lenses with defects are ok

I once wrote a blog entry about whether photography is art or not. The reason I wrote that, and why I keep up my blog, is to find out what I really think about it. when I write it down I tend to think it more through. One of the things I mentioned in the article was that digital photography becomes too perfect. Almost cold and robotic instead of an organic process. I wrote that light leaks and lens imperfections shaped the character of old photographs. Recently I have been reviewing a few lenses on my blog, (mostly to help other buyers of old glass since there is relatively little written about it on the internet) and I have been complaining about the performances of some of these old lenses. For example in my review of the vivitar 200mm f/3.5 I do not sincerely recommend (even though it still is a great lens) it because it shows quite some CA wide open, and the sharpness is a small OK. 

However I took that lens out today, and because it was overcast and it is a longer lens I had to use it wide open. Then I took this photo, and when I saw it on the computer it struck me that I have been contradicting myself. I once said that it shaped the character of a photograph when it showed defects, and in my reviews I was complaining about their “character”. And to be honest I even exaggerated the softness of the lens. I shot this photo in raw, and did not add any sharpening, reduced the contrast, and applied a Gaussian blur at the edges. So what I am basically trying to say is that there are a lot of good lenses, but some are more appropriate for different kinds of photography. When you want to best (or clinical perfect) look, go for the latest lenses, but sometimes the defects of lenses can give a wonderful mood to your photographs. 

vivitar 200mm f/3.5

Vivitar was a lens re-seller, and the serial numbers are an indicator who actually manufactured the lens. There is some difference in optical quality and exterior per manufacturer. You can check who made your lens on this list

The serial number on my lens starts with 28 which means it’s made by Komine.

I am not sure if I am really positive about this lens. In test shots it shows what it can do, but in the field (which is way more important) it is a lens which takes getting used to before you get good results. It is pretty difficult to get the right focus, and if you missed just a bit you will notice it. I guess I will be more positive about it in the future, but for now I really need to pay attention to my focus, more than on any other lens (except for macro photos)

Handling the lens

The lens feels solid, it is quite heavy but not front heavy. You can stabilize it quite easily and does not feel unbalanced on my D60. The focus ring is quite smooth, not as smooth as my Nikkor lenses, this one uses oil. This is a major disadvantage during cold days because the oil becomes stiff and the lens is harder to focus. However most of the off-brand lenses use oil in their focus mechanisms so I won’t nag about it anymore. The thing is, focus is really critical with this lens. When I first got it and tested it I was a bit carless about my focussing. At first I thought I bought a dog because images were soft. This lens does not tolerate focus errors at all, and the right focus is a bit hard to achieve. It takes a smaller twist on the focus ring than I used to to defocus the lens. This is could be because the focus ring is not precise enough, but I think it’s mostly because it is a longer lens with a faster aperture than I normally use. The lens has a built in hood. It is relatively short and I am not sure how effective it really is. But it probably is better than nothing and it seems like a nice feature. (especially during the rain to keep your front element dry)

Results

Wide open this lens is extremely prone to CA. In high contrast situations you’re able to see it without looking closely. During processing you will find CA everywhere. However it falls within the limits of what’s correctable in my post processing program ( I use Capture NX 2, but I’m sure any other program will be able to cope with it as well)

The sharpness wide open is a small OK. It does not shine wide open. At f/3.5 details start to blur, perhaps also caused by the CA.

without correction

With correction

At f/5.6 the quality starts to increase rapidly. Sharpness increases to great, but CA is still visible, but a lot less. You won’t be able to see it at normal magnifications, only when you zoom in for small precise adjustments (hey not pixel peeping right?) I would be confident to use this lens for a large print for a paid job at f/5.6.

F/3.5

F/5.6

Bokeh is all right, with busy backgrounds it can be distracting, especially branches. The only solution is to open up your lens, or come closer. But a lot of lenses won’t be able to handle it very well. If the background is a bit smoother the bokeh will be all right.

Conclusions

I bought this lens mostly because I wanted something faster than my 70-210 f/4-5.6 for my walk around wildlife photographs. And this lens does the job all right, it is a good lens but nothing special. It is not as sharp wide open as my 70-210, but this one has a faster aperture. I end up using this lens as a regular 200mm f/5.6 lens with some emergency extra F-stops. The reason I do so is because focus is really critical and I just need the DoF to get sharp images. Especially for wild life because the focus ring has more friction than my Nikkor lenses (but as much friction as my other 3^rd party lenses) which makes it a bit less precise. And because the real sharpness of the lens is just better at f/5.6 So in conclusion I do recommend this lens, but don’t pay too much for it. The lens is OK, but nothing more. 

Note:

If you want full resolution images, just sent me an email, and I will send them to you. I just don't like to put up full resolution images

leave your white balance on auto

I know, everyone always says that your auto white balance isn’t any good. And partly it’s true, it can be way off. And that’s also the beauty of it since I only recommend shooting in auto white balance when you shoot in RAW. Because when you shoot in RAW your in-camera white balance does not really matter, you can change it afterwards without compromising the image quality.

