Tokina 500/8 : Mysteron Party

This is a bottle of some sort at my parents house, thats also the Christmas tree behind, and the rings are the classic signature of the Mirror lens design. The mirror lens concept is described here in greater detail:

http://www.photozone.de/mirror-lenses

in the conclusion it states this"Nonetheless mirrors are quite cheap and  fun to play with. "

which I agree with,  :)

ISO 3200  f8 1/100th of a second

( I had to use ISO 3200 to get a fast enough shutter speed to eliminate any blurring)

Happy New Year

Super Takumar 200/4: New Years Eve Moon

I took a few lenses to my parents place so i could take a shot or 3 of the cool crescent moon and this one was taken with the Super Takumar 200/4

Settings  f5.6 , ISO 400 1/200th of a second

Summicron 50/2: Renaissance Man

Boxing day at my parents house ,
 the 2 youngest kids, my daughter and nephew, he looks like a person in a painting from the renaissance IMO , especially his hand on her shoulder

ISO 640 f4 ( shock ! horror! ) 1/250th of a second

Summicron 50/2: The Scorer!

what do canadian kids love for Xmas day?

the official NHL Air Hockey table thats what.

 My eldest daughter lining up a rebound shot for a score!

ISO 640 f2 1/90th of a second

Summicron 50/2: The Boss with flattering sunlight

At the boxing day feed I snuck around with my cameras , I got better candids from the Leica because its so quiet , well compared to a house with 12 people in it and 5 of them 11 or younger :)

This is a B+W JPG out of the camera with a few small adjustments to contrast and brightness. The sun was reflected off the snow outside and beaming right into the living room , it was neat :)


ISO 320 f4 1/250th of a second

Helios 40 85/1.5: Bartatoes

At my parents house for boxing day munchage!

 Great time and great food !

My father talking to his youngest son and family in Barbados, or as my eldest calls it

Bartatoes!


shot at ISO 1600 f1.5 1/160th of a second

Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar T* 50/2.8: Merry Christmas from the Ice Queen

I went for a walk with the family 2 days before Christmas, it was snowing and a mild -1C

 Standing next to the creek , her hair is covered with snow and then it started to freeze, giving her sparkly hair , she looks like an Ice Queen or princess .

shot with the excellent CZJ Tessar T* 50 at f4 , I converted these to B+W as the lens was designed with B+W film in mind, it does a REALLY nice job of rendering I must say!

ISO 200 f2.8 1/800th of a second

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: New technique with old favourite II

Part II of my new technique postings, I suspect there will be a lot more shots forthcoming over the holidaze.

 As much as I try to use a flash unit, I always prefer to use natural light and then try workarounds like using higher ISOs or bracing my arm/camera on my knees or a wall etc to try and keep it stable at such slow shutter speeds

 I always have the backup plan of converting them to B+W like this if the results arent what I wanted due to blur or grain

 SAying all this, Im glad that the flash unit I did buy cost me 40 bucks, I'd be a bit miffed if I spent 400+ on one, especially saying I rarely use it!


 this shot is in the murky Gym with teh terrible lighting:
    ISO 800 f1.4 1/40th of a second

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: New technique with old favourite

I revisited a website that gave me a LOT of good info about Leicas and techniques for photo and processing, this shot is processed using his method of dodging and burning.

I almost forgot the URL : http://overgaard.dk/100000-exposures-later-III-dodge-and-burn.html

 IE: Make highlights 10% brighter and shadows 10% darker , I normally do something similar using adobe lightroom, but these are using a student copy of adobe photoshop .

 The main difference is that when I use Lightroom the effect is on all of the photo, in Photoshop you can choose only the highlights or only the shadows.

 let me know what you think, I will upload versions of these done my usual method tomorrow :)

ISO 1600! f1.4 1/60th of a second

Summicron 50/2: The junior photographer herself

Here is the culprit, my 4 yr old in action with the Super MC Tak 50/1.4 and the pentax KX

 She dislikes Live view and wants to look through the " little window like a real photographer" :)

Taken with my trusty Leica and its 47 yr old lens

ISO 640 f2 1/60th of a second

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: One I took

Here is a shot from the gym visit that I did, this is shot at f1.4!

thats my father on the right watching his model fly around in wide circles

ISO 800 f1.4 1/80th of a second

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: Goin' Ballistic

I went to the local model airplane clubs indoor night at the gymnasium and brought along 2 cameras, my Pentax KX with the Tak 50 and my M8 , and my 2 kids of course!


 we had a great time , and grabbed some decent photos , and to make it even more interesting this one was taken by my 4 year old daughter!

this one came out very nicely, thats my 8 yr olds hair on the right, so the viewpoint is low to the ground , but she got the airplane in the middle of a manouvre

I gave her a fighting chance though, and set the lens at f2.8 1/60th of a second and ISO 1600

Leitz Summicron 50/2: My Brother having a good time

I was at a friends Christmas party last night in addition to a cocktail party with some family friends, typical, 2 outings on the same day :(

 My brother drinking 0.5% beer in case someone needed a ride home afterwards, what a cool dude!

