lenses back to say the least!

The one lens I have purchased since my last update that was fine was a used Canon EF 85mm F/1.8, it focuses fast and accurately and is sharp at all apertures, if it wasn't for this lens I may well have thrown my camera gear off a bridge in a tied up sack this month!

Super Paragon 28mm F/2.8 (about £10 from ebay)

2011-04-20T22:34:00.000+01:00

I apologise for the lack of updates recently! This is for several reasons, firstly the news that I am to be a father for the first time has taken up a lot of my concentration recently but the main reason is simply that I haven't gotten around to it, I've started to write a new entry several times but as I always have about 25 browser windows open I have just haven't managed to finish it. It's not even that writing an entry is a hugely time consuming job, I'm just a disorganised person as much as I hate to admit it!

Anyway!

The Super Paragon 28mm is a wide angle prime lens manufactured by Cima Kogaku and was available under various names as well as Cima selling it under their own Cimko label. Paragon was a brand name that the British photographic importer Photax put on the lenses they sold, much in the same vein as Vivitar and Soligor and so on...

Build quality and finish:

This is a well built and sturdy feeling lens with a well damped focus action, the macro scale on the front barrel is a welcome little feature and the only other wide angle I have seen with the same feature is the Sigma mini-wide although the Sigma can only manage a 1:4.5 reproduction ratio vs the Paragon's 1:4

Image Quality:

The image quality is great for what must have been a relatively inexpensive lens at the time of it's release. Starting from wide open the centre sharpness is strong with the edges being less impressive but not terrible. From F/5.6 onwards sharpness is very good across the frame and I found that between F/5.6 and F/11 this lens is a match for the Tokina RMC 28mm F/2.8 and the Tamron adaptall 28mm F/2.5 which is pretty good going for a lens that can be had so cheaply. I found bokeh was quite smooth for a wide angle so using this lens as a standard lens on a four thirds camera works quite well. Colour and contrast left no room for complaint, the images always seemed to have plenty of punch and nice colours. I didn't notice any significant issues with regards to either lateral or longitudinal chromatic aberrations. Overall the lens gives nice punchy images, it's not going to embarrass a Zeiss or Canon L but considering how much it can be had for it's a pretty impressive little optic.

By clicking on these images you can go to flickr where a larger version is available:

Conclusion?:

I found this lens to be a great little performer which delivered very solid results and as is often the case I think it's an absolute steal considering it often sells for £15 or much less on ebay. If you see one going cheap then snap it up!

More from the Optomax 200mm F/3.5

2010-11-03T00:52:00.000Z

Here are some more shots taken with the Optomax 200mm F/3.5 that I reviewed here

Tokina SZ-X SD 28-105mm F/4-5.3 F4-5.3

2010-11-02T19:43:00.000Z

Because I was impressed by the overall performance of it's smaller brother I decided to try out the Tokina SZ-X SD 28-105mm F/4-5.3 to see if it could deliver a similar performance over a more versatile focal range (albeit with slightly slower maximum apertures)

Build quality and finish:

A similar story to the 28-70mm, this lens has a lot of metal and an overall solid feel. This lens is a push/pull design as opposed to the traditional 2 touch design of the smaller 28-70mm but otherwise has a very similar finish.

Image Quality:

And once again a similar story, very similar!. Wide open we have decent central resolution at the wide end and decent resolution across the frame at the long end. Stopped down to F8 produces razor sharp results ideal for landscapes. Because of the relatively slow maximum apertures bokeh is not a consideration all too often but when coaxed into producing it the lens shows a relatively smooth performance for an older zoom lens, one benefit of the slow apertures is that axial chromatic aberrations (sometimes referred to as bokeh CA) is extremely well controlled. That just leaves colour and contrast, both excellent across the aperture range!

By clicking on these images you can go to flickr where a larger version is available:

Conclusion?:

It has to be another recommendation, apart from low light work where the slow maximum apertures would be a disadvantage this is a great all rounder and puts in a decent optical performance, best of all people are practically giving them away, go and buy one!

Tokina 28-70mm f/3.5-4.5 SZ-X270 SD

2010-10-03T23:50:00.001+01:00

Build quality and finish:

There is nothing lacking here, the lens is mostly metal and has smooth focus and zoom rings. Overall construction is very good considering this was not a top of the line lens, the only possible criticism is that there is no internal focus mechanism so using a polarizer filter can be tricky as the front element rotates during focusing but this is not unusual for an older zoom, especially one that was modestly priced.

Image Quality:

In short; great! The lens has superb colours, almost too saturated sometimes! In terms of sharpness the centre of the frame is pretty good at 28mm wide open and stopped down to F/8 is sharp across the frame, just as sharp as most of my 28mm primes! Wide open at 70mm sharpness is already very decent across the frame and is superb at F/5.6. Contrast never seems to be lacking and even the bokeh is smooth in most situations although at 28mm with close backgrounds it can be understandably busy. Overall I was impressed by the results from this lens, it's best stopped down at the wide end which I tend to do with most lenses as I usually do landscape work at wide angles and at 70mm it's really very good wide open so can be useful for portraits. The lens has a macro mode and while it doesn't allow for a huge magnification it's worth noting that sharpness remains decent even at or near the minimum focusing distance.

By clicking on these images you can go to flickr where a larger version is available:

Conclusion?:

It's well made, light, has great image quality and a decent macro mode, the only thing I found lacking was a non rotating front element, this is another bargain lens that you can buy for a ridiculously small price and get great results from, I recommend it!

RE: Cheap polariser filters

2010-08-07T00:58:00.005+01:00

An update about cheap polarizer filters!

A while ago I wrote about some Sakar CPL filters that were bought cheaply from ebay and how well they performed however after some research I have discovered an issue that is worth mentioning.

