looking into the (high contrast and bright) light

Recently I got the GWC1 adapter for my Panasonic 14mm f2.5 lens. I've written about that over here and here. One of the reasons for getting it was because I've been after something which equaled my OM21mm f3.5 lens (on film) in the micro 4/3 digital realm. So having satisfied myself that it was good enough for me, I then sold my other wide options (the Olympus 9-18mm zoom) and moved on.

The release of the Sony A7 camera has been very interesting for me, and has had me wondering again about if I should go to full frame. I like many things about full frame, but what I don't like is that cameras like the EOS 5D (and most of the new series lenses) are bloated creatures. I would quite likely not be carrying them, and thus (it not being with me) the best camera I had would be something else like my GF/GH camera (or probably my phone). I find it disappointing that full frame digital was only in such obese bodies while my OM series film cameras had been quite compact devices.

I decided to put a roll of 35mm neg into my OM1 and whack the 21mm onto the front and go for a walk with both cameras and see, as it happens I took these shots over the period of a week.

Firstly I was looking for any differences in "Shallow DoF" that could be obtained with a wide lens, because I don't always want everything to be in focus. So I took these two shots. Ohh, and all digitals were shot RAW and many and varied methods were employed to not have blowouts ... more on that in a moment.


GF1 + 14mm + wide
 

OM1 + 21mm

The perspective difference between 4/3 (4:3) and 35mm (3:2) makes them look a little more different, but essentially the horizontal view is similar between the two systems (and therefore I can crop the 4:3 into 3:2 no dramas) and the DoF is really similar. However I did notice that (when taking and then processing the shots) that the digital blew out in the highlights. Really that just shits me, and this isn't even harsh light compared to stuff I work with in Australia.

So I wandered around down to the river and took these shots:
GF1

OM1

This is the proverbial "chalk and cheese" and cuts to the heart of why I hate digital ... blown colours in real world situations. Sometimes this just isn't recoverable. The 35mm negative held the cloud details and the irregularity of where blown channels are (red often blows before green or blue) makes the clouds look horrible to me.

Perhaps with a lot of time on my hands (and I already tried using Adobe ACR, dcraw and Photomatix) I could perhaps work this into something nicer. But you know, you just can't recover data that's lost, you can only work it into something acceptable buy effectively "painting".

So this got me thinking (seeing those blinkies and knowing about this issue) that I'd give my OM vs GF a torture test. I waited for a clear day and took a shot looking right into the sun.

GF1

OM1

So, first impressions were:

• holy shit my OM21mm had massive flare (and a lens hood isn't going to help here)
• holy shit the blowouts on the digital are massive ... its pathetic

 Ok, so I dropped the exposure on the GF by two stops and tried again (shot on manual BTW) in an attempt to give it more room, and got this:

The blowout is less, but geezuz its still hot. Lets take a closer look...

GF1

OM1

Which actually has details and didn't blow the channels of Neg (but must be hitting hard I have to say) ... just amazing. Tweaking the contrast and you can actually see the graduation to the disc of the sun!

• A better lens would fix my film camera shots lens flare, but nothing will fix the digital.
• just how far do you have to under expose to not blast out the digital (and at what expense of the shadows) 
• the clouds around the sky in the digital are artifically red due to channel blowouts

The astute (looking at the 100% images) will also notice on this that the 35mm shot enlarges bigger because the 35mm film scan is 5590 x 3780 pixels while the GF1 is 4000 x 3000 pixels. That's a bit more than 25% more pixels to play with!  So you could either print large or scale down and clean up the film grain to have the print looking nearly as smooth as the digital.

So where does this leave me?

Well while my intention was to see how my lenses may "look and feel" on the Sony A7 this exersize has left me wondering if there is any point in moving systems from micro4/3 over to the Sony full frame system, simply because no matter how many more pixels (and I've got enough IMO already) or how much the larger format is going to look better I'm still going to be stuck with the dynamic range issues of digital.

So compared with keeping 35mm neg and micro4/3 (NB going to the Sony A7) I would

• rationalize bodies and lenses (being able to use the 35mm lenses on both systems)
• but still need to carry a 35mm film body for high contrast work

and still need to spend a bundle on the A7 (and more or less be only getting a small advantage?).

