Helios44m-6 58mm f2 : Stunning bokeh smoothness

This is one of the first photos I took with my Helios 44 that I bought off a Russian guy who lives in Vancouver now , total cost was 48 dollars with caps and a metal lens hood as he said the lens has some scratches on it.

As you can see, the scratches dont seem to bother it at all, and the colours seem nice and vibrant, and the smooth background bokeh is beautiful, very painterly and pleasing to the eye. This is a M42 lens that I had to modify slightly as described earlier , as its an Auto lens only, and no matter what I did, it wouldnt stop down the aperture ( duh! ) as it didnt have anything to push the pin to enable the actuating mechanism inside. Quick fix was some solicone tubing, replace the backing plate and its now a pure Manual H44m-6.

 This shot was taken outdoors ona bright summer morning, and it was just a test to see how the lens rendered backgrounds, and shallow depth of field , the 2 problems were that I was new at using manual settings and it was taken as a JPG not as a RAW file , you can also see I was new at post processing the older lens shots ( OK so thats 3 things)

Laterz

Super thin DoF : Helios 40 85mm/1.5

I took this one last summer when I first got this huge lens, it weighs a ton, ( 0.9 KG I believe!) but it has a few advantages

1: its very hard to get any camera shake when you are holding the equivalent to a bag of sugar on the front of your camera
2: its soft wide open away from the centre ( great for portraits)
3: It has already been converted to the pentax M42 mount, so it slips right onto my KX with the official adapter
4: its 85mm, which on my camera with the crop basically equals 127.5mm, so a telephoto with enough light to be f1.5, sign me up!
5: its definitely a conversation starter :)


This shot was taken wide open and it used the auto white balance of teh camera, and I think it messed it up a bit, but it came out OK and the depth of field is absolutely razor thin, I wish I had taken the photo using RAW instead of JPG, as the colours got a bit too over-saturated once I post processed it :(

Pentax Super MC Takumar 50mm/f1.4 : Thats me in the corner.......

I seem to be enamored by the colour blue, and especially the relationship between blue and orangey/yellow, its either too much CSI:Miami or Michael bay, I havent figured out yet which, maybe the reason they use these tones together is because they work well? http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-posters/

 This was taken in the sushi restaurant and sticks oto the formula of wide open ( f1.4) and indoor ISO ( 800) I moved around a bit to getthe look I wanted , specifically the lantern in focus and the reflection off the window of the blue sign lights outside.

 Once again the Super MC Takumar comes through with flying colours ( literally!) and the out of focus lighting is nice and smooth

Pentax Super MC Takumar 50mm/f1.4 : Miso Hungry ( desktop wallpaper)

Someone asked me for a desktop wallpaper recently, so I made this one from the *sushi set*

 I focused about 3 inches prior to the bowl and i had it away from the spotlights so it has a nice subdued lighting, and a rich colour to it all.

 The top part is the bowl of miso soup, and the bottom left is a piece of Red Tuna Sushi ( yum!) taken at ISO 800 on my Pentax KX and my lens of yore, Super Multi Coated takumar 50/1.4

Full size here, enjoy

Super Takumar 50/1.4 : Miso Soup for the soul

 Continuing with my theme of food establishment fotos, I took my eldest daughter to the local authentic sushi bar , well I guess she took me because I wanted to go to the coffee place :)

 We had a 24 piece party pack of sushi and maki and it was delicious except for the miso soup which I didnt like ( she didnt either)  being a kid she got away with " I dont like it" and I had to make do with " I left some in the bowl so I can take some photos of it ":)

 Im trying something new that I learned on another site , Thorsten Overgaards excellent site . For outdoors Im using ISO 100 for indoors ISO 800 , and I am also trying to use the lenses as close to wide open as possible , so this shot is:

 Pentax KX with 1971 Asahi Pentax Takumar 50/1.4 @ 1.4 ISO 800 and shutter speed of  1/60 second. The in-body IS ability of the KX is a godsend for these type of shots , and I also found that the density of the Takumar makes the camera really easy to hold steady as it ends up being well balanced.  full size here

 I mostly took this shot as I noticed the crazy bokeh of the spotlights in the restaurant , and I cheated alittle by sliding my bowl directly underneath one of them !

later , now Im hungry, just not for Miso

DDR Pentacon 50/1.8 : bargain lenses part Vb

Ok,
  I was a bit disappointed with the performance of the pentacon outdoors in the harsh winter glare, I need to buy a lenshood methinks! Saying that, I went out for a coffee with a friend of mine, and it was -21C outside, which apart from being cold as all get out was great for my car stereo, i dont think the sound has ever been so clear and crisp!

 I ordered my usual drink and for some reason this time it was bubbly, I mean REALLY bubbly, so before i put in my dairy product I took 3 or 4 shots with the Pentacon 50 wide open at ISO 800 .

 One major advantage of the Pentacon is that it can focus down to 0.3 metres, so thats what I did to see how the quality and depth of field are, and i must say i am pleasantly surprised  , the middle bubbles are in focus, the foreground ones arent and the ones at the back of the mug have the crazy Euro-style swirly bokeh that I like in these oldies. Im thinking I should print it out and see if the coffee shop will hang it up.........

Helios 44m-6 58mm f2 : Bubbling blue clouds

This summer I seemed to spend alot of time taking shots of sunsets and sunrises ( a good thing!) as we had so many that were gorgeous , or maybe it was that I never paid attention to them before, Im not sure which.

 Once again, the trusty Pentax KX and the soviet M42 gem Helios 44m-6 , the lens for some reason has a way of making the images *pop* I guess thats what you get when you copy a lens formula from Carl Zeiss , luckily as I mentioned before, it was 40 dollars and not 200+

This was taken at f4 and the sun had started to set, but the clouds above were still in the sunlight and gave off the awesome radiance that you see here

l8r

Pentax Takumar 50mm/f1.4 : A very Smooootth bokeh

One of the reasons I like these primes is that invariably they have excellent optics for a fraction of the price of a new lens , this is taken in the coffee shop ( I really do have other pictures!) and i focused too short on purpose and in Lightroom i adjusted the white balance ( maladjusted actually) to tungsten instead of fluorescent because I like blue and it accentuated the blue glow from the reflections from the microwave

 The only thing I really had to change was the noise in the image, the Pentax KX takes really good JPGs but I am now using mostly RAW as the vintages lenses have a tendency to over or underexpose depending on the f-stop used  ( no correction inside the camera like the fancy new lenses) and i found that trying to add 2 stops to a jpg ended up with banding

 The plus side is that when you use higher ISO settings, the RAW files actually look like film grain, so it fits perfectly my *vision* of what i wanted to accomplish with this project, shoot filmic imagery without using film :)

ISO 800 wide open at F1.4 focused about 1 metre before the object , and hand held , the body image stabilisation is a godsend!

Pentax Takumar 50mm/f1.4 : How good is it in low light?

One of the main reasons I like the older Prime lenses it that they have excellent optics and invariably they are VERY fast . This helps me in a few ways as first of all I dont like using flash too much on my family as we are very pale and a flash makes us look like twilight fans.

 Second of all, a wide open aperture thats under F2.0 has a razor thin depth of field that works great for portraiture as it can isolate your subject easier to cut out background or foreground clutter in the case to the left

I took  this inside a dimly lit coffee shop on an overcast day in january using ISO 800 and f1.4 wide open on my Super MC Takumar 50/1.4 , the Pentax KX body has really good higher ISO capabilities, and 800 is as good as 200 on my rebel XT , but the KX is 7 years newer :)

 As you can see from the shot , my daughters eyes and face are in focus and everything else is blurred, but not blurry to the point of annoyance, I find it actually quite a pleasing effect as the blur is subtle and smooth
the only reason I converted it to Black and White was I thought the tones and contrast looked better in B+W as opposed to colour :)

bye for now

Pentax Takumar 135mm/f3.5 : bargain lenses part IV

I was posting about bargain lenses and I realised that basically the rule of thumb seems to be grab a Pentax Takumar :) I forgot that I bought the 135/3.5 early on and even though I find it a *boring* lens I have taken quite a few shots with it that I liked!