It turns out these filters work perfectly well on lenses up till about 70mm in focal length, after that they will degrade picture quality because they are not uniformly flat enough and when placed in front of a lens will create a prism effect and distort light rays. The effect worsens with longer focal lengths and larger physical apertures (ie the actual size of the lens opening and not the aperture setting)

At first I thought it was just an issue related to the cheapness of the lenses and that by buying a more expensive filter I would be safe to use it on lenses with a longer focal length but after some research I discovered that even expensive filters can have very negative effects on long lenses, that is why a lot of super tele lenses have dedicated drop in filters at the rear of the lens, this smaller filter is a lot easier to make totally flat so it does not impact on image quality.

The problem is discussed in greater depth here:

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/evaluating_filter_quality/index.html

There is also a discussion here on the red movie making forum where a user has used VERY expensive Schneider filters and still experiences severe image degradation which he likens to smearing Vaseline over the lens:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39893&page=2

So to conclude this short entry, the cheapy ebay filters still work incredibly well for their price but I would advise not using them on lenses over 50mm to be safe, I have tried a Tian Ya CPL that was much better and worked till about 150mm so it really depends on which filter you get but I would say 50mm to be safe and anything more is a bonus, we are talking about £3 filters here! If you want to use a CPL on a longer lens then be prepared to dig deep into your pockets because it's not just the cheapy ebay ones that spoil the party on Tele lenses, no wonder there is such split opinion over filters and their effect on image quality!

On a side note, I have also used Green.L brand UV filters and have noticed no problem with these even on a 500mm lens so in my experience it's the polarizing filters that can be tricky!

Southerndown sunset, shot with an EOS 350D, a Sigma EX 18-50mm and a Sakar CPL!

Ebay nightmares: Canon EOS 350D and robsonic-fm

2010-07-01T11:12:00.000+01:00

My 350d gave up the ghost recently so I decided to buy another body.

This seller had a tidy one listed, "perfect working order with no issues" and so on so I bought it.

The camera turned up without a dust cap on the body, the lens mount stuffed full of bubble wrap, the viewfinder was caked in dust and dead bugs etc.

Worst of all the focus confirm lights were all misaligned so far that they didn't even hit the boxes in the viewfinder, they were all too far to the right. As a consequence the lights do not hit the little reflectors/etched areas and the lights are so dim you could hardly see them unless you turned the lights off!

I emailed the seller and he claimed this was normal for ANY used camera.

He said it was a regular issue with this particular model, even though he said "no issues" in the description.

When I demanded a refund he told me he had found another body that "works correctly" at which point I said if this is the case then you were lying by claiming the first body isn't faulty.

I sent the camera back but he did not refund my original postage, on top of the postage to send it back I was £18 down.

I left him negative feedback and he sent me a ridiculous threat about taking me to court (he must have heard that silly story in the news a few years back) he then sent me a request to change my feedback which I denied!

Then he sent a request to cancel the transaction, that option is supposed to be for when an item gets lost or damaged and cannot be sent, he stated to ebay that I had "changed my mind" he was obviously trying to get his selling fees back but seeing as he ripped me off I immediately cancelled his request. He then accused me of being a scam artist, I pointed out that to scam someone you need to make money from them, not buy faulty goods and not get all your money back.

He has now sold the camera to someone else even though he still possesses money I paid towards it. The new owner left positive feedback but I emailed them and told them the situation, they said they had not fully checked the camera over but now it seems they have realised it is faulty too!

In the meantime, someone else has bought a camera from this guy that was faulty and he has accused the buyer of damaging it himself and is refusing to refund him!

Basically this guy is dishonest, arrogant, hostile, unprofessional and very poorly informed in terms of legal matters and distance selling rules etc.

He tries to pass off physical damage and malfunction as "normal wear and tear"

AVOID THIS SELLER!

robsonic-fm

Named and shamed!

Kodak gear 78-215mm F/4.5-5.6

2010-05-03T11:04:00.002+01:00

In my last update I mentioned I had bought a Kodak Gear 78-215mm F/4.5-5.6 in Canon EOS mount for peanuts and that I was quite optimistic about it's capabilities considering it's price and I'm pleased to say I was right. This lens is essentially a re-badged Tamron that was also available under the Tiffen name. The true focal length is 80-210mm and the Kodak version can be had with both 80-210 and 78-215 written on the side but they both report as a 80-210 in EXIF information.

Build quality and finish:

The lens has a lot of plastic in it's build but is certainly well put together and even the manual focus ring, while small compared to days of old is still superior to most of Canon's own efforts in this price range and benefits from a rubber grip. The lens is very compact and light which makes it ideal for when you don't want to be weighed down by too much equipment. The lens even comes with a custom Kodak bag that has room for the lens plus one more and a few filters, a really nice touch and along with the lens hood exhibits how stingy Canon et all are with their lower end products, often making you pay extra for such accessories. The focus motor is a bit noisy but not too bad, you can't expect a silent motor in this price range. The focus action is acceptably swift but accuracy appears to become worse the further towards the long end of the zoom you go.

Image Quality:

This is where the lens shines for me, the colours it produces are very vivid and eye catching and contrast was strong regardless of aperture of focal length. The sharpness was good wide open up till about 135-150mm where it began to tail off slightly but by stopping down to F/8 bought the sharpness right back. You can actually get fairly sharp images wide open at full tele but the autofocus seems to be inaccurate enough to miss slightly most of the time, this may well be partly thanks to my 350D too but I found it safer to just stop down when at the long end. With a camera that has a better AF system the lens may perform better in terms of focusing at 210mm and if you had live view you could obviously tweak the focus manually.

By clicking on these images you can go to flickr where a larger version is available:

Conclusion?:

Overall this is another one of those bargain autofocus lenses that can be picked up for next to nothing and delivers surprisingly good results, I have better lenses but they cost many times as much and are also much heavier. These lenses crop up on eBay a few times a month and if you need a telephoto zoom on a budget or like me you just like a bargain I recommend giving it a try!

Bits and Bobs

2010-04-01T23:49:00.000+01:00

I was thinking the other day how I don't get around to making posts as often as I would like so in an effort to combat that I will begin making entries to document all the smaller photography goings on in my life that do not warrant an entire entry (at least not yet).

Recently I have purchased lots of bits and bobs from ebay (as usual) as well as two cameras! A new camera is quite a significant event to me so to have two new arrivals inside a month is an exciting thing indeed!