The wide lens on the 4/3  did give me sufficiently shallow DoF for my purposes and quite enough resolution too. So as long as I don't get blowouts (and I have enough experience to predict that) and since the GF/GH camera is about as compact as the Sony (and really how much more compact can it get?) perhaps I don't get much extra bang for my thousand bucks??
That would be body only and selling my micro4/3 gear to offset the price, so I'd still not have any AF lenses then) at lest with a EOS camera I'd have a couple of EF prime lenses too.

So maybe I won't get the Sony just yet ...

Tulip bulbs and Bitcoins

Financial boom bust cycles are interesting stuff (for those not entrapped in them), there is always speculation over what the next one will be and when it will pop. They seem to have a lot in common with Ponzi schemes, but of course everyone denies that till its 'hindsight'.

I was browsing over at zerohedge and came across this article which discusses the value of Bitcoin going over the US$500 mark.

The article discusses the merits of this new 'financial instrument' and how its going to be going up financially speaking. They mention some interesting points including that the Chinese can now buy real estate with Bitcoin (see this reference).

Naturally there is all manner of weird-arsed comparisons between Bitcoin and gold (the metal) and justifications on how Bitcoin is undervalued compared to gold. Bitcoin proponents suggest that its a solid reliable private currency, and its got a great future.

Well what has all this got to do with Tulips?

Well Tulips have come to represent a major financial "bubble". Some time in the 1630's tulip prices went off the scale, it is reported on Wikipedia is this "By 1635, a sale of 40 bulbs for 100,000 florins was recorded. By way of comparison a skilled laborer might earn 150 florins a year".The crash for tulips came when sellers found that buyers weren't paying their desired prices (and it has been suggested that a change in the laws regarding tulip futures contracts had some effect).

It could be argued that Bitcoin is taking off as the international and electronic private currency. But unlike many other private currencies, bitcoin is not underwritten with anything. In a historical study of "unregulated banking systems in nine different countries during the nineteenth century: Australia, Canada, Colombia, China, France, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and the United States" things went well for private currencies. But a significant point in that historical examination of private currencies (see this reference) was that:

A competitive market compels unregulated banks to fix the value of their deposit and note liabilities in terms of the economy’s basic money, by offering redeemability at par (full face value) in basic money. In the past, the basic money was gold or silver coins.

So it seems that people could trust these private currencies because they were backed by the financial institution and redeemable.My understanding is that bitcoin is not underwritten by anything or redeemable for anything except good and or services and trades on the free market. Its value is very much set by the market view of its worth.

Bitcoin is viewed as safe and the technology of it prevents fraud. Sounds good...

So my comparison between Bitcoin and Tulips starts with this post that BitCoin is Broken by a pair of IT academics who have identifed flaws in the security of Bitcoin. They outline a method where:

a minority group of miners can obtain revenues in excess of their fair share, and grow in number until they reach a majority. When this point is reached, the Bitcoin value-proposition collapses: the currency comes under the control of a single entity; it is no longer decentralized; the controlling entity can determine who participates in mining and which transactions are committed, and can even roll back transactions at will.

Nice... of course mining bitcoins takes some serious computing investment (much as does commercial large scale mining in the ground), which is commonly in the realm of BIG governments (you know, like the Chinese or the USA or say a conglomerate of EU nations).

So is this a new Ponzi Scheme? After all Bitcoin is only worth what the market thinks its worth. If the market felt that a Government was in such a control position the market may just flee the system.

I reckon that there is money to be made in buying and selling Bitcoin (just as there is with FX trading) if you have the stomach for it, but ... don't get caught out with the digital equivalent of the Zimbabwe Dollar.




cos in my view, when the music stops you will want to have already sold you seat to someone else. Who knows how far Bitcoin will go up ... I'm no financial adviser, but here is some music to listen to while planning your Bitcoin investment

long live the king

First a story

Once upon a time ... there was a king, I think the king was named Wu (or something like that it was a long time ago now) and this king was king because while he had only one eye, all else in the land were blind.

you know the gig, in the land of the blind the One Eyed man is king ...

