Pentacon 300mm f4

I occasionally like to make use of a longer tele lens than the Nikkor 180mm f2.8. So, I bought a Pentacon 300mm f4 which weighs a ton - to capture the occasional bird or other wildlife shot. This came in at under AUD200 so was not a big investment. And I figured I would also take for travel shoots where I had the car available for transport as there’s no way I’m going to carry this with the other lenses in a camera bag. I have previously used both Canon and Nikon teles upto 400mm as well as the 300mm equivalent Olympus. I have to say I love the images this lens produces. That wonderfully soft and somehow still quite sharp result together with beautiful colour rendering makes the images from this lens worth the exercise.

Wattlebird in Grevillea bush - handheld.

A four hour forest walk

I’ve really enjoyed coming here over the years. Although its only 10 minutes off the main road that goes through the Blue Mountains, you can, as I did only come across one other person the whole day. I don’t live here anymore so the trip isn’t as predictable as it used to be. Weather forecasts can’t be relied on…

A lot can change over time and this area was strewn with fallen trees and likely subject to some flooding. Nevertheless there were cool little spots for testing a Zeiss 18mm f3.5 lens (on a Sony A7RIII). Some superwide lenses with leave you with stretched corners which I find particularly unpleasant and distracting in a landscape scene. Not to mention very difficult to correct in post. Most photographers don’t seem to even bother. The photo below as with others in this blog were edited with the ‘auto’ selection and ‘Adobe landscape’ profile in Camera Raw. I found I had to reduce the saturation a little though. For the most part they were shot at f11. Although I focus stacked many of them I can’t see the necessity of using the other exposures.

It was overcast for most of the day so exposures were upto a couple of seconds. For these a tripod was used of course. I’ve gotten used to working with manual lenses and not having much info at my disposal. I don’t find it matters much although I don’t always remember which lens was used. On this day though - was the Zeiss 18mm and another piece of Zeiss glass which doubles as an excellent close up lens - 35mm f 2.4 Flektogon. The reason I like traveling to this location is that all these features were within a 500metre radius.

BTW, I would have moved this log resting on the tree root if it wasn’t so heavyand quite long.

This one is quite bizzare…

Black & white coastal

I would usually swim here but a combination yesterday’s weather and timing made it a little impractical. What’s only partially visible but not obvious is the wind that was blowing. It was moving the sand over the surface of the beach and created a wavy effect just in front of the shoreline. Combined with the stormy clouds above and two sand mounds in the foreground it provided quite a good multi toned b&w image.

A longer view of the beach with sand drift lines drawing the vision into the frame. An ND filter would have been useful for these two images to slightly blur the breaking waves but a long exposure wasn’t really possible under these conditions - even if I had a tripod handy.

Below, a colour shot for context.

Second bite at the cherry...

Returning to Cradle Mountain in Tasmania during a sudden snow dump was a welcome break from some pretty hard physical labour on a farm. Sliding around on the road enroute to the National Park due to ice on the road combined with shortness of available time heightened the senses. I’d been there about a week earlier in bright sunshine. Seeing it now transformed in white was a real treat.

Lugging around a big camera bag with all available lens options was not an appealing one. So, it was one lens in the pocket and one on the camera. I even thought I would leave the tripod in the car and make the most of high ISOs. Not a great option if you’re looking for near and far focus matching sharp images at small apertures or even considering a portfolio effort. Anyway, here are some of those images with more from others destinations.

All these images were taken just outside the entry to the NP. There are a few good walks and these are within 20mins of the car park. Of course a 20 minute walk quickly turns into 2 hours if your stopping frequently, changing lenses (and cleaning of moisture) and setting up a tripod. Most of these shots were done holding an umbrella (rain variety). River shots were from Pencil Pine walk and others from King Billy Pines walk.

The below image is my ‘could’ve been’ shot which I ended up taking with an iPhone. The blown highlight my punishment for not packing a 50mm or 85mm lens.

So, have I learnt my lesson? Yes. I recently acquired a smaller camera bag - a Lowepro Backpack Lightweight Sporty Lowepro Tahoe BP 150. Lightweight alright. Some might say flimsy. You don’t get much for $80. Still it’ll do the job for now. An extra 3-4 lenses with relatively easy access. I’m not really complaining.

The above shot is of one of those places you drive past and notice out of the corner of your eye. But there’s no place to stop and there is a line of cars behind you. I’ve been there before. Not this time. Turn around after stopping and head back. Wandered around for an hour. Even got access via a gate. It was a wetland area.

Early morning shot from a bridge somewhere near Campbell Town. Probably the South Esk River. All things considered I think Tasmania is Australia’s most beautiful state. Plenty of these beautiful scenes all within reach of a day’s travel.

Can’t say I know what’s going on here. This is an iPad shot taken quickly from a bridge on the way to St Helens.

A black and white conversion that works for me. Another ‘stop down the road, turn around and come back’ shot.

Not much interesting lighting but still a great experience. If I’m not mistaken - the Meander River on the way to Liffey Falls.

Tree roots, Liffey rainforest. I haven’t mentioned thus far that this was my first real outing with the CZ 20mm F4.