Some recent purchases have been:

Vivitar 200mm F/3.5: This lens is massive for what it is and is in a style I do not recognise it is mostly black with a large silver band towards the base, my initial tests show it is quite good but unfortunately the aperture mechanism has become disengaged somehow, typical! it survives 30 years then crumbles in my hands after 5 minutes! It should be easy enough to fix :)

A Kodak "gear" 78-215mm F/4.5-5.6 zoom lens in Canon EF mount: This is a re badge Tamron lens and is really an 80-210mm and is also sold under the Tiffen brand. I got this lens purely because it was dirt cheap and I was curious. The presentation of this lens is excellent, it comes complete with a well made a storage pouch/bag and actually has a better grip on the zoom ring than the Tamron version. Optically it seems quite good, I haven't tested it extensively but it seems to be a pretty decent performer considering how much it's worth.

50 bags of silica gel: These were just a bag of gel pouches like you get in packaging and new shoes, I bought them just to put into lens pouches and my camera bag and other places I store lenses just to keep moisture (and hopefully fungus and mould) at bay.

A knock off version of the Canon ES-62 lens hood for the 50mm F/1.8: This is really great quality and easily up to the standard of the official canon one at a fraction of the price, it even has the bayonet ring which you screw into the filter thread and then just twist the hood on and off, some cheaper ones just screw straight in and then you can't put the lens cap on again. I have bought a few copied lens hoods recently and they have all been excellent.

A Yashica ML zoom 42-75mm F/3.5-4.5: I got this for two reason, firstly it was cheap and secondly it is a less common focal length and I was curious. I haven't tried it yet.

A 10 piece Tian Ya graduated filter set: This is a cheap set of filters that are compatible with the Cokin P series and appear to offer substantial value for money. It was after reading this encouraging post that I decided to try them out and although I haven't used them a great deal yet they seem to be great for the money, you can't really used them for too many situations because they will make things look too unnatural but for intensifying sunsets and sun rises etc they should prove an interesting addition to the kit bag.

LOTS of lens caps: Just a bulk buy of front and rear caps for various lenses, they were a bargain and the front caps were all centre pinch which of course makes putting a lens cap on with a hood fitted much less infuriating!

A 3 axis hotshoe mounted spirit level: I am nearly as bad as holding a camera straight as I am holding it steady so this is a handy little accessory. I already had one but it was inferior and had a machining mark right across where the bubble sat so it was hard to read properly.

A Ricoh Rikenon 50mm F/2: I have bought and sold a few of these in the past and it's a great lens, very sharp and nice bokeh too, I got it because it was too cheap to pass up!

A Casio Exilim EX-Z77: Yes ok I got 3 cameras recently but this one doesn't really count as it was 99p and described as faulty. It turned out that just the battery was dud so I got another one for £2! Unfortunately it's not as good a performer as I had hoped, edge sharpness is poor through most of the focal range as is purple fringing control and the entire frame becomes noticeably soft through diffraction if the lens stops down and with no way of controlling it manually half of the shots comes out muddy looking. I wasn't expecting too much but I was hoping the lens might have been a bit more consistent, only the very best point and shoots are genuinely sharp at the pixel level but I was at least hoping I could get some decent A4 prints from it's 7 mega pixels (my 4 mega pixel Canon G3 manages that just fine) I'll probably put it back on ebay but I'll try cleaning the lens first just in case it makes a difference.

Miranda 28mm M42 lens: Dirt cheap, haven't tried it yet.

Vivitar 75-205mm F/3.8 2 touch: The one that's made by Kiron, been through a few of these and they are excellent for an older zoom. Unfortunately this lens has some oil stains inside which I may or may not be able to clean as zoom lenses are impossibly complex to disassemble. The seller is not interested because they claim to have been unaware of the problem at the time of sale, I tried to explain that a shop would not be able to shrug off responsibility that way but they were still unwilling to help so I left them a negative feedback, bollocks to em'!

A Samsung GX-1S DSLR: CHEAP! The first DSLR Samsung ever made, this was listed as faulty because the mode dial wasn't activating all the settings, I'm pretty sure I will be able to fix this as it's normally just dirt and/or corrosion on the contacts underneath the dial. The camera is in perfect shape otherwise and came complete with both the 18-50mm and 55-200mm kit lenses. I was impressed by the quality of the kit lenses, non rotating front elements and hoods with removable cut outs to make the use of rotating filters possible with the hood still attached, much better than Canon and Nikon kit lenses for quality of finish! The only gripe I have so far is that I can't open the raw files in capture one, it's annoying because the files are all but identical to the equivalent Pentax model so it must just be the headers that capture one is getting upset about, I read about a piece of software that can fix this but have been unable to track it down. I don't know if I'm going to keep this camera or fix it and sell it on for a profit but it's already growing on me, I'll post a review of it soon either way.

A Tamron 103a 80-210mm Adaptall lens: This was 99p, I already have one but I couldn't let it go at that price, it's a great lens, I'll review it at some point.

A Panasonic DMC-G1!!!! An EVIL (Electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens) camera! I have bought this to replace my Olympus E-410, using magnified live view is by far my preferred method of focusing manual lenses but trying to make out what's on the LCD in daylight is next to impossible. The Panasonic G1 has an electronic viewfinder and it's probably the best one ever fitted to a camera so now I can use live view even with the sun behind me! Other advantages over the (admittedly already versatile) E-410 are the ability to use pretty much any lens with the right adapter (Canon FD, Leica M39, C-mount, Olympus Pen, Pentax 110, Minolta MD, Deckel and so on and so on) and the excellent rotating rear LCD, how I have dreamt of an interchangeable lens camera with the same excellent feature of my trusty old Canon G3! Hopefully the camera has better noise control too, when you turn the detail killing noise filter off on the E-410 even ISO 100 shots have noise visible. Expect more about this camera soon!

An Olympus 4/3 to Micro 4/3 adapter: This will allow me to use all the adapters I have already invested in for the E-410

A C-mount to Micro 4/3 adapter: So I can try out all sorts of weird and wonderful Tv and Cine lenses!