 This shot is from a whale-watching trip we took this summer in the bay of fundy , and even with the crop factor making the lens 202mm the whales were still VERY close , and the definition of the lens isnt as bad as I remember . and the shot was taken at F8 , you can actually see the whales mouth under the water ! full size version is here

 The 135/3.5 is a hugely overlooked lens, because Pentax also made a 135/2.5 , but the 3.5 version is still a good buy, and is available on ebay for about 50-60 dollars!

Pentax Takumar 200mm/f4 : a bargain lens part III

Im dredging through my old flickr shots to find out various lenses that I have tried and liked that were inexpensive and i forgot about this gem, a Super Takumar 200mm/f4 from about 1970 , this lens is VERY well built and it has a smooth focus to it thats easy to use ( basically just like every other Takumar!)

 I got this for 62 dollars  off ebay and that was with 2 caps and a cool lens hood ( the hood itself sometimes sells for 40 ish) and the lens showed up and it was/is mint , and its barely bigger than the 135 tak , plus on my KX with the crop factor, the 200 becomes a 300! sweet! Right now ( jan 18 2011) there are about a dozen of these available for 100 dollars US shipped on ebay so if you want a really light and sharp prime telephoto lens, there you go

 This shot was taken using a tripod on international observe the moon night, why they picked a non full moon for this i dont know, but this is one of the hots that came out nice , shot wide open at f4 and ISO 200, the shutter speed is a surprisingly fast 1/400 of a second , just goes to show you how much light the moon does reflect  ,I also cropped out a little bit of the top and bottom to give the moon itself more impact in the frame

Pentax Takumar 55mm/f2 : a bargain lens part II

Hi again, Part II of my bargain lens series:

 I already showed you some shots taken with the Takumar 50/1.4 and its awesome, and the wide angle 28 nature lens, plus the 35mm *normal* lens , but there is an overlooked gem in the Takumar range , the 55mm series

 This lens comes in2 varieties, the 55/1.8 and the 55/f2 , mine is the 55/f2 and it cost me 22 dollars , I bought it to use as my bad weather lens , or a lens i can pop onto a camera and not worry if it gets ruined or dirty, so of course I used in once in the rain and it took some phenomenal shots!

The shot to the left is during a fall rainstorm wide open at f2.0 full size hereand the camera was wrapped up in a plastic grocery bag and the lens also. The trick was to unscrew the UV filter from the lens, wrap the whole rig in the bag, then rescrew on the filter OVER the bag, then remove it again and you have a perfect circle for the lens , just pop the filter back on and a rubber band to stop the bag opening and you are good to go ( Its actually quicker to do than it took to type and read all this)

 One of the rumours about the 55 series of lenses is that they are identical, but the ones that didnt pass the wuality inspection for f 1.8 were remarked as f2.0s instead , I dont know if thats true, but it was on the internet so it must be . This lens can be found now for about 50 dollars, and the M42>EOS adapter was the fotodiox one I got for 10 dollars or so . The out of focus rendering is really cool, and with a bit of goofing with the light balance i made the shot look like the Vangelis Album cover to Beaubourg ,  by some strange coincidence, i was listening to Vangelis while doing the post - processing in Lightroom!

laterz

Pentax Takumar 35mm/f3.5 : a bargain lens part I

I got a message from someone asking whats a good way to start with manual focus lenses on the modern cameras , well here is part 1 of a quick suggestion list of what you can get for a small amount of cash.