ISO 640 f2 1/60th of a second

Leitz Canada Elmarit 135/2.8: Sliding to home plate?

We went to the rink last weekend and I took a few shots with the unwieldy 135 Elmarit ( made in Canada you know :P)

talk about suffering for your craft, this lens is a pain, but it delivers when it does work....

My youngest after falling down for the umpteenth time

ISO 320 f2.8 1/180th of a second

Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar T* 50/2.8: Dreamer

A lovely B+W portrait of my wife taken with the very long named Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar T* 50mm 2.8 lens from 1953!

 what a great lens this is,  not too sharp, just nice enough for a portrait

taken wide open at:

f2.8 ISO 1600 1/100th of a second

Helios 44M6 58/2: Christmas Bokeh VI

the family across the street always puts up a lot of lights this time of the year, so after taking a snap of it a while back using the Helios 40 85/1.5 I decided to take one with the helios 44 58/2 instead :)

I like how the out of focus lights are circular in the centre then become lenticular (?) towards the edges


ISO 800 f2 1/25th of a second

Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar T* 50/2.8: 50s Portraiture

My golden haired daughter taken with the Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar T* 50/2.8

ISO 1600 f2.8 and 1/125th of a second

I converted the 2 portraits I took to B+W as it seems to suit the lens better, then again, the lens is 58 years old and was designed for Black and White film :)

I liked the rendering of her hair especially

Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar T* 50/2.8: Distant Bokeh

After dinner in the parking lot I noticed the traffic lights down the hill made a nice blend with the store lighting, so I did some bokeh shots using the tessar wide open at f2.8 Im a sucker for these abstract style shots at night.

ISO 1600 f2.8 1/100th of a second

Summicron 50/2: Santa?

A cool kid at the christmas party , he was quite energetic after all the sweets and sno-cones :)


ISO 640 f2 1/40th of a second

Summicron 50/2: Big Sister

My friends older sister.

very photogenic , and I also turned it into a B+W shot to be more flattering :)


ISO 320 f2 1/30th of a second

Summicron 50/2: This is worse than the paint!

A friend of mines son changed his mind halfway through the face painting , but once he started to get cleaned up he realised it wasnt much fun either!

ISO 640 f2 1/40th of a second

Summicron 50/2: Hydroplane!

Even when the weather is mild ( rain in December!) Canadians tend to ignore it, case in point.................

ISO 160 f2 1/180th of a second

Super MC Takumar 28/3.5 : Unexpected popup!

I was taking some shots of stuff around the house and got a surprise visitor :)

scared me a little , but I still managed to refocus and get this shot

ISO 800 f5.6 1/400th of a second

Super MC Takumar 28/3.5 : Windy Clouds

We had a very windy day yesterday ( so much so that we had a wind warning !) and the clouds looked cool as they were getting blown around the sky, this is just before sunset

ISO 400 1/2500th of a second and f5.6

Super MC Takumar 28/3.5 : Nagelesque

A  1950s leather jacket I painted in 1995 with a patrick nagel poster using an airbrush and createx art inks

1/125th of a second f8 ISO 800

Super MC Takumar 28/3.5 : Lightpen

Ive been sick for almost a week now, and missed out on 2 photo walks with friends :(

 So I started doing some lightpainting in my computer room with the help of my Kids

my 4 yr old took this shot too, wrote this backwards!

ISO 400 f5.6 with a 4 second exposure

Super MC Takumar 28/3.5 : Darth Vader

Ive been sick for almost a week now, and missed out on 2 photo walks with friends :(

 So I started doing some lightpainting in my computer room with the help of my Kids

my 4 year old took these 28mm  shots

 The kids asked me if I could draw Darth Vader , this is the best I could do :)

ISO 200 f5.6 w/ 8 second exposure

Super Takumar 55/2: DNA ?

Ive been sick for almost a week now, and missed out on 2 photo walks with friends :(

 So I started doing some lightpainting in my computer room with the help of my Kids

 this is with a Super Takumar 55/2 and my youngest waving around a UV LED

ISO 200 f2 1.3 second handheld.