A Canon FD to Micro 4/3: Because I already have a few FD lenses laying around.

A sun 28-80mm Macro zoom: Dirt cheap and I have a soft spot for Sun lenses, Haven't tried it yet.

A Canon conversion lens adapter LA-DC58C: This is for my Canon PowerShot Pro1 and allows filters and wide angle converters etc to be used and also has a tripod mount. I got it mainly because it only cost 99p!

A Canon Wide Converter WC-DC58N: This is for my Canon PowerShot G3 and takes the wide angle from 35mm to 24mm in 35mm equivalent terms. This was also bought mainly because it was very cheap and I always lusted after one when my G3 was new but could never afford it!

And finally a Kamasa 30 piece precision screwdriver set so I can stop mashing the screws of lenses up by using those cheapy pound shop "jewellers screwdrivers" hopefully I will be able to repair more lenses now instead of ruining the screws and rendering the lens un repairable.

Whew! that's about it I think! I'm currently waiting on my lens adapters for my new G1 and in the meantime will be selling my E-410 and a few lenses most probably. I shall no doubt post some more lens reviews etc soon!

The Canon 35-80mm F/4-5.6 III in not terrible shocker!

2010-03-20T17:26:00.001Z

Some lenses are just destined to be unpopular and this is a classic example. The problem starts not so much because of the actual deficiencies of the lens but because of snobbery. Time and time again we hear about people who have "all the gear but no idea" and how many times have we frequented forums where members have spent thousands on the kind of equipment and software we can only dream of only to post the most mediocre photos that could have been taken with a compact? These people are the worst for spreading false information, often commenting on equipment they have never owned purely out of snobbery.

Disclaimer of sorts:

Before I proceed I want to make it clear that this IS a less than stellar lens, it does have a low build quality, it does have distortion and chromatic aberrations but none of these factors account for why most people hate this lens, people hate this lens because it's CHEAP and people who have limited photographic skill but lots of money need to feel they are justified in spending thousands on lenses.

Any lens can capture a good photo, I honestly believe that. If you have a stunning sunset you can take a picture of it with your phone and it will still be a good photo, the subject is already there and will be the same no matter what medium is used to record the scene. The difference the equipment makes to me is in the actual image quality, you can watch a great movie on an old black and white TV set or on a brand new 1080p system and it will still be a great movie, the expensive equipment does however increase the viewing quality and in turn raises the overall enjoyment. So while the gear doesn't make the photo I do believe that there is a level of quality to which we must adhere to at least do a scene justice, the more expensive the equipment gets the more the law of diminishing returns comes into play but at a more affordable level there is a great leap between let's say a camera phone or cheap compact and an entry level DSLR with even a mediocre lens, in some cases you could pick up the DSLR for less than the phone/compact but even brand new an entry level DSLR and kit lens will not cost more than a few hundred pounds or dollars more than one of those ultra high pixel count cameras or camera phones. The DSLR will have much, much greater per pixel sharpness, better colour, better noise control by a ridiculous margin, almost incomparable features and functions and even with the cheapest of kit lenses will have a better lens with less optical flaws and improved sharpness and contrast. Now to make the equivalent upgrade over the entry level DSLR you would not have to spend a few hundred or even a few thousand, there is simply no DSLR/lens combo available that will improve upon an entry level DSLR as much as that DSLR improves upon a camera phone or a cheap compact.

The point I'm trying to make is that once you reach a certain level of image quality the returns of spending more money quickly become harder and harder to discern. There is a level of image quality that is nowadays affordable to reach by most people, any entry level DSLR and lens will will take photos that are almost immeasurably superior to a cheap compact or camera phone. There are a lot of people who own very expensive cameras and lenses yet don't have the technical skill or sheer photographic eye to make the most of entry level equipment let alone top of the line professional gear. There are people out there that would not be able to use a Canon 35-80mm F/3.5-5.6 III to it's full ability yet will passionately slate it and condemn it as "The worst lens canon ever made" having never touched one and having never taken a decent photo in their lives.

The purpose of this entry then is not to say that this lens is anything special because it's not but to say that it is vastly better than popular opinion would suggest, it's not a top performer and you WILL see a difference between this lens and let's say, a Canon 17-55mm F/2.8 but just try to remember that I bought the 35-80mm for about the same price as the hood for the 17-55mm costs! Let's say you picked up a second hand 350D body for £150 then you picked up a 35-80mm for £15, that £165 combo will shame any camera phone or cheap compact for image quality and functionality. But if you were to buy the aforementioned 17-55mm along with an EOS 7D to put it on would this £2200 combo shame the £165 350D/35-80mm in the same way? Of course not, it would be a considerably better but it would not be the same giant leap, the same monumental step forwards and it certainly would not represent the same value for money. It's hard to break the image quality down into measurable units but certainly the 350D/35-80mm would represent a better quality/pound ratio than the 7D/17-55mm.

So what is this lens if it is not great? It's simply good enough. It represents that first jump in image quality over basic imaging devices and a price/performance ratio that more expensive lenses will never reach. It will take decent shots, it will do most scenes justice, it will allow you to make decent A3 prints and it will deliver enough sharpness once stopped down to mid apertures to keep up with most digital sensors. It is a world away from a camera phone but only a city away from a Canon L lens. Obviously the aperture is slow and there is less scope for using the depth of field creatively but it is still immensely more useful in this respect than any compact will ever be purely because a compact camera is limited by it's tiny sensor.