 First off you need an adapter to utilise the lenses on a modern body, I used the official m42>pentax K adapter for my lenses, but if you are using say a Canon body , then you will need a m42> eos adapter, the ebay seller Fotodiox sells decent ones for a good price, I think mine was under 15 dollars shipped.

 Next of course you will need a lens, an inexpensive one at the moment is the one in my shot here, a Super MC Takumar 35mm/3.5 by Pentax,  mine was 20 dollars and as you can see it is mint, in fact that guy who sold it to me said it had taken perhaps half a roll of film in 1970 or so , and was unused until I popped it onto a body 40 years later , the threading still had black paint on it :) On ebay right now you can expect to grab this for about 60-80 dollars with lens caps and a hood  , like I said , the Takumars are going up in price rapidly , but they are very well made and have a great rendering to them that I find pleasing, especially the out of focus *bokeh* which reminds me of a painting . The neat part is that on a cropped sensor the 35mm becomes a 52mm to 56 mm lens , which is close to the classic film 50mm standard size.

here is a link to the full size image full size on flickr

The Takumar 28mm f3.5 : Perfect for Nature

This is the lens that started me off in the realm of vintage glass for my cameras.

 I was looking for an update  to a videogame and the lead designer is an avid photographer  quite reknowned in the world of underwater work , and he was talking about using his old Tair fotosnaiper lens on his modern body , so I did a search for vintage lenses on modern cameras and was surprised at how many sites were going on about dong that!

 I started scouring around and found a guy 100km away who had a takumar 28mm f3.5 for 20 dollars , so I ordered it from him, and it cost me 28 total :) and I also ordered a m42 > EOS adapter from ebay , the lens shows up wrapped in bubble wrap and thrown into a xmas ornament thin cardboard box , plus it was a bit dusty , I was worried it might have been damaged, but it is a solid lens, all metal and crystal clear glass.

 I put it on the Canon Rebel and couldnt believe the quality of the images ,  the colours popped, and the field of view was/is awesome! For up here in Eastern Canada one thng we have in abundence is nature, and with sunsets, sunrises etc , this lens really comes into its own, F3.5 isnt as sexy or cool as some of the other lenses made, but I shot almost all of my sky stuff at f3.5 or f5.6 and the only troubles I had was avoiding the darn powerlines!

 The shot here for example was me running across the street in my pyjamas with a Pentax KX and the tak 28mm to grab a few shots of the brilliant colours before the sun was full risen and they all faded, the sky was only like this for about 90 seconds, but I think I managed to grab a decent shot of it, full size is here:  Full size tak 28 sunrise  

 This lens is still quite inexpensive and is a bargain IMO, smooth focus , solid build and a very good angle of view , ( 42 mm on my KX, 44.8 on my Rebel)

Highly recommended!

The Japanese leica lens: Super Multi Coated takumar 50mm/1.4

Ahhh , now we are talking epic vintage lenses, and affordable too . In the 50s after the korean war, the UN troops were quite taken by the quality of the japanese optics, as they were as good as the German gear , but at a lesser cost , after a while the Japanese really came into their own, and one of the forerunners was Asahi Optical , which became pentax after the style of their cameras PENtaprism conTAX , the Pentax brand became so well known that they changed from Asahi Optical to Pentax Cameras I believe

 Enough history, what I have is one of the best regarded Pentax lenses the Super Multi Coated Takumar 50mm/1,4 , I have a few takumars that  I use on a regular basis , but the 50mm is my go to, I have shot a wedding with it, quite a few portraits, landscape , candids etc, all came out better than I expected  , this lens is very clear , and sharp and optically to get the same quality in a modern AF lens you would spend over 1200 dollars , and this can be had for around 100 , but the secret is out and the prices are rising rapidly due to the Canon 5/7D video gang , the 7 glass elements are well made and the outer body is metal, so the lens is dense, and very solid .

