Weird camera and lens combinations involving weird cameras and weird lenses.... Or what we do when it's too hot to play outdoors.

Photographed with the charming and highly capable Panasonic Gh5ii

and the Olympus 12-45mm Pro lens. Surprised at how much I liked the

technical quality of the image.....

 I love being out taking photographs far more than I like talking about cameras but the weather is actively campaigning against me spending much time tromping around in the nasty heat jungle that seems to have settled over Texas. Perhaps it's a karmic punishment for our political transgressions. Maybe it's just a rogue weather pattern that won't let go. But right now we've got an actual temperature of 105° and when you combine that with 30% humidity you wind up with a lusty 112° of heat index; or what it feels like to your body. We're exceeding our "Wet Bulb" threshold by a good margin. 

As of July 19th Summer we have had 78 days over 90° (actual temps) and now 41 days in a row over 100°. We're all getting just a little tired of the relentlessness of it all. Can't wait to see the electric bills....sigh.

I've been getting up earlier in order to water the plants and trees that I consider "mission critical" to my long term lifestyle/mental health. The Japanese maples are getting special treatment these days. I've even rigged up a few scrims to block the direct sun on a few branches that were showing signs of heat stress. It's hard work but it would be harder on me to lose the trees. They are quite beautiful. 

After I take care of my horticultural chores I make myself a cup of (these days....) decaffeinated coffee, eat a piece of toast and head over to the pool for our coached workout. The water temperature is as cold as we can make it with evaporative coolers but with our daytime highs and nighttime non-lows we're struggling to keep the water temperature under 84°. That's a hot swim and it sucks the moisture right out of your body when you are swimming hard. We each keep a cold, re-usable bottle of water at the end of our lanes and in between sets our coaches encourage ample re-hydration. I didn't used to take it very seriously but this year I'm zealous. Sixteen ounces an hour.

Sadly, or happily, I took a break on Monday from swimming with the team and went to the Deep Eddy Pool which is Spring fed and just freaking marvelous. The spring water is refilled every couple of days and it comes out of the wells at something like 68°. Plunging in on Monday morning was a little bit of heaven. The laps were better than free money. But now I feel that the memory of the perfect water colors my appreciation of our team workouts in the warmer pool. Deep Eddy is a public pool and I'm pretty sure the City of Austin isn't going to invite our whole team over to monopolize all the lap lanes any time soon. 

Since the "mercury" has been hitting 100° or higher by noon each day I try to get errand running done as quickly as possible. Our house uses a septic system for wastewater and our septic guy, Bob, recommends we drop a gallon of a special live, beneficial bacteria solution ($48 per gallon !!!) into the main tank at least twice a year. The stuff in the gallon bottle smells really bad but I can tell you that the grass is much greener over the septic field --- and we haven't had any major problems with the system in years. Occasionally a pump fails. It gets replaced. And yes, I do have a septic guy. I hope he never retires...

Except for a few assignments inside chilly high rise office buildings we're dead in the water here, business-wise. And that's okay. Nearly everyone in Austin who can swing it is working from home, nestled in their air conditioned refuges. Few are venturing out in the heat of the day. I'm no different. 

If you've read the blog for a while you know I'm usually a big adherent of getting out in the afternoons and walking no matter what the weather. But not in this. If people won't come to work and there's little traffic on the roads it's probably a message from the hive that we should all just slow down and be more careful than usual. So, since I got home with the septic stuff I've been chilling in the house, just reading a novel on the couch. But I got bored so I ventured out the twelve feet from the front door of the house and into the studio. I've been keeping the A/C in there at 85° when I'm not present --- that's what our power company recommends --- so I turned the thermostat down to 78° and got comfortable. 

On the floor by my desk I found a camera and lens that I'd put together for some project that never happened but I'm more and more attracted to the potential of the actual "system". The lens is an ancient Carl Zeiss zoom lens made originally for the Contax Y/C system but rejuvenated by the mirrorless revolution and the availability of a huge range of cheap lens mount adapters. Yes. Even for the L mount cameras. 

I've shot with it before and posted about it here. The lens is big and bumbly. It's a 35-135mm and I have to say that this must be the absolutely perfect focal range for me. I don't miss the wider angles at all and I love being able to zoom out to 135mm. It's slow by today's standards in several ways. First the variable aperture is from f3.3 to f4.5. Certainly not a problem on a camera like the Panasonic S5 or the Sigma fp. Those two cameras can pretty much see in the dark. The lens is also "slow" because it's a manual focusing lens with a long throw focusing ring and that makes for sloooow focusing. Finally, it's a one touch zoom in that the zoom ring and the focusing ring are one and the same. The whole front of the lens trombones out as you zoom to 135mm. It takes practice to make this combination of focusing and zooming efficient. 