Build Quality and finish:

This lens is actually kind of solid feeling in a strange way, it's very light and very basic in it's construction but it seems to at least be made out of hard plastic that wouldn't break easily, it's more substantial looking than the Canon 50mm F/1.8 which isn't saying much but might at least give you some idea. The finish is very basic and as with many entry level Canon lenses the focus ring is ridiculously small, it's almost like a vestigial structure such as the human appendix, it's a throwback that through disuse has shrunken to the point of being barely functional. The autofocus motor is quite noisy and the lens cannot always be trusted to get a focus lock first time every time, this may be just the lens or a combined effort between the lens and my 350D but either way I found it wise to take a copies of each shot where possible, making sure to half press the shutter in between to allow the lens to have another try at getting it right. The failure rate wasn't high but I would say maybe 2 out of every 10 shots could be mis focused so it was worth taking several shots to assure at least one was focused correctly, this issue was more prevalent at the tele photo end of the zoom. The lens features only 5 aperture blades so out of focus highlights will not be circular once the lens is stopped down and some people will hate this but personally I appreciate most types of bokeh be it silky smooth or bold and quirky so I didn't feel hard done by in this area. Overall the lens displays all the hallmarks of an object that was built to a tight budget because it was!

Image quality:

Even wide open the central sharpness is perfectly decent, corners inevitably become soft, more so at the telephoto end but even so we are talking about a lens that is worth about £15. Colour and contrast are totally fine in my eye, faithful to real life with maybe a slight bias towards magenta which gives a nice warmth to images. As for flare and colour fringing, this only occurred in challenging situations such as back lit tree branches and although unpleasant were relatively mild and easy to correct in software. Overall the lens is capable of taking punchy photos with usable sharpness wide open and once stopped down to F/8 sharpness that appeared to exceed the resolution of 8mp sensor inside my 350D. Considering the used value of this lens the quality is quite remarkable.

I'm going to provide a brief comparison between a Casio EX-Z77 (typical entry level compact) a Sigma 18-50mm F/2.8 EX DC (supremely sharp mid to upper range zoom) and the 35-80mm (dirt cheap piece of junk!) It was hard to get the same field of view with the Casio due to the different crop factor and lens focal length involved but I got it as close as I could, The Sigma and Canon lenses were both set to 35mm and F/8.

First of all some web sized shots:

Casio:

Canon:

Sigma:

Even at low resolution it's possible to see a lack of detail in the Casio photo compared to the others but in terms of colour and overall appearance the images are quite close, the Casio and Canon lenses have more of a magenta hint and the sigma is slightly more neutral, Note also that the sigma exhibits less slightly distortion, particularly visible at the bottom right of the frame

Now lets do some pixel peeping, first up some 100% crops from the Casio:

Now the Canon:

And finally the Sigma:

It's plain to see that the Casio image is very soft at the pixel level with noise reduction killing detail even at the base ISO setting, the sensor is 7mp but I would personally say there's only 4mp of information being recorded at most. The 350D/35-80mm combo is immediately more impressive with improved sharpness and detail and better contrast. The 350D/Sigma combo does provide a tiny amount more detail but not by much and by looking at the green fence in particular it appears that both the Canon and Sigma optics out resolve the 8mp sensor inside the camera. Overall then the the Canon lens completely outclasses the Casio compact and runs the Sigma very close, the difference being the Canon lens cost £15 and the Sigma lens cost me £370 when it was new, now I'm not saying the Canon lens is as good because it simply isn't, the Sigma is sharper, has less distortion and is less prone to colour fringing and flaring (compare the cladding around the chimney), not to mention that fact that the Canon lens cannot physically compete with the Sigma's faster aperture and superior build quality. All I'm trying to point out is that at F/8 they are very close and with a scene like this in particular I would always be shooting at F/8 even with the Sigma so whilst the Canon is somewhat inferior overall both lenses are capable of getting a decently sharp and colourful shot in at F/8, both lenses will do the job and produce a file that will print nicely at A3.

The following pictures are all clickable and will take you to my Flickr page where you will be able to view the full size images:

80mm F/5.6 (wide open):

35mm F/5 (half a stop from wide open, focus is on the TV aerial):

80mm F/5.6 (wide open):

35mm F/5.6:

None of them are prize winners obviously but they give you an idea of how the lens performs.

Conclusion?

Put basically the 35-80mm is a decent enough lens and an amazing one when it's value is taken into consideration, it receives universal scorn for being a bad lens but it seems very few people are willing to give it a try. I suppose to some people it would be pointless to even bother but to me it is interesting to use different lenses just for the sake of variety because all lenses have unique characteristics and never render a scene in quite the same way. I bought this lens to see just how bad it was and it turned out I was surprised by just how OK it was! If you see one for cheap then I recommended trying one out, take it somewhere you would normally use a more expensive lens and see how it does, make an effort to squeeze the most out of the equipment and challenge yourself and remember, if you don't like it you can always take out the front element and use it as a super macro lens capable of greater than 1:1 reproduction, but that's for another entry!

Edge Sharpness VS Field Curvature

2010-02-11T21:38:00.004Z

The other day I was pondering the peculiarities of my AF Sigma 10-20mm, the lens exhibits a significant "curvature of field" effect and despite the massive potential depth of field offered by the focal length it is possible to take shots where there is not uniform sharpness across the entire image, at first I thought this was a lens defect as there were many reports of these lenses being sold with elements that were de centred but after some testing I realised that I could take a succession of pictures with the lens wide open and re composing the focus each time and that each picture would have a different plane of focus despite common sense telling me everything from a few meters to infinity should be in focus no matter what.

A typical set of results would include a picture where only the extreme background or foreground is sharp, a picture where edges are soft and a picture where the entire scene is in sharp focus.

Obviously with an ideal lens if you focus on an object that is 3m away in the centre of the frame then any other object 3m away anywhere in the frame should be sharp too but some lenses seem to exhibit a distinct shift towards the edges of the frame either inward or outward.

I have noticed on a few lenses now (mostly wider focal lengths) that if I focus on the centre using the magnification mode of live view and then move the focus point to the edge of the frame that I have to readjust focus to get the picture sharp. It seems some lenses have a flatter field of focus than others and if you just take crops from the edge of a shot that was focused in the middle it will not always accurately display the potential edge sharpness of some lenses.

It is entirely possible to get uniform sharpness for most subjects even if a lens has field curvature but you have to account for this when focusing in order to avoid soft areas. There are 3 basic types of field when dealing with camera lenses, a flat field, a field that curves outwards at the edges and a field that curves inwards at the edges.