 If you are used to modern plasticy autofocus enses, the first time you pick up a Takumar it feels like you are holding a hand grenade, a hand grenade of awesome!  What Asahi's design mantra atthe time was to create a lens that was better than zeiss of Leica, and they achieved pretty much that ideal, in the 60s this lens was $199 and i read somewhere that they took a loss on every one they made until the manufacturing process became less expensive , to convert that, $199 in the 60s is about $2000 now!

 This shot was taken at night time using my pentax KX using the official m42>PK adapter from the pentax site, it was 30 dollars and it lets my KX use ANY pentax lens made from the mid 50s until today ! Adapter info I stepped the lens down to f4 so the OOF highlights would be octagonal as it has 8 blades inside, it came out nicer than I thought, and here is the full size version  full size : click on original

How big is the Helios 40 you ask?...........

Quite the tank! someone asked me how big the lens was, so I took a shot of it .

 the tripod collar actually hits the popupflash unit, but luckily it can be loosened off to be positioned anywhere , so what I have to do is arrange it to the left or bottom of the camera , then install the screwmount lens, and then I tighten up the tripod mount , phew!

 there are 3 knurled rings , the top one is the aperture set for the step down mechanism, the nice middle one is the one to turn to step it down, and the bottom torture device is the one for focussing :(

how it works is, you set the aperture using the top ring, IE F4 , then the lens stays wide open for focussing, then when you are ready to take the shot, you move the middle ring to stop it down , and click, there is your shot

Helios 40 85/1.5 wide open portrait

The Helios 40-1 is a strange lens, it feels like something from the 30s ( which I guess it is I guess) but the images that come out of it have a certain *look* that is surreal and yet filmic at the same time.

 When I first got it, I had a lot of trouble in Lightroom getting the colours right, so I converted most of the portraits to B+W , this is one of my youngest daughter

 I find the lens itself overbalances my small Pentax KX and the knurling on the focus ring starts to abrade my fingers after a few minutes  , but when I can retrieve an image like this, its all worthwhile, nothing like suffering for your craft!

 Someone asked for some extra info behind the lenses and cameras , so here you go:

 The reasons I like the Pentax KX over my rebel XT ( in addition to being 7 years newer tech!)

1: very agile and easy to use
2: In body image stabilisation easily adds 2 stops+
3: the High ISO ability is awesome, I have shots at ISO 3200 that are great
4: Nice colour rendering when shooting in JPG mode
5: The official adapter from pentax lets me use every  lens that pentax made, from teh M42 mounts to the modern ones!

 Thanks for the feedback , comments welcome

Sunrise with 1954 CZ Jena tessar 50mm f2.8

This was the only bright part of the day, the sunrise peeked under the overcast for less than 5 minutes, so I was outside with my KX and the Carl Zeiss Tessar lens I have that cost me 40 dollars off a guy in Greece. I did the post processing while listening to Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack, so perhaps thats why I made it in an anamorphic aspect ratio

The lens is single coated and prone to flare, but I like it , and I dont know why,but  it has a great rendering that the more modern lenses dont do, is it more contrast? less definition? I dont know , but it was made when black and white photography was the norm, so when used to take colour, it seems to really generate excellent images

Ray of Gold : Super MC Takumar 50/1.4

Ray of Gold

taken with a Super MC Takumar 50mm f1.4 at f1.4 on my Pentax KX

 On the way back to the car during an evening photo trip  the golden sunset was almost done,but a ray of light shone through the forest and landed on this leaf , so I took a picture of it naturally :)

 I like this lens, even if it is a bit yellowed with age , the thorium coating causes the cement inside to discolour over time!

Bokeh Christmas tree! Takumar 50mm /f1.4

Super Multi Coated Asahi-Pentax Takumar 50mm f1.4 at f1.4 on my Pentax KX

I had the lens wide open to get the circular highlights,  if you stop it down below F2 it turns them into octagons, and by f4 they are perfectly symmetrical . Quite cool!