I’m pretty satisfied with its performance along with the rest of the CZ lenses. They’re all manual lenses - for the most part its not a big deal especially with landscape photography. Being f4 hardly matters either. Nearly all shots are f8 and above. Sadly my prize 50mm Pancolar has developed some sticky aperture blades and so stayed at home for this trip. Relegated for the moment to portrait shots at around f2.8.

Nice combination

Recently, I bought a number of vintage lenses such as Carl Zeiss 35mm Flektogon from East Germany and also some Soviet-made lenses like the Jupiter 9 and Helios 44M. I bought these to replace some of the lenses that I sold that were medium format that I had been using on my Nikon D800 for several years. In fact one of my early posts in this blog refers to those lenses that replaced some more modern Nikon lenses - one in particular that was totalled in a fall of a cliff (24-70mm). But that’s another story. Just prior to buying these vintage lenses I bought a Carl Zeiss Planar T* 85 mm F1 .4 for those occasions where I might need a larger image such as the Nikon D 800 can provide but with a good quality lens with excellentllent resolution. It’s turned out to be a very impressive piece of glass. But more interestingly I combined it with an XPro close-up lens super II F500. The resulting sample image can be seen here. I’ve always been wary of using any other glass in combination with a lens I know to be of exceptional quality like the 85mm CZ for fear of diminishing the quality of the image. That did not seem to be the case here.

Carl Zeiss 85mm f1.4 with XPro F500 close-up lens

While not exactly macro I was particularly pleased at what could be achieved with this lens. BTW, the CU lens was not attached via a threaded adapter (which I’ve since ordered), I just held it up to the lens. The image has not been sharpened or touched up in any way save a small amount of exposure compensation. I couldn’t achieve this result with any of the other lenses. Both the sharpness and bokeh for my liking are superb. Message me for more details if you’re thinking of this combination. The CZ lens came in at around AU$1100 and the XPro $55. Both are second hand but mint condition. PS. Although I still have the D800, I have an adapter for the Sony A7III which more easily accommodates the vintage lenses.

Gumtree and black pines in snow

A cold blast or as the weather news described - an ‘antarctic blob’ arrived yesterday and delivered a substantial snow dump close to and including the Blue Mountains. The shot below was taken near the town of Oberon. More to follow…

'Aerial' shots

Well, not really… I was in the process of compiling some video clips for a meditation sequence. The images reminded me of some aerial views of the landscape in Iceland. They were taken on the coast south of Sydney.

Cliff face shots (below) from the northern end of the beach.

Anamorphic images

Well its been a while since my last entry into the captain’s log. Lots going on in the world right now but this will be on the topic of photography. For various reasons partly involving me doing video shoots with people and food, I have resorted to the use of iPhones to get the job done. I was also inspired by the quality of the images I took on my recent tour to Russia and Hungary. The iPad with a measly 5 MB camera turned out some pretty acceptable images. On the strength of the improvements offered by the better cameras in the iPhone 8 Plus I decided that the videos that I will be making could just as easily, in fact much more easily be done with phones. The size, the compact nature of them, battery life, on-board memory, quality of the video, all made them a front runner in putting together and editing the footage on an iPad.

In addition to them having a modest zoom function I looked into the reviews on third party lenses in particular the Moment anamorphic lens which attaches to the iPhone via a case sold also by moment. I ah e bought the Tele and the wide but as yet haven’t used them extensively. There are plenty of YouTube videos about them though. I did a photoshoot the other day with the anamorphic and was very pleasantly surprised by the results. I’m posting a couple of shots here of a mother and son in Mt Wilson

Czar’s holiday house

This is one of those images I photographed many times with the iPad. Mainly because I wanted to get just the right positioning in relation to the tree and horizon. I also had the DSL are and took some shots with that as well. Apparently this is the summer residence of the Czar (Peter) at Peterhof. Well, this is his verandah. The summer house which is not in view is a single story effort. Not that impressive but I’m sure it’s very comfortable inside.

Fit for purpose

If you had of told me a few years ago that I’ll be walking around using an iPad for photography I wouldn’t have believed you. In reality most photography if we are real about it doesn’t find its way onto the walls of a gallery. Most photography is done, intentionally or not for the web. And it makes sense because that’s where the biggest audiences are. I’m not completely won over by the use of the iPad as a walk around camera mainly because I end up with JPEGs that I can’t do very much with in terms of colour balance. But on balance taking photos with this tool makes its functionality and acceptable compromise in certain situations.

While I was travelling in India I never wanted to convert my images to black-and-white just because it has such richness of colour. However in other places where colour isn’t that much of an influential factor and where street photography is the main consideration then black-and-white makes perfect sense. So then it doesn’t matter so much how accurate your colours are as a JPEG.

Having said all that, just for the sake of having flexibility in the final output I still want to have raw files. I have intended for a year or two now to downsize my Quitman and equipment and I’m interested in the camera that has reasonable quality and IBIS and is compact. The new Olympus EM5 MKIII when it comes out may well be the ideal choice.

Blown highlights are not pretty

And I would never commit an image to print that had them. However, more important in this instance then my photography skills being demonstrated is the telling of the story to show the skills and the quality of art work. It’s a bit like spelling mistakes when you’re communicating an important idea – they don’t seem so significant or detract from the idea. The question arises though – later will I want to commit an image to print ie. will it be used in other media or have a standalone application. Meaning, will it have to tell it’s own story?