Out in the real world this issue is not as obvious or even as relevant because the circumstances in which it arises are not as commonly found but certainly under some conditions it can be noticeable. The kind of shot that most often shows up the problem is when people take "wall shots" or use test charts as part of a lens review to demonstrate both centre and edge sharpness. Some lenses that have a curved field can end up being sold short in terms of edge sharpness because people tend to always use the centre of the image to focus such pictures, now all that needs to happen is for the tester to focus from in front of the subject if a lens has an inward curving field or focus from behind the subject if the lens has an outward curving field and the corners could instantly be rendered soft giving the false impression that a lens has soft edges when it doesn't.

Note: When I say focusing from behind I mean starting off with the lens focused beyond the subject when you begin adjusting the focus ring and likewise when I say in front I mean you start off with the lens focused somewhere in from of the subject before you begin turning the focus ring. The following illustrations will show you that where the focus comes from has an effect on the sharpness across the image when using a lens that suffers from field curvature.

In these examples we are imagining our lens has a plane of focus that curves outwards at the edges away from the photographer. The black bar represents the subject and the violet bar represents the area of focus with an outwards curve.

In this first image the photographer has focused on the edge from in front of the subject, due to the field curvature the centre of the subject falls outside of the area of focus:

If he had instead pulled the focus in from behind the subject then the entire subject would have been inside the area of focus:

And in this image the photographer has focused from behind the subject and on the centre of the image and this time the curvature has prevented the edges from being in focus:

If he had instead focused from in front of the subject then again, all of the subject would have been in focus:

So with a lens that has an outward curving field of focus it is best to either focus from in front of the subject if you are using the centre as a focusing point or focus from behind if you are using the edges. Obviously with a lens that has an inward curving field of focus the opposite is true.

It's important to remember that you are working with a narrow margin of error so you have to stop turning the focus ring just as soon as focus is achieved or you will go right through that margin or error and end up back where you started. An easier way to make sure is to take several shots with slight adjustments to the focus made between shots so that one of the shots has captured the entire subject inside that small margin, people call this focus bracketing and it is especially useful for this problem and also for AF lenses that have a tendency to be indecisive about if they are sharply focused or not.

Another way which I recommended is to use live view if you have such a luxury, using live view you can quickly confirm that you have achieved uniform sharpness before snapping away.

Obviously the more pronounced the curve is the harder it is to make sure the entire subject falls into the area of focus but even when using a wide aperture the depth of focus is usually not paper thin, all you need is for the focus depth to be enough to contain the subject even with the curvature going on. Even if a lens cannot focus on the centre and edge of a flat object simultaneously there is usually a good compromise between the two. When it comes to lens tests and reviews it still seems unfair and technically inaccurate to base edge sharpness on an image where the lens is not correctly focused at the edges, perhaps re composing focus between the centre and edge whilst making a note of the field curvature would be a fairer method. Under "real world" conditions we seldom take photos of flat surfaces with the lens wide open so it's less of a problem but it's better to be aware of such issues and how to get around them and it's certainly better to be aware of such issues when you are conducting a lens review!

This is just a brief explanation and doesn't account for the fact that some lenses have a varying field of focus depending on how far away the subject is, some lenses have a flat field with close subjects but a curved one with distant subjects and vice versa. Another variable is with zoom lenses where different focal length settings can have an effect on the field of focus. It is also worth considering that film is to an extent three dimensional and more forgiving where as digital sensors are completely flat and less forgiving but all of this is certainly both beyond the scope of this post and beyond my level of intelligence!

Sakar Circular Polarizer Filter CPL (£6.50 for 3 on eBay)

2010-01-31T01:15:00.002Z

This is just a mini review of the Sakar CPL filters I got on ebay recently, I got 3 different sizes for about £6.50 all in, very cheap in other words!

Build quality and finish

Totally fine, they came supplied with sturdy plastic cases, the frames are metal and the rotating action is smooth.

Image quality

The image quality is great! When the cost is put into consideration the results are even more impressive. To put it simply they do all that you could ask of a polarizer, blues are deeper, reflections are reduced and foliage and vegetation appears less shiny and colour saturation in general is improved. There was no apparent colour cast and no noticeable loss of sharpness or contrast. I could find no fault in these filters that is worth mentioning, especially at this price point.

Here's a simple before and after:

Conclusion:

At this price point there is really nothing to lose, these filters are great value for money and deliver more than satisfactory results!

UPDATE: I have recently noticed strange behaviour with these filters when using lenses with longer focal lengths, for some reason where a filter will give perfect results on a wider lens the image will turn mushy on telephoto lenses, I am investigating the matter further and for now I can only recommend these filters for use on lenses 50mm or lower in focal length where they have performed and still are still performing perfectly well.

Optomax 200mm F/3.5 M42 (Around £5 from ebay)

2010-01-11T21:35:00.004Z

This lens was one of the first manual focus lenses I bought and came as part of a job lot. Due to my lack of experience I expected a poor performance from this lens based on the brand because at the time I had no idea that many of the old manual focus brands were just importers and that this lens was likely to have been made by one of the major Japanese manufactures. In time I came to realise that the lens was probably made by Tokina and that there are Vivitar and Mamiya versions out there as well as others.

Build quality and finish

This is one solid hunk of lens and features a lot of metal in it's construction, the finish is an attractive but easily soiled satin effect and the rubber focus grip feels good and offers sound traction. The lens includes a sliding hood which while almost certainly not as effective as a separate hood offers at least some glare protection and is better than nothing, it's a nice little gift horse that should not be looked in the mouth. It all feels well screwed together and the focus and aperture mechanisms are positive and sturdy.

Image quality

This was a surprise for me because as I explained previously I was not expecting much in terms of image quality. The sharpness of this lens wide open was an eye opener, whilst it would be foolish to claim it is one of the sharpest I can comfortably say it is far from soft, there is certainly enough sharpness there to make using the lens wide open and entirely practical proposition. The lens does exhibit a small amount of colour fringing wide open but it is minor and easily corrected in software if necessary. I have to wonder how much of this is down to poor lens design and how much is due to the lens being far too old to be optimised for digital sensors. The colour and saturation are of a good standard and coupled with the decent level of sharpness on offer this lens is a pleasure to use and consistently returns decent results. The bokeh this lens produces is generally very smooth and compliments subjects well, I have no complaints in this department although I am known for having low standards in what is in my opinion a matter of personal taste.

