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!)

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: Noodles

Still taking it easy this week, and processing pics from this weekends activities


 My youngest daughter taken at f1.4 and about a metre away to test clarity wide open


f1.4 ISO 1600 1/40th of a second

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: Ray of Hope

Been a rough week with 2 parents in hospital , 1 serious , 1 OK now, this is another shot I took last year that Looks more relevant at the moment.

 These abstract bokeh shots are very soothing to me I find.


ISO 400 1/1250th of a second and f4 ( note the cool octagonal bokeh/highlights)

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: Sawdust

Hehehe even mundane objects look different at f1.4 lit by the sunset

ISO 400 f1.4 1/2000 sec

Super MC Takumar 50/1.4: Octagonal Abstract

Dredging through my hard drive I found some more shots from earlier on this year that I hadnt worked on

 This is an abstract of a kids concert at the school , some creative license was used with the colours and white balance to make this desktop image.

shot at ISO 800  F4 1/40th of a second

Summicron 50/2: Autumn walkabout

While my kids were in Gymnastics, i went for a walk around the local area to give my wife some time to read her novel.

 The weather was nice, Beautiful Blue sky and clear air too.

 Shot at f2 , ISO 160 1/4000th of a second

Summicron 50/2 : Happy Fence Friday VI

An attempt at something artsy and different for Fence Friday.

 good / bad?

ISO 160 f4 1/1500th of a second

Summicron 50/2 : Disco at the Mall

At the mall Christmas decorations are already up! Nov 4th gah!

luckily I know the manager of this store so i asked if I could take a shot or 2 . This came out well I thought

ISO 320 f2.8 1/90th of a second

Super MC Takumar 35/3.5 : Dusty Summicron!

Im going through my old shots and I had tagged a lot that I didnt know how to post process at that time, but I liked the composition, so I kept them for a later date.

 Here is one from the 1st day i got my Leica M8 and its lens , taken with my Pentax KX and a Takumar 35/3.5, the cron 50 is a bit dusty, but it doesnt affect the image quality at all ( that I can see anyway!)

ISO 800 f4 1/400th of a second

Super MC Takumar 28/3.5 : Scarlet Children

I took a few shots of my kids to test the focus of my 28mm lens, this is set at f5.6 and was set to focus from 2 metres to infinity!

 The colours were hard to fix as it was cloudy and close to sunset, so it was too blue for me, so I converted it to B+W in lightroom and resaturated just the red tones of their winter gear

ISO 400 f5.6 1/1000th of a second

Super MC Takumar 28/3.5 : Combine Overlords

Just as the sun started to go behind the clouds I snapped this shot of the wind generators a few KMs away, spooky!

 The title is a shout-out to a pal of mine who thinks these are signs of  an alien invasion :)

ISO 400 f5.6 1/500th of a second