May 11, 2012 - New Old Lens

May 11, 2012 - New Old Lens


This is a fairly recent addition to my collection of older manual focus lenses. It is a Takumar 1:4 17mm Fish Eye. They're not too hard to find on eBay, but always seem to drive a premium price. After watching for a while, I found one at the lower end of the scale, bid, and won. It isn't a perfect example, but the flaws are minor enough for it to be perfectly serviceable. I'm less interested in spotless museum quality collectors items than I am functional, interesting bits of gear to enjoy actually using.

Haven't yet shot very many frames with this fish-eye. Haven't really had the time. It is VERY wide - 180deg FOV. Found it is very very easy to include fingers and such in the frame.

Am using these older lenses on the 5dII by way of various M42 to EOS adapters. Have tried a couple different ones. Have a "pro" Fotodiox right now which seems to be the best of the bunch - and even that one sometimes doesn't mate well enough for the focus chip to function. Most of these are made over seas. The chips work, but seem like a real hack. Mostly an after thought, they're typically just glued onto the adapter ring. However, since the 5dII doesn't have a split-prism focus screen available, unless you have really good eyes, the chip is a necessary evil. Of course, with a fish-eye, like this, it isn't quite as much of a worry as with other lenses.

January 13, 2012 - Dessert at Proof

January 13, 2012 - Dessert at Proof. Ran downtown and met folks for happy hour and some eats at Proof. Good Fun, good friends and ya, the wine and food excellent too.

Photo Notes - ya, you guessed it, iPro Fish-Eye lens on the iPhone. ISO 800, 1/15th, f/2.4. Had the camera resting on the table to keep it steady while I took the shot. Lit with available light - of which there wasn't a whole lot.

January 3, 2012 - Commuting fun. Wasn't really ready for this today. I suppose that neither was anyone else.

Photo Notes: Another iPhone with iPro fish-eye lens. ISO 64, 1/320 second @ f /2.4. Had the phone mounted to a spring clip using the iPro case which has a screw mount adapter for standard 1/4-20 thread. You can see a bit of a clip in the upper right hand side of the photo. The clip was wedged under the passenger side visor. I was using the headphone "+" button as a remote trigger.

I was trying to be careful about adding distractions in the car. The phone was far enough away that it wasn't in my field of view, and I couldn't see the screen while I was driving. So, no temptation towards chimping - just shoot and hope.

What would I do better next time? I suppose the easy answer is "use a better rig" but, really, the iPhone is a nice size here - it was relatively unobtrusive and non-distracting. The remote trigger capabilities of the headset worked well. I could trade the fish-eye for the wide lens, something to try next time.

The clip probably needs a bit of tuning; I'd like to not see it in the frame, first, and second, I'd like to have everything a bit more secure, rather than just thrown together and wedged into the visor, as it was. This was a ten minute hack with available hardware. I did actually use a screwdriver at one point to assemble things, but only to tighten the 1/4-20 screw down enough that it didn't randomly fall out.

Also - guess I need to give the car a wash. Hmmm.

December 31, 2011 - NYE dinner and wine tasting at Screwtop.

Taken with the iPro fish-eye lens on the Iphone. No flash, just ambient light.

December 30, 2011 - Sushi cat - Snuggling on the couch with CKB. We're at just over 2 years with this pair of cats. They're great friends and have brought us no end of joy and happiness. So glad we were able to adopt them. Taken with "iPro" fisheye lens from Schneider optics (Thanks DGK!).