I have to add that this lens has several patches of fungus around the perimeter of the front element along with what appears to be some residue possibly from internal lubricants leaking. I have yet to buy a decent lens spanner but when I do I will be able to easily clean the lens up and I would expect the image quality at the edge of the frame to improve somewhat.

All of these samples are wide open:

You can click on the following two to see them at 100% size:

Conclusion

In conclusion I recommend this lens wholeheartedly, it has decent sharpness throughout the aperture range, good colour, good contrast, nice bokeh, it's well put together and it's nice to handle. It won't challenge a Canon L or a Carl Zeiss but it puts in a thoroughly decent performance so if you see one for a good price I suggest you snap it up and see if it's a good copy!

Sun Optical 28mm F/2.5 (£6.51 from ebay)

2010-01-02T20:58:00.014Z

I like Sun lenses, they were one of the few companies to make their own lenses in a time when many of the popular brands were just distributors putting their name on other companies designs. The company started off some time soon after the second world war rising from the ashes of the K.O.L lens company. They initially made lenses for the Leica screw mount and one of the appealing qualities of their lenses is that they continued to make lenses that were aesthetically pleasing in a time when other brands were becoming a sea of dull blackness. The company appears to have ceased the production of 35mm lenses in the late 80's but the company still seems to exist as a manufacturer of industrial lenses, on their website they claim to have began operating in the late 80's but had a past in the 35mm lens industry so there is surely a connection but how deep or shallow it is I have no idea.

On to the lens

Sun lenses always seem to have some sort of quirk or gimmick, be it the styling of the lens or some kind of function that makes it distinctive in some way compared to rivals and that is why they appeal to me as a collector. The slightly unusual aspect is of course the F/2.5 maximum aperture as opposed to the more usual F/2.8

Build quality and finish

This 28mm lens is in fact one of their later and more sober looking lenses although it still has a funky logo on the lens cap. It's well put together which seems to be a consistent trait of sun lens but optically it's a mixed bag..........Also a consistent trait!

Image quality

The main problem when the lens is wide open is a tendency to produce bloom in areas of contrast which can make focusing a difficult task, when you are very close to critical focus the bloom appears and gives the impression of softness so the lens almost looks sharper when it is just outside of perfect focus, you have to go against your instincts because if you try to set the focus ring at a point where the blooming is absent you will get a soft image.

The sharpness wide open is not bad in the centre but poor at the edges, unfortunately the edges don't really come up to scratch until F/8-F/11 but I find myself using this aperture a lot with wider angle lenses anyway. The lens also makes a fairly good portrait lens on my Olympus E-410 where it has a 56mm equivalent focal length, in this situation I can use the lens wide open because the subject is more often than not at the centre of the frame.

Where this optics strengths lay are no doubt in the colour and contrast department, there is a very appealing warmth and enthusiasm to the colours this lens produces and the contrast is gives a decent pop that almost makes up for the lack or resolution at wider apertures.

The bokeh is interesting in that it is very smooth wide open but at smaller apertures has a strange almost ring shaped appearance on highlights, almost like a mirror lens. I like it personally but then again I like mirror lens bokeh so I'm a Judas in any case!

There follows some samples which can be clicked on to see a larger version.

This one was at F/2.5:

This one was taken at F/5.6:

This one is a stitch of two photos taken at F/5.6:

This one is F/5.6:

Conclusion

In conclusion I would have to say it's hard to recommended In general even if I am quite fond of it personally, it's optical performance is average and whilst it is strong in the colour and contrast departments it let's itself down in other areas. If I was not a fan of Sun lenses in general I would probably sell the lens on but there is just something about it that I cannot quite put my finger on. If you are in the market for a lens of this kind of spec and price I would recommend looking out for a Tokina RMC 28mm F/2.8 which is a class act in comparison and has much better edge performance and is acceptably sharp across the frame. Another option would be the Tamron adaptall 2 28mm F/2.5, it doesn't quite have the sharpness of the Tokina but it does have that same slightly faster maximum aperture as the sun lens but without the blooming.

Ebay nightmares: Soligor 200mm F/4 T2 mount

2010-01-01T11:24:00.009Z

You know the scene, browsing soon to end items on ebay, you catch something that's really cheap so you put a bid in and cross your fingers. I won this lens for next to nothing BUT I only bid on it because the seller described it as in good working condition, I know a few pound isn't much but it's the principal that counts surely? I wouldn't have paid a few pennies for it if I had know how it would turn up!

Was there fungus? No

Was there a stuck aperture? No

Scratches? No

Stiff focusing ring? No

So what am I complaining about?

I would have to say that the front element is rather loose to put it mildly!

So, I says:

"Hi there, Just received the lens but there seems to be a problem, the front glass element is completely loose and rattling around, it looks like it could fall out at any moment. I'm not trying to say you sent it knowing it was broken but obviously the lens is unusable in this state and I would appreciate your thoughts about that to do. Here is a photo of the lens:"

And he says:

"Hi ,I thought it was packed all right with it being in the case aswell.the postal staff must had a game of football with it.When I offered it for sale & indeed packed it there was no rattle or problem, if yo look at my feedback record ,you might assume that I am very fessy about what I sell ,this is clearly a transit problem.Either you or I must make a claim from the post office,Ive a feeling it might have to be me even tho it cost a pitance ,in any case keep the lens etc as evidence.There is no point in sending it back because of the cost involved but I can assure yo I wouldnt send out a faulty piece of equipment esspecially for a measly £2.00 Let me know your thoughts"

Pittance? Measly?