When I use the lens on a non- image stabilized body focusing gets progressively harder as the focal length gets longer. Why? because the finder image shakes. We're spoiled by new tech. 

I mounted this slow, plodding lens on the front of the weirdest camera I have in the studio. That's the Sigma fp. It's an eccentric little genius of a camera and when you get everything just right the files are wonderful. They just exude "art." But it's a demonic looking system when put all together, as above. 

I'm only comfortable using it on a tripod and for this particular lens I really have to have the big Sigma loupe attached to shade and magnify the rear LCD. I'm pretty sure I'll never run into anyone out in the field who has exactly the same set up. The odds are long. 

But when it's hot outside and you're playing with your toys in the miracle that is air conditioning it's all good. Can't wait till we get some cooler days so I can get out and shoot with this beast of a system. Stay cool.

https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2022/06/testing-old-lens-thats-new-to-me-and.html

Testing an old lens that's "new to me" and wearing an old watch that's not new to me. Here's how the morning went...

 

I'd like to think that I'm not an acquisitive nerd but like Michael Johnston  my "hobbies" also extend to wristwatches. The one in the photo above is an  Eterna Matic, Airforce II which is water resistant to 10 ATM or 100 meters. It is an automatic which can also be hand wound. It's Swiss made with a Swiss mechanical movement and came with a black leather band. It's a watch I have owned for about 20 years. It's one of four Eterna automatics I seem to have collected and, because it is small and minimalist, it is one of my favorite dress watches. 

How accurate is it? I have no clue....Nor do I care.

Yesterday I picked up a used Carl Zeiss 35-135mm f3.3 to 4.5 zoom lens that was originally made to use on Contax Y/C cameras. Cameras like the Contax RTSIII which was an absolutely delightful camera from the 1990s. The lens was described by Zeiss in their technical literature as being of superb optical quality and competitive with many prime lenses. 

It's a manual focusing lens and has no electronic contacts with which to communicate with any camera. When used with an adapter on a Leica SL2 the lens is like the Sphinx. It divulges no information. It just rides on the front of the camera and looks as cool as possible. 

I had no intention of buying yet another "standard" zoom lens since I already have, for the full frame L mount system the Panasonic 24-105mm and the Leica 24-90mm products. Both are very good and very useful but they each bring something different to the table. The Leica brings unbeatable image quality at all focal lengths while the Panasonic brings with it image stabilization (great addition to the non-stabilized, older Leica SL cameras, and the CL + TL) and easier handling on account of its lower weight. 

I also have the Panasonic 20-60mm lens which is often overlooked but, for the money is an excellent performers within its range. And so affordable. 

But a friend alerted me to the arrival of the Zeiss zoom at our local camera store and suggested I check it out. He knew I had used the Contax system for a few years and remembered that I liked their lenses a great deal. In fact, I still have and use both the 28mm Zeiss Distagon and the 50mm Zeiss Planar lenses from that old system, with adapters, on the Leica and Panasonic cameras and find them to be really good when used correctly. 

When the lens is zoomed all the way out it looks enormous. About the size of 

my 70-200mm. When it's at 35mm it's about half the lens. And note, this is without a hood.

The 35-135mm is a combined focus and zoom ring model. One "pushes or pulls" the main ring on the lens  to zoom between 35mm and 135mm. The ring also rotates for focusing. This lens is... and isn't a "close focusing monster." Used in its normal mode it only focuses down to 1.2 meters or about five feet and change. But the ring closest to the camera body can be pulled back toward the camera to engage a macro focus capability that will get one down to about 10 inches. I haven't had the chance to use the macro functionality but I'll get around to it.

Given all these parameters you probably can tell that using the lens for day to day photography requires...patience and processes. For example. Since there is no automatic aperture action you can't just set an aperture and focus. You'll go crazy trying to fine focus while battling extended depth of field at f8.0 or f11. The appropriate way, as often described by Sean Reid, is to set the aperture to its widest setting and then focus. This gives you the shallowest depth of field and helps you make a visual assessment of when you are "in the zone." Once you've hit sharp focus you then take a second or two to stop down to the taking aperture you wanted in the first place. 

I would add to this the idea that one focuses at the widest aperture and augments the process by also "punching in" the magnification to see a much enlarged section of the frame for even more accurate focusing. I also keep focus peaking engaged as a quick double check; even with full magnification. 