Now back to why you can shoot auto white balance: it messes things up up. For example this photo:

With the correct white balance it looks way warmer and greener. Which would have been fine, but with the blue hint the photo looks better (to me). I do not think I would have come up with this result myself. I probably would have fine tuned my white balance to make it correct and the photo would look less alien. But with photos like this, when your white balance is off, sometimes it gives you a tip how you could process your photograph.

On the other hand, when you are on an assignment and you want to do as little post production as possible, you probably want to fine tune your white balance in camera. But if you’re shooting for yourself and you want to “develop” your photos anyway, you can try auto white balance.

Thanks for reading,

Koen

Vivitar Series 1 28-90mm f/2.8-3.5 review

WARNING: Vivitars, and especially this lens, are notorious for problems with the aperture. This lens is notorious for oil leaking on the blades.

My lens is one of those lenses with oil leaking on the blades, this causes the blades to be too slow to close down. Fortunately because of something in the design the lens doesn’t automatically open up all the way when you put it on your camera with the aperture closed. It opens up to f/4, giving me two apertures to work with. (I think this is caused by the higher friction, so the springs which should open it up all the way are too weak).

Before you plan to buy this lens, check the serial number. There are multiple versions around, made by different manufacturers, although I have heard that every version of this lens is good. My lens is made by Komine.

Handling the lens:

The lens is pretty heavy, yet it does not feel unbalanced with my d60, and of course this weight should be expected for a large aperture zoom lens. The lens has a different design than most lenses: you have to refocus every time you zoom. This takes some time to get used to, but in the end you’ll keep it in mind.

The design allows very close focus at the widest end, but only a minimal focus distance of one meter at 90mm. To be honest I really like this, it gives a nice wide angle look to your near-macro shots, something you don’t see very often.

Handling the lens without metering:

If you use this lens on a consumer grade Nikon camera you’ll probably lose metering.  but if you get the hang of guessing the exposure this lens will not pose any problems. Yes this lens has a variable aperture, but it’s only half a stop, so if you forget to adjust you can easily fix it in post. And because you have to refocus anyway after you’ve zoomed this lens in or out you’ll probably remember adjusting the exposure just a bit.

Results:

The lens shows quite some chromatic aberration wide open, especially wide open. Yet your post production program is very well able to remove this. When you close it down, there still is some CA but you have to look for it. However I like to get rid of it anyway since it takes almost no effort.

Sharpness is almost OK wide open. You get a usable image, but if you look your photo at 100% you see that is soft compared to a prime shot wide open. I’m not sure if this is a fair comparison, a prime has an easier construction, but why would you settle for less if you also have a prime? However if you close it down one stop it sharpens up to very usable levels, but don’t expect extreme sharpness.

Bokeh is ok, nothing really special, but also not very distracting.

There are some downsides though, this lens is pretty prone to flare. Sometimes the flare is all over your photograph, reducing the contrast. You can use this to your advantage, but sometimes it just happens too often and easy.

I have heard quite some complaints about vignetting, but because I use this lens on a DX sensor I have not yet noticed it. When I shoot it against a white wall I’ll probably see it, but until now I have not seen it in “real” photographs.

(the highlights in the background is flare caused by a flash positioned at 60 degrees from camera left)

Conclusion:

Buy this lens if you want an easy lens with a lot of possibilities, and that’s the reason I like it. You get a useful range, you can focus really close and you have a fast lens. This sounds too good to be true, and of course it is. The results are ok, but not amazing. I think that’s the reason I don’t use it very often, because I also have a 28mm and 50mm which do have amazing image quality and are my preferred focal lengths.  

(also checkout this page for extra reviews)

my thought process for this photograph

First I wanted to take a normal photograph of a mushroom nearby, but the flies kept bugging me. Then this little shroom caught my attention because flies were constantly sitting on it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and decided to come back to this mushroom since it was near the entrance of the forest.

After 2 hours I came back and the sun was already setting and I cursed myself for being too lazy to figure out what I actually wanted. Than I remembered that I also brought a flash and triggers just in case I might run out of light.

I tried a test shot and realized that the light was too hard for this photograph, good thing I always keep an envelope in my bag as a reflector for macro photography. (if you take an occasional macro photo, put an envelope in your bag the next time you go out. They do not take up any space, but can save you, just like it did for this photo)

Instead of using the envelope as a reflector I pulled it over my flash to soften the light. I put the flash at a 90 degree angle from the camera and started to take some photographs. Than I accidently pointed my camera a bit at the flash and noticed the flare.

I thought it would be cool to make a dramatic photo with flare of a fly looking into the camera. I increased my shutter speed to decrease my ambient exposure to make the photo more dramatic and pointed my camera near the flash with envelope.

Unfortunately the flies would not look into my camera, but when I reviewed my shots on the computer I saw this one looking at the flare.

