Finding the Time

Finding time to take a quick pic isn't to hard but finding time to work on taking good photographs and working on the art of it is hard sometimes.

Kit: D5100 Canon 28mm 3.5 with Fotodiox Adapter

So while I was running around I made myself stop and take some photos. Usually I either don't bother bring my camera or see a spot to stop but talk myself out of it or can't see a good stop.

The buildings by the train tracks I have wanted to stop but never have. I did this time.

Now to continue this so I can improve my photography.

Right in my front yard and up the street and around the corner

I recently heard a photographer talking about process of switching to making photography fun and interesting again because it made it harder. I certainly don't need to make photography harder for my self but the excitement for photography that has come with learning how to use my vintage lenses has gotten me back into taking pictures and with the challenges of manual focus and the lack of  the modern features of my DLSR I guess it has made it harder as well.

The image above is of a rusted out truck bed or something that I have passed many times and never taken the time to photograph. Wanting to learn how to use the lenses has brought me back to photography.

I need to remember to look everywhere for the shot and then the next one.

Meadow Farm

Meadow Farm - circa.. 1810

Kit: D5100 Canon 28mm 3.5 with Fotodiox Adapter

The Set up

This was one of my fist attempts at using this 1960/70 Canon 28mm 1.2 lens I got from my father. To mount this to my Nikon DLSR I used a Fotodiox adaptor. I had learned from my outing with the 55mm lens and I think I did better on the focus.

The Process

I have visited this park many times over the years and I really enjoy it. They have lots of events and trails to hike and or bike on. My son and I, and our two little dogs, were just out for a walk and i brought my camera to test out how well I was learning zone focusing and how to use this vintage lenses over all.

The Issues

I had less issues this trip than the previous one.. except I had noticed to spots on my sensor. So I cleaned it and didn't do a very good job. I actually made it worse. I had quite a few unusable images because of the mess I made of the sensor. Lesson learned make sure when you clean the sensor you actually clean the sensor.

 

James Turrell Twilight Epiphany Skyspace and other travel photos in Houston

About a year ago I saw a place called the James Turrell Twilight Epiphany Skyspace on the campus of Rice University in Houston Texas but was unable to stop by and see it.. sunrise is hard to make. You can visit at sunset as well but I hadn't made it then either.

The space is located on the camps in a long grassy area between campus buildings. Walking up to it at 6am while it is glowing an orangey red was an interesting experience. There was no one else around and it was very quiet with only some noise from the city and a few bugs.

As the morning went on the lights under the roof cycled through different glowing color combinations. It was a very peaceful and relaxing way to spend the morning.

The Hobbit Café is a great little spot in Houston for some food and a drink. We try to visit evetime we are in town.

And as we like to walk in the towns we visit we came across this city scene.

For better or worse this was  short trip and I didn't bring my camera so I had to use my iPhone. And as usual with my phone i forget it wants to make everything bright so it did it's long magical exposure and ruined the blue glowing scene in hte dark I did my best to regain the image in Lightroom.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

Emmanuel Episcopal Church at Brook Hill was built in 1860.

Kit: D5100 Conon 55mm 1.2 with Fotodiox Adapter

The Set up

This was one of my fist attempts at using this 1960/70 Canon 55mm 1.2 lens I got from my father. To mount this to my Nikon DLSR I used a Fotodiox adaptor.

The Process

This was a great location with beautiful trees and grave stones. The building was also very interesting but I didn't get many shots of it and none were that great, next time.

I am enjoying shooting with these old lenses despite the learning curve and inherent issues with focusing and the inability to use the cameras light metering or other features of modern cameras.

*Zone Focusing is using the aperture and the distance scale on the lens to set up a "zone" that will be in focus. I am still learning and processing this but the way I am currently doing this technique is placing an f stop say f8. On the lens there is scale that corresponds to the lenses f stops. It starts with the highest f stop on one side an goes down to the lowest number as it moves to the center of the lens and then back up again on the other side. You line the infinity sign up on the f stop you are using on the right side of the lens. Then were the f stop is on the right will line up with a distance in feet and or meters. From that number to infinity should be in focus. For my 55mm set to f8 everything from about 6 feet in front of me to infinity should be in focus.

The Issues

Focal Length: Between the full framed lens and the photo adaptor this 55mm lens turned into an much longer focal length. I didn't do the math before I went out there but I believe the lens is creates a 1.5x magnification/crop and the adaptor is about the same. So it probably ended up between 85 and 123mm +-. This did cause me to have to be farther away from subjects than I was expecting.

Focus and all other modern conveniences: Manual Focus, between my old eyes and using this vintage lens on what is probably considered a vintage or DSLR manual focus is problematic. DSLRs do not have the split imaging focus like the old SLRs did and my camera is too old and low-end to have Focus Peeking. Another issue with vintage lenses is there are no sensors to give your camera any information so you have to shoot in manual mode and at least in my camera shoot with out any focusing indication or help and no use of the light meter.

Since these photos have been taken I have started to try and use Zone Focusing* or Hyper Focusing, I am sill learning.

The Journey Continues

My journey with vintage lens continues. It is by no means a smooth easy journey but they say it is about the journey and not the destination. Well this journey is going to have a lot of blurry and wrongly exposed images.

Kit: Canon FL 28mm 3.5 lens on Nikon D5100 camera body.

Zone Focusing: This first image worked pretty well on my initial zone focused image. The rest didn't have the same clarity and depth of field. 

Even though the other images didn't come out as well as the first I wanted to try to practice with Lightroom so I have processed them despite the less than desirable focus.

For these last three images I did start with the Lightroom presets instead of starting from scratch. This got me to a decent image much quicker and with a better output. 

The journey will continue...