Obviously this is a pain in the butt and won't go very far in making you the fastest shooter in town. But that's what the AF lenses are ultimately for. There were some lenses made in the film days that were designed to be par focal (meaning that you could focus at the longest focal length which was also the most magnified and then zoom to a wider angle of view and get a more accurate focus setting that way. This is not a par focal lens. Not by a long shot. Or or short shot.

While a number of lenses that I use with adapters seem to work perfectly for exposure on the SL2 this is also not one of them. I find myself often correcting overexposure with a twist of the exposure compensation dial. A fairly large number of images I made this morning required anywhere from a third stop to a stop and a half of correction (usually darker...) to get the exposure right for me. 

Another thing you need to know if you are considering finding one of these beauties and picking one up is that "picking it up" is a bit of a workout. The lens weigh somewhere north of two pounds and will make just about any combination of camera body and lens feel a bit front heavy. Or just...heavy. The silver lining might be that if you carry the camera and lens all day in your left or right hand (instead of on the strap) with your elbow bent you will build muscle mass. I recommend switching hands from time to time. The front of the lens is big. It takes an 82mm filter as does the big Leica lens. I've also read that the 35-135mm has a tendency to flare but I didn't see much evidence of that today. I will try to source a lens hood because they are beneficial even in studio settings. 

One might question my sanity in buying a lens that's so cumbersome and unforgiving. I would get in line with you to make that diagnosis but...I would declare (disingenuously or not) that the lens has a different look and optical character from the more modern lenses and gives me an extra tool for creating images that transcend the look of current gear. And that my preferred use would be for making portraits with the camera happily ensconced on a tripod and used at a comfortable pace. But another reason for my purchase was purely nostalgia for simpler times and sexier systems. This was a lens I wish I'd bought back 25 years ago and I never did. Being able to play with one to my heart's content now, and for about $300, seemed like a bargain. But I'll let the photos tell the story....

In a full sized, 47 megapixel raw file the texture on the stone on the building on the left is so well imaged that even the texture shows more texture. And you can see the sand in the mortar between the bricks. It's pretty magnificent. I like it.

The "color checker" shot. Does the wall render a greener color than the sky?

You'd be surprised at how many cameras make a mess of this....

this shot is all about my ability to handhold a camera at 1/15th or 1/20th of second with any degree of steadiness. I shot this at 1/20th of a second into a mirror in a dimly lit room. I had already swum two miles earlier, had two cups of strong coffee and walked a mile in the heat. Not bad for an ancient photographer. 

It's important to work on your handholding skills if you use this lens with any of my Leica SL(x) cameras. The two earlier SL bodies have no image stabilization nor does the lens. Your skill is it. The SL2 has image stabilization but requires you to either use an L system lens or to be able to pick from a lens that is in the camera's profile set. This one is not. 

I guess if you are going to work at a fixed focal length with this lens you could select a Leica R lens profile that matches the focal length and this would enable I. S. but you'd be stuck with a mismatched lens profile which may overcorrect for vignetting or geometry or cause some color spread that you don't want. 

It's a crap shoot. I'll try it and see what works. But for today it was not on the menu.

Which brings up something else. We're spoiled by I.S. in one good way. If you are focusing manually it stabilizes the finder image making it easier to achieve fine focus at longer focal lengths or higher magnifications. The finder images are less jumpy and jittery. 

I'm always been impressed when a lens is capable of rendering straight lines as straight lines without the intervention of software fixes and profiles. It's the mark of a high performance design. 

No geometric "fixes" were attempted on this image in post production. The lens just makes...

straight lines.

It was a strange morning. I hit the pool and swam from eight to nine. I got out, got dressed and went to meet a photographer in the downtown area who said he wanted to "do the walk" with me. When I got to my usual parking spot I checked my texts and found one from him bowing out for today. I was there with a camera so I went right into the walk. From 9:30 till around noon I put in some good miles and got the extra workout from carrying the camera and lens around. By noon the temperature was already in the 90s and I was feeling....tired. Worn out. Thirsty and spent. Some iced tea and bit of lunch was good and sitting on my butt writing this post was enforced relaxation. I think I'll draw the line at getting more than 4 hours a day of exercise and movement. At least not all at once....

Here's to sitting in a quiet, dim studio with the air conditioning cranking and more iced tea in the fridge. 

New lenses are fun. I like this one. I need to find a human to photograph with it. It's a keeper just for its personality.