Thanks for reading,

Koen

using M42 lenses on your nikon: Glass vs non glass adapters

Glass vs. non-glass M42 adapters for Nikon

There are a lot of good lenses out there which are sometimes even cheaper than the old Nikkor lenses I normally use. They all have the Pentax screwmount, also known as the M42 mount. Unfortunately Nikon is the worst brand to use lenses on with another mount. Canon cameras, for example, can use an adapter without glass to obtain infinity focus. But because the difference in Nikon cameras between the sensor/film and the lens is longer than with most brands you can not obtain infinity focus without an optical element in your adapter.

However these adapters are not known for their optical quality, usually they go for 30 euros on Ebay, one can hardy expect any quality glass for that price.

In the summer I bought a Helios 58mm f/2 lens because of the “swirly bokeh” it produces when the background is full of these out of focus highlights. I thought that I would become frustrated with the lens if I could not use it until infinity so I ordered a relative expensive one and hoped that because of the price the quality would at least be a bit better.

Unfortunately it would produce extremely soft images, especially with the lens used wide open. After a bit of research I found out that the reflections between the adapter and the lens itself were most pronounced when there was a lot of light coming through the lens.

Stopped down the images look kind off alright, but it was certain that I would never get really sharp results from this combo.

I tried and I tried but I could not get a moderately sharp image wide open, when I shot a portrait, it would like one of these fashion photos were the editor went a bit too far with removing blemishes from the model’s face. And worst of all, somehow the adapter corrected for the swirly bokeh, the only reason I wanted this lens.

Luckily I ordered my adapter from a very friendly seller, and he accepted my complaints and let me return it. At the same time I ordered the non-glass adapter, so I could at least use my lens. The difference between your maximum focus distance and infinity differs per focal length, wide angle lenses suffer the worst from this, while some long telephoto lenses can focus up ‘till 10 meters. A 58mm gives you a maximum focus distance of something like 4 meters. You can make a headshot of your model, but that’s it. (and actually that’s the only way I wanted to use the lens, for portraits)

But because there’s not glass between the lens and the sensor/film the optical quality of the lens remains, and I have my swirly bokeh back.

So although the Nikon/M42 combo is not an ideal one, you can get some cool lenses for a relatively low price, even though (at least I would recommend using a non-glass adapter) you won’t have infinity focus.

Thanks for reading,

Koen 

Scanning film on a budget

First of all, I did not come up with the entire idea myself, I watched this video http://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalRevCom#p/u/7/AgOTk4ApEYs where they use their computer screen as a backlight.

To digitalize your film you need a lens which focuses close enough. You have to be able to take a frame filling photograph of a single negative to get the maximum resolution. If you don’t have a macro lens / extension tubes you can crop the digital photograph but you’ll lose resolution. However keep in mind that since most of us own a camera with a DX sensor you don’t need to have a 1:1 magnification. I use a 70-210mm lens and extension tubes so I can change my magnification by zooming and focussing. And I always include some extra space, you can always crop it out in post production but it gives you a black control point for when you are “developing” your colour negative. (see chapter colour)

To get a good photograph you need some light coming in from the back. Just open a new document in Microsoft word and you get a large equal light coming from the back. Keep in mind that the computer screen is built up from pixels, so keep some space between your negative and the screen.

To keep the negative in place I use a simple box, and I just put the negative in one of the folds of the box so it will stay put. I intent to make something more sophisticated because film has a tendency to roll up again, which results in depth of field issues, but haven’t yet. [UPDATE: i use a slide projector frame]

Once you have the photographs, you load them into your computer. This doesn’t mean you’re finished. You have to “develop” the negative image in a positive one. Open your photo program and go to the curves menu and invert the line, normally the line starts in the lower left corner and ends in the upper right one. The only thing you need to do is to make the line go from the upper left corner to the lower right corner.

From here the process for black and white and colour film differs:

Black and white

Depending on the desired result you can desaturate your photograph. (your digital camera adds a sepia tint to your black and white negative) I have noticed that my photographs from negatives are a bit flat, so I add some contrast to the photograph. From here on, it’s basically a normal work flow and up to your own personal preferences.

Colour

Colour photographs are a bit trickier to digitalize because the negatives also show a colourcast. Until now I only have experience with Fuji Superia film, and this film shows an overwhelming blue colourcast. 

You can eliminate this colourcast with the colour picker tool. With these tools you tell your computer what part of the photo is supposed to be black, white and 18% percent gray. Sometimes you don’t have a perfectly black spot in your photograph, this is why I include just a little more in my digital photograph of the negative. The borders of the photograph (unexposed part of the film) should be black, so that’s my first reference point. You will see that it already looks much more a good photograph and it will be easier to spot where to place the other colour pickers. 

Then you place the white spot, and after that the colour correcting can begin with the neutral one.

Even though the colour pickers are quite precise you don’t always get your desired colour. But that’s part of your regular digital workflow as well, and I guess that’s up to personal preference how you finish your photograph.

I hope this article made some sense to you, if not don’t be afraid to leave a question / send me an email. Thanks for reading,

Koen