Summicron 50/2: The Light Vacuum!

I went out with my family for dinner and on the way home we stopped by a bookstore ( real books! paper and everything!)  and I almost always carry my m8 with me in case I see something interesting.

 Well out the window I saw all these cars going through an intersection and there were some construction lights there too, so I snapped off 2 or 3 shots

 This is the one I liked the best, because it appears that the leica is absorbing the bokehlicious lights into the lens :)

 hence the Title, the Light Vacuum

ISO 320 1/45th of a second f2 aperture

Summicron 50/2: Raindrop Bokeh

slow week for photo as the weather has been rainy and I developed a headcold of somesort :(

 This is my car early in the morning after a quick rainshower.

 ISO 160 f2 1/8000 of a second, I liked the lens flare in the left centre and the out of focus lenticular bokeh on the far right ( its sunlight in raindrops)

Summicron 50/2: Green Light

slow week for photo as the weather has been rainy and I developed a headcold of somesort :(

 This is me in traffic just as the light went green I snapped this of the traffic waiting .  I was looking to get the green reflected in the wet road.

 I reduced the saturation of every colour except aqua and green :)

ISO 320 f2 1/500th of a second

Summicron 50/2: Berry Blue Sky

12C today and a beautiful sunny sky this morning.


 My daughter noticed that the tree in our garden still had some berries slinging to life, so I manouevered around to get the branch in front of the high Cirrus clouds

ISO 160 f5.6 1/750 of a second

Summicron 50/2: LED Trees!

We decided to skip the Christmas Parade this year, however It cost me about 60 bucks in LED lights for our 3 saplings in the front garden and also 4 extension cords to power them :)

 After this we went indoors, had dinner and setup the Christmas tree!

ISO 320 f2 1/6th of a second

Summicron 50/2: Snowscraper!

When we got the first storm, during the day I took some shots of my youngest cleaning off Mommies car, I love the clarity and the snowflakes frozen in mid air :) Child labour at its finest

ISO 160 f2.8 1/500th of a second

Super Takumar 55/2 : Blizzard Bokeh

a few more shots from the blizzard jaunt we took the other night

 Im a sucker for Xmas lighting, especially while holding a camera with a vintage manual lens that goes to f2 :)

ISO 1600 f2  1/40th  of a second

Super Takumar 55/2 : Blizzard Walkabout

Ok , who takes his family for a walk in a blizzard?

me!  this was after about 8 hours of snow and it eased off for a few so we went out for a walk, then of course it started to come down really heavy again so we had to come home, and my Daughter on the right is keeping an eye open for Snowploughs and skidding vehicles ( really!)

 We had been out for about 5 minutes and you can see how much snow is on my wifes hood , this is also about a minute before I fell down for the first of 5 or 6 times and bent my glasses

ISO 1600 f2 1/20th of a second ( I wanted it slow so I could get the snow moving)

Super Takumar 55/2 : the Thing?

At night we decided to go for a walk ( in a BLIZZARD!!)  it was very slippery and I only fell over 5 or 6 times, I dragged my KX and Super tak 55/2 with me to take some night shots.

 This is my eldest daughter wearing her night vision goggles she got from a science fair, technically i think they are more a " flashlight goggles" but she loves to wear them and it looked cool when it lit up the snow

PS It was MY idea to go out too ( what a fool)

ISO 1600 f2 1/50th of a second

Helios 44M6 58/2: the Watchful Eye

The Tanktastic Helios 40 85mm ( a Carl Zeiss Biotar Clone) on the edge of the boards at the rink last weekend
  I wanted to get a shot of the lens coating and the name of the lens.

 Shot with a 1993 Helios 44M6 58mm ( another Biotar clone!)

ISO 400 f2 1/40th of a second

Super MC Takumar 28/3.5 : Jupiter

I was using the 600 rule of astrophotography for the first time tonight and got this cool  shot of a star and the back of my house I dont know which star  however, Ill have to look it up :)


the 600 rule  is: 600/focal length = longest exposure you can get without the stars being blurred 

 so for me my 28mm with the crop field of view is 42mm so thats a 14 second exposure, maximum, but once I reduced the exposure time to 10 seconds it was less blown out

ISO 800 f5.6 10 seconds, adjusted for levels and curves in photoshop

Summicron 50/2: Aggressive Lights!