How rude! It was enough money for him to bother selling it in the first place! I cannot express enough how I know it really is a tiny sum but the principle remains that if I had known the lens was faulty I would not have paid anything at all. There is no way on earth that the element popped out by itself and on closer inspection of the sellers photos all seemed to show the lens side on, how convenient. I asked the seller to go ahead and ask royal mail for a refund but I never heard from him again so in due course I gave him a negative feedback for his efforts. If everyone in the world decided customer service was not an issue if an item only costs a small amount the world would be in a right mess. He called my money measly and a pittance yet he was unwilling to refund me! Hopefully in future he will realise that the key to being a professional ebayer is to treat all customers with respect and gratitude, even if they do only spend a measly amount.

Tokina RMC 80-200mm F/4 (£6.99 from ebay)

2010-01-01T02:12:00.004Z

This lens is as good a place to start as any!

First of all it's worth mentioning that during my travels of the various forums and websites on the net there seemed to be a general consensus that any zoom lens made before the late 80's/early 90's would be soft, plagued by low contrast, weak colours and extreme image defects such as flaring and colour fringing. The reasoning behind this was that technology at the time was simply not advanced enough to produce optically acceptable zoom lenses. In more recent years however, and after frequenting sites such as MFLENSES.COM it became apparent that this was far from the Truth! Indeed it seems that although there are some real stinkers around there is also a fair share of decent zoom lenses from the decades past.

The main negative issue I see with these lenses tends to be a small amount of colour fringing when the lens is wide open but nothing that cannot be corrected in software. What impresses me with the majority or lenses in the 70-200mm (give or take) arena from the 70's and 80's is that they seem to consistently produce sharper images at the long end of the zoom than modern equivalents can manage whilst usually having a usefully faster maximum aperture. I would even go as far as to say that almost all consumer grade zooms in this range available today will inevitably be soft at the long end especially wide open. I cannot believe that technology has taken a backwards step so I can only assume this is a deliberate measure taken my manufacturers in order to split lines into consumer and professional ranges. It is almost guaranteed that a modern zoom that ends at 200mm will have a F/5.6 aperture at best whereas older lenses always seem to be F/4 or better whilst delivering sharpness that is usually significantly better.

Get On With It!

There is some confusion as to if the RMC in the name refers purely to the "rainbow multi coating" or if it signifies this lenses place in Tokina's range. Some have suggested that RMC is an in between grade with ATX being Tokina's best professional lenses and RMC being somewhere between this and the basic consumer models. Other people believe that RMC in it's self is not an indication the quality of the lens and refers purely to the lens coating and that both bad and good lenses have carried the RMC label.

Build quality and finish

In terms of pure quality and finish this lens seems very well put together, it is of the one touch style that was popular in the 80's and is very compact considering it's specification without feeling cheap or flimsy. For a lens that must be approaching at least 25 years of age the focus and zoom movement are very smooth and well damped. Aesthetically it is subtle but smart with the familiar green font and red logo on the retaining ring of the front element and a silver band at the end of the lens barrel.

Image quality

No need to waste any time here! The image quality is quite remarkable at all zoom settings and all aperture settings. Colours are strong but realistic, contrast is just about perfect and the sharpness had me constantly checking to make sure the lens really was wide open and the aperture hadn't stuck. The only weakness is a tendency to produce colour fringing in areas of extreme contrast but nothing that cannot be corrected swiftly in post processing.

The samples below can be clicked on to view a full size versions so that you can judge the sharpness for yourself, these shots were taken with the lens wide open at 200mm. These images have had mild tweaks of the levels and saturation but the sharpness has not been altered in any way:

Conclusion

This lens can be bought for peanuts, it's well built and delivers amazingly strong images considering its age and compact size. The only negative quality I can see is a slight amount of colour fringing at wide apertures but certainly not enough to spoil the party. Overall I recommend this lens and I find it's superiority to modern consumer equivalents a real hoot, If you can do without autofocus this lens will give you a real step up in quality and it's not alone! In time I will show you models from Tamron, Vivitar, kiron and others that can all be had for similar money and exhibit similarly good performance!

Greetings and happy new year!

2010-01-01T00:03:00.001Z

This is my first post as you can probably see for yourself!

My main reason for setting this blog up is to document my experiences buying and using manual focus lenses on my DSLR's which at the moment consist of a Canon EOS 350D and an Olympus E-410. I also of course buy and use more modern autofocus lenses as well as filters and various other accessories which I will also write about.

I hope this blog will prove helpful to potential owners of these lenses and will be of interest to photographers and collectors in general.

The reason I got into the practice of using manual lenses was simply a matter of curiosity coupled with the amazingly cheap prices some lenses can be had for on sites such as eBay as well as in second hand shops and car boot sales etc. As times goes on the more respected and famous lenses continue to fetch more money but there is still ample opportunity to pick up bargains and "hidden gems". Many lens brands around in the 60's/70's/80's were simply importers who had lenses produced for them by established Japanese manufactures so it is commonplace to find lenses made by companies such as Tamron, Tokina, Cosina, Komine, Kiron and Olympus(!) wearing cheap and nasty sounding badges, Vivitar is a great example of this although prices are soaring! Soligor is another good example, many lenses wearing this badge are made by Tokina and Tamron! I would be lying if I said I didn't occasionally pay a fair sum for an old lens but for the most part the joy for me comes from taking a gamble on an unknown lens that costs a few quid, testing it against lenses I already own and deciding if I should keep it or sell it on again. If I make a small profit that's great but even If I only break even it means I have a financially neutral hobby that is always interesting and sometimes very rewarding.

I'm a great believer in finding things out for myself, even though that sometimes equates to learning the hard way! I am always buying very cheap filters and other accessories, some turn out to be exactly what you expect them to be but others show up the more established brands as overpriced and prove that sometimes people dismiss things too easily based on name and reputation. A good example is the Expo Disc white balancer which costs an eye watering £80 in 82mm size yet a coffee filter will do an equally good job and if you want something slightly more dedicated you can buy items that perform just as well on eBay from as little as £3 including international shipping! I'm by no means an expert photographer and I am certainly no Wordsworth either but hopefully over time this blog will prove to be at least interesting! The rate at which I update will depend on how busy I am and how inspired I feel at any given time!