Saturday, April 30, 2011

Summicron 50/2 : The Boss!

While my wife was busy looking after the children, i was *busy* taking artsy photographs :)

 What a cutie!

Leitz Summicron 50 from 1964
ISO 160, f2.8 1/3000 of a sec

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Summicron 50/2 : Flower Child

from the same session as the pic of both of my kids, this one was my youngest grabbing flowers ( the same one her older sister made her put in the plastic bag!)

ISO 160 1/2000 th of a second f4

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Summicron 50/2 : Scarlet Sapling II

Who says you cant do Bokeh/abstracts with a rangefinder camera? :P

ISO 160 f2.8  1/1500th of a second

Monday, April 25, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Golden Children






During the bokeh test walk with my Helios 44 I also brought along the Leica and grabbed this beautiful shot of my kids backlit by the sunset


ISO 160 F4 1/2000 of a second , processed in Lightroom 3


full size is here

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Iphone 3.9mm/2.8 !!! : My M8 with the Elmar 90/4 and hood

Someone asked me how big the 90mm lens was, and its kind of goofy looking to  be honest , but it works quite well for a 53 year old piece of glass, especially saying I paid 60 bucks for it!

 The only thing I dont like about it is that its prone to flare+glare ( hence the lens hood) Oh and it has a really long throw of rotation to go from 1 metre to infinity, perhaps 300 degrees or so ( OK thats 2 things!)

 Quick aside, Leica metal lens hood 155-225 dollars, Hong Kong Knock off , also aluminium , 18 shipped.......................Leica on the cheap! thats an oxymoron for sure


Happy Easter

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Helios 44m6 58/2 : First flower of Spring

In addition to taking the artsy bokeh tests yesterday I did take some nice ones of the flora and fauna (well my kids)

 Here is one of a dandelion held by my 3 yr old

 Helios 44m-6 at about 2 feet away, using my Color efex pro trial 
F2 ISO 100 and 1/6000 of a second

Happy Easter

Friday, April 22, 2011

Helios 44m6 58/2 : Hexagonal sunlight

After re-reading the articles I had published on the house of Bokeh, I decided to take my Helios 44 and my KX out for a walk with the kids, I got some nice stuff

this is the first batch , this shot was f4 ( you can tell because you get hexagonal bokeh instead of circular ones)

Color efex pro plugin for lightroom 3 used

ISO 100 F4 1/2500th /sec

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Summicron 50/2: stubborn leaf

 I found a tree that STILL had some leaves left from last Autumn.

 The one bad thing about 3C weather is the cold , the good thing is that Canada has these absolutely brilliant cobalt blue skies when the weather is this crisp and clear!

Shot at f4 to test the sharpness and DoF
ISO 160 f4 1/4000th of a sec

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Elmar 90/4 : Windy night I ( Silver efex pro)

After I tried using the Super tak 200/4 at night, I grabbed the leica to see how it fared, about the same I think, there is only so much you can do at night with a lens that goes to a max setting of f4 without a tripod!

 However, I really liked the way this shot came out, so I used my trial of silver efex pro by Nik Software to convert it to B+W . I think this program does a lot better at B+W conversions than the default setting in Lightroom 3

settings: ISO 640 F4 1/15th of a second HANDHELD!  ( tripod required next time!)

Monday, April 18, 2011

Super MC Takumar 200/4: Windy Night

My mother called last night and told me aboutthe great clouds we had in front of the moon , the winds were about 50 kmh+ so they were moving rapidly.

By the time I went to get my camera it was completely covered, I was out for 30 minutes until I got cold and got 1 shot that I sort of liked

Best I could do with an F4 lens at night!
settings ISO 800 F4 1/10th of a second ( thats right, no tripod!)
 full size here

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Graffiti Gradient

full size here
Urban  graffiti , using the bi-colour filter from Color Efex pro in Lightroom 3

the cool part was I was able to do a user created one, greenish for the top 1/5 for the glass, and then a gradual shift to Orange to the bottom 4/5ths  the bricks!

 Post processing wasnt a chore, it was fun!