 I am convinced the UV/IR filter makes a HUGE difference to the rendering of the M8s images the magenta tinge is gone and so is a bit of the flare too

 Even the R8 V10  headlights have this clarity and aggressiveness about them that they didnt without the filter ( you do need a lens shade however to stop the extra filter picking up lateral flare)

ISO 160 f2.8 1/6000th of a second

Helios 40 85/1.5: Bokeh Blast I

whats better than Firework fotos?

how about retro lens bokeh firework shots?

Shot on Canada Day 2011  and I was using a tripod  to get really slow exposures without blur. Intentionally focused a bit too short to exaggerate the lenticular Bokeh of the H40 lens. I also cropped this to make it widescreen  as it looks great as a desktop for a computer monitor.

ISO 800 f1.5 1/15th of a second ( told you I was using a tripod for a reason!)

Helios 44m6 58/2: Helios 40 freelens

We went to the Ice rink for the first skate of the year during a public skate session, I took along my KX and 2 helios lenses the 1993  H44 and 1965 H40 , and had a lot of fun!  I just realised that these are both Zeiss Biotar clones :)

 Inna does a lot of freelensing, so i figured I'd try some of my own, but instead of holding the lens in front of the camera, I thought Id reverse it and focus so that the subjects were perfectly sharp INSIDE THE OTHER LENS!  I also took this one to show the data on the front of the Helios 40 and it  came out way nicer than I expected , the Helios 44 was set at f2 and the Helios 40 was set at f1.5 :)

ISO 400 f2 1/60th of a second

Helios 40-1 85/1.5: Helios Sk8r Grl I

We went to the Ice rink for the first skate of the year during a public skate session, I took along my KX and 2 helios lenses the H44 and H40 , and had a lot of fun

 AFter over an hour of skating my Eldest stopped by my vantage point to telll me she was having fun, captured with the helios 40 85mm at very close range, perhaps 1.5-2 metres and stopped down just a tad to f2.0 to sharpen it up by about a factor of 3 ( very soft at f1.5).

Unfortunately the lens is a tank! my hands were killing me after holding it and focusing for about 20 minutes.

ISO 400 f2 1/80th of a second

Elmarit 135/2.8 : Moonrise

 I received this lens in april and havent posted as many shots on this blog with it as I would like, so Im going through my flickr stream and adding the ones I missed that I liked ( plus I need to catch up with 18 shots posted this month :P)


From May 6th:

My Elmarit 135mm came in, and its weird,  Im not sure if I like it or not, but this is shot at f2.8

 Moon was just rising, and the 135 is an effective 180mm on my M8 , nice and clean optics!


NOV 18th 2011: My feelings have changed towards this lens, I think its utterly impractical , heavy and a bear to focus, BUT ....................whenever I use it I always seem to get some really good shots with it , so despite my misgivings and suffering , the Lens just plain out works , and very well too I may add! ( Plus its a Leica lens made in Canada that I bought from a guy in the USA:P)

Elmarit 135/2.8 : Harvest Moon

from August 12th!  when we got home after our summer day, the moon was this golden colour so I ran inside and grabbed my 135mm , this was the best of the few shots I took

ISO 160  F2.8   1/1500th of a second

Summicron 50/2 : Bokeh Swirls

Found this in a directory on my hard drive for my Takumar lenses, i exported it there by mistake

 quite the swirls!

ISO 160 f2 1/500th of a second , the exif data says f4, but its too smooth for that :)

Summicron 50/2 : Drippy!

Cold day today so we went to the library, this is part of the fountain in the atrium :)

ISO 160 1/125th of a second f2

Summicron 50/2 : My Brother

My brother drove 1200 kms to be here for the weekend, so I was determined to get a good shot of him, this was the one that came out the best I think talk about clarity!

 Shot with the Mecablitz Flashunit ( I love that name!) and a 1964 Summicron 50/2 on the Leica M8


ISO 160 f8 1/250th of a second 

Elmarit 135/2.8 : Grandmother

My mother while we had everyone in our family together ( except my dad who is still in hospital)

Shot with the super cool Leitz Canada ( kanada?) Elmarit 135/2.8 and my Metz Mecablitz flash .

 ISO 160 f4 1/250th of a second

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: Starfire!

Starting to feel a bit more normal after that busy week , here is another from this weekend

I had a setting incorrect on the camera ( white balance) and while trying to fix it I managed to get the cool blue aura around my oldest daughters hair! so I took out all the colour except for the hair and left the hair as the *cool* colours, it reminds me of Starfire from the X-Men (?)

 I worked on this for about 30 seconds, so no comments about my shoddy editing skillz!

ISO 800 f2.8  1/8th of a second ( wow!)