Tag: Close up

50 days of 50mm #48

Early on in this 50mm project, I saw an opportunity to get more acquainted with some of the vintage 50mm lenses I had acquired from charity shops and online outlets.

My good intentions were halted in their tracks by the enjoyment of using my Pentacon 50mm lens, more often than not but today’s walk finally saw me using my Carl Zeiss Jenar Tessar 50mm 2.8 lens.

The pattern for much of August so far has been to get out early, more to avoid the inordinately high temperatures we are seeing in the UK at present than to chase a sunrise.

Even at just after 5:30 am, there is a warmth in the air, the sky an expanse of beautiful blue with no hint of clouds, another scorcher on the way.

The Jenar lens is one of the few lenses that will focus to infinity on the 5d, without grazing the mirror, one of the reasons the Pentacon has taken a firm place in my camera bag.

As with many of these vintage lenses, the colour rendition is very pleasing and even at the widest apertutre of F2.8 this lens offfers a pleasing bokeh and subject separation.

As I take my normal route towards my riverside walk, the light makes for some pleasing images at St. David’s church, even at a wide aperture the images are pleasantly sharp without being clinically so.

With a mixed bag of monochrome, reflections and close ups, I have enjoyed this morning’s walk and I shall look forward to sharing the images later in the day.

50 days of 50mm #46

Back in the late spring, I visited a forest that to my shame, I had not really explored that much, despite being just a few miles from my doorstep.

I blame my preoccupation of Dartmoor and the nearby coast for my lapse but today, I intend to fulfil a promise I made to myself after the last trip, which was to become more familiar with my local forests and woods.

Immersing myself within this beautiful landscape is not hard, listening to the stonechat just ahead of me, interrupted very rudely by the screech of a jay, neither of which I see, just knowing they are here is good enough.

I choose once more to use my manual focus 50mm lenses (50mm takumar F1.4 and Pentacon F1.8), as I find the act of twisting a focus ring so much more pleasurable than pressing a button, that same feeling goes for changing aperture value on the lens itself, rather than through a screen.

Hopefully the enjoyment I had here is evident in my selection of photos in the gallery below, I will also ensure my next visit will sooner than the autumn.

50 days of 50mm #31

For day 31 I am back in my former home town of Salcombe, where I once again make an early morning start in the hope of watching another sunrise.

The chances of capturing the vibrant colours of late are lessened by a thick layer of cloud but the light is favourable and there is little or no breeze.

The stillness of the morning is emphasized more by the silence of a town devoid of people and traffic, in just a couple of hours, it will be a typical bustling seaside town waiting to welcome the weekend’s pleasure seeking tourists.

For now, I enjoy the solitude and serenity of the scenes in front of me, capturing the shimmering reflections and subdued light of this Saturday morning.

Using the native Canon 50mm for the landscape shots, I decide to shoot with my Pentacon 50mm lens, capturing a few shots on the walk back, with an emphasis on close ups of a patch of daisies that appealed to the eye.

One of things I have come to appreciate with shooting at 50mm, is how an apparently mundane subject can be seen as a potential image, especially through the glass of an older lens, where its soft corners and vignetting can be used to my advantage for that more organic and imperfect look.






Small world

I remember my first experience of looking through the eyepiece of a science lab microscope at school and being immediately captivated by the details that were previously kept hidden from my inquisitive mind.
Of course I had seen images in the children’s magazines of the day, (look and learn being a particular favourite) but to see these images in the real world made me want to look at the world in a different way.

The fascination for these miniature worlds has never left me, I count macro photography as one of my favourite subjects, typically it is fair to say I have bought and sold a few dedicated macro lenses over the years but it is possible to get close without spending a fortune.

These days, rather than lugging an expensive and often heavy lens around, I use one of my vintage 50mm lenses for close up work, while not a dedicated macro lens, its close focusing ability allows for a much lighter camera bag and some decent results.

The lens is question is one I mention often in my musings, a Pentacon 50mm 1.8 lens, available very fairly priced on online auction sites.
These lenses are often the of the  M42 screw mounting, popular with many of the SLR cameras of the day, for around £10-£20, an m42 mount adaptor can be bought for most makes of camera.

Focus is manual only, aperture is controlled from the lens aperture ring, focus from the lens ring, just like the good old days.

In the current ‘stay home’ directive, take a little time to look around the garden at things that we take for granted, take pleasure in the things that we can see, not those that we can’t.

 

Close to home

Walking has always been something I have enjoyed, from an early age growing up by the sea, I took great pleasure in discovering the miles of coast path around the picturesque south hams.
It has only been in the last 10 years that a camera has become a part of my continued exploration of old and new places, what better way to record the changing of the seasons in those favourite haunts?

More recently, I have endeavoured to travel further afield, with day trips to Bristol, a 3 day break in London, other venues were due to follow this year but for the Covid spanner being thrown into the works.

The moving of the goal posts has been the same for all of us, it is how we respond to new challenges that can make us more creative, or perhaps in my case, to appreciate all the more the opportunities that are on our doorstep.

For the last couple of mornings, I have taken an early walk around the River Exe, watching the day unfold but this morning I was keen to see what I could find closer to home.

With the morning spent doing the few jobs I had set out to do, it was unusual for me to set out after lunch but with ideas in mind, it was a favourite 50mm vintage lens that was put onto the camera, the pentacon 50mm 1.8, which offers a close focusing ability.

There is something about the rendering of colours from vintage lenses that I really like for this type of close up image, as well as the fact that manual focusing gives you the feeling of taking the shot, not just point and click.

While I only took a fraction of the photos that I would on a ‘normal’ photo walk, I was happy with the majority of them, just going to prove we should not ignore, or take for granted the beauty than can be found close to home.