 1/250 sec F8 ISO 160






Saturday, April 16, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Oh Canada

This is another shot of the war Memorial in Victoria Park . This time I found out the benefit of using a rangefinder camera, in that when you lick the shutter you dont lose sight of the subject , I moved to the right of the statue to getthe Canadian flag in the background, and took 3 shots , this is the tird one, and the one where I had the flag unfurled, but not fully extended to touch his face

Settings : Leitz Summicron 50/2 @ f2.8
ISO 160 1/4000 of a second
processed in Color Efex Pro plugin for  Lightroom 3

Friday, April 15, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Sorrow

I went for a walk in the 3C weather with a pal, it was nice to get outside for once after the winter, and I took some shots of the war memorial in the local civic park

 I was all excited t process these as i thought they would come out nice, but doing the PP actually bummed me out a bit
this monument had so many names on it and that was just the names from our small city of 70,000 people :(


this is a crop of another shot I took of it, processed in Color efex pro

1/3000th of a second ISO 160 F 4

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Zorki and Jupiter 8 50/1.5 : Flatworth in 1977

A scan of a photo I took in 1977 using my Dads camera ( thats him with the model plane)

 I thought using the Leica was my first Rangefinder experience, I was incorrect , I was allowed to use the Zorki when I was 12
 This was fixed after scanning using Lightroom 3 and its excellent noise reduction algorithm.

 The UK in 1977, what an innocent time , good fun , even if editing this shot made me all wistful and slightly sad, but happy at the same time :)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Color Efex pro test

Full size is here

 I downloaded the demo of Silver efex pro and Color efex pro , this one was edited using Color efex, using the preset : " Bi-Color green/brown 2"

ISO 640 f2.8 1/90th of a second

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Blue Hour

I was waiting for the sun to re-appear from the cloudbase, then I realised it had set already, mostly because it was getting darker :) focusing was a bit difficult so I used the infinity lock and tried a few shots, this one captured the mood the best I thought

ISO 100 , f2.0! 1/1500th of a second,

full size is here

Monday, April 11, 2011

Summicron 50/2: ME!

Here is a shot that my pal took with the "Camera-he-hates"

 I also downloaded the demo of Silver efex pro and Color efex pro , this one was edited using Silver efex pro I think just the default B+W conversion

settings: ISO 640 f2 1/60th of a second handheld

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: Cutie :)

settings 1/400th of a second ISO 200 f2


I rarely get shots of my eldest anymore as she is so darn fast , thats the reason I bought the FA 50/1.4 autofocus, but for today I used my old Takumar 50/1.4 so I could compare it to the Leitz Summicron 50/2

results to follow on that front, but I like this shot, even though it was a bit chilly out, we had a lot of fun

Saturday, April 9, 2011

SUper MC Takumar 200/4: Moonshot!









  I took about a dozen  shots to use in an astronomy stacking program, but the first shot I took that was unstacked looked better than the modified one!   full size is here           1/200th of a sec ISO 100 F 5.6 on my 40 year old Super MC Takumar 200/4


 






Friday, April 8, 2011

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Anamorphic kid

this is why I like the lens, very nice clarity and definition, Imnot sure if its the lens or the sensor on the M8 , time for more testing methinks!

ISO 640 f2 1/180th of a sec

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Liquid Glass

Taken with my new M8 and the 47 yr old summicron, I promise Ill use some of my other lenses soon!

this is an indoor waterfall inside the atrium of the glass ceiling business plaza downtown




ISO 320 f 2.8 1/125th of a second white balance as shot and a bit of post processing to correct the contrast

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Roots Canada

ISO 640 f2.8 1/350th of a second

Post processed to enhance the retro tones and grain

Monday, April 4, 2011

Summicron 50/2: Crimson Clanger

another test from the visit to the blue cross building in town ISO 640 f2.8 and 1/20th of a second

The colour rendition is awesome with this lens/body combination , all I had to do was change the white balance a little :)

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Summicron 50mm f2: Go to the Light!

The love affair with the Leica M8 continues, I went out for a short jaunt with my 7 yr old daughter in a snowstorm to a building that has a nice indoor waterfall and a beautiful glass atrium

 This is the Summicron 50/2 on the m8 : settings  ISO 640 ( which i think has been measured at 800 actually by testers) f2.8 and a shutter of 1/20th of a second , handheld! :) I love the fact that the picture wasnt blown out by the sunlight in the atrium in the background

for the pixel peepers or curious full size is here 

Saturday, April 2, 2011

1958 Leitz Elmar 90/4 : Daguerrotype

The lens has a bit of flare, but I was able to reduce the EV by almost 2 stops to recover the detail ( leica sensor?)

 ISO 640 F11 1/4000 sec!

Friday, April 1, 2011

1958 Leitz Elmar 90/4 : a child of the 60s.....wait a sec

I bought a 1958 Leica M mount Leitz 90mm f4 Elmar lens off a guy for a really good price , like 60 bucks!

the colour rendering of the lens is very retro and its actually quite sharp, so I used my trusty Kodachrome preset and modified it a bit to remove teh excessive greens , and make it look like a shot from 50 years ago, which I think it does well at, except for the WII controller!

Leitz elmar 90 f4 @ f 6.7 !? ISO 640 and 1/750th of a second