He had a son (as Kings often do), who he named Wang. Sadly Wang was born blind, just as was everyone else in the Kingdom (but only Wu knew). Wang grew up envious of the power of his father and noting that all others were blind arranged in a Machiavellian way to have his father removed from this world (after all, who would see?) so that he, Wang could be King.

While his father led with his peculiar one eye'd vision Wang led by convincing the others that (like his father) he could see and know. Since all the others were blind, they could not see Wang was actually blind too, so they happily followed him.

Much like the people from London are Londoners the people from the Kingdom of Wang can also be thought of as Wangers. To this day Wang the King (in some languages this is abbreviated to Wanking) remains the King of domains of the blind such as the Internet.

Panasonic I suspect know their market well, and having myself participated in the discussions of camera gear for some years I know that many posters are from the Kingdom of Wang; I think Panasonic know this too.

I was interested to read that they had released a new version of their classic (but over priced) 20mm. I quickly toddled over to a major online reseller to see the prices. A screen grab is below and shows that the new lens is had for the bargain price of  just $79 more ... (not less as you may expect)

So, were there any changes to the lens?
Did it now have OIS included? - nope,
was there a changed optical design? nope

According to the Panasonic site the main difference is:

High Class design increases the joy of ownership and further enhances LUMIX G cameras.

The joy of having it in your hand ... no kidding ... see for yourself from this screen grab from the Panasonic site on the new lens

Oh Kay ... so do they throw in a years supply of KY and some tissues?

The old lens page is almost identical, but of course without the appeal to the Wangers:

I can hear somone calling

Ok ... enough with the sarcasm ... they must have improved it.

Well sorry, but it seems not ... nothing added at all, in fact it seems that according to DXO things are actually slightly worse in optical performance than earlier. Also, production seems to have moved from Japan to China to keep production costs down ... I mean to ensure higher joy of ownership.

Great ... so all this new lens has in its favor after the upgrade is an appeal to how it feels in your hand.  Mmmm ... look and feel ... Its a got to be a compelling buy to wangers now.

The majority are always right in the kingdom of Wang. (although I suspect these sheep are not blind)

Being well and truly sick of the Wangers telling me how well priced the original lens was citing such compelling reasons as
*other 20mm lenses are more expensive
* its so cool looking
* its so fast

I tire of pointing out that:
20mm is not wide on 4/3, its comparable to a 50mm on full frame.
A 50mm AutoFocus lens of similar fstop from Canon or Nikon will cost you about $100 and be a harder lens to make because it covers a greater area.

Like Duh ... that's why MF and LF lenses are so expensive, because they have to cover a greater area.

Now, before you argue, if you are unable to grasp this point, go look at reviews of Panasonics fine LX 7 camera which has a beautiful zoom lens and the entire camera costs with a lens about what this new 20mm lens costs.

I guess that its not hard to tell that I'm disappointed with the direction of m4/3. I just wish some one else out there could see.

So the king is dead ... long live King Wang
All hail the king ... King Wang! King Wang king wangking wanking wanking...

Hey, where is he again?

(Baaaaa)

(not just) another FD lens adapter review

Lens adapters for using Manual Focus lenses (from mainly 35m cameras) on my micro 4/3 is something which I've not written much about for some time.  Well really not much has changed, until I spotted this little guy on the market.

As you can see its a reasonably vanilla looking basic lens adapter. To me there is not much difference between the various FD adapters on the market except if they do or do not have an iris engagement pin ring on the adapter, this does.

What does stand out immediately to me however is this adapter also has a tripod mount on the adapter.

Now to me thats something to mention!

I'd seen a few of these pop up in the in the past, but as this was so bloody cheap I thought I'd just get one.

One of the problems that you have with cameras is when they have a big lens mounted on them that does not have a tripod mount on the lens. Now normally lenes don't have a tripod mount on them but bigger lenses do. 200mm seems to be the turnaround point where they may or may not, but by 300mm they usually do.

That can become a slight problem for balance on the tripod (when you adjust the tripod the lens just goes 'whack' down from the cantilever). Also I feel that there is more likely to be vibration in the tripod + camera mount with the lens a cantilever on the camera that's on the tripod.

Back when I used 35mm gear I often wished there was a tripod collar for my EF100-300mm lens because of all the above reasons. When I was after the EF200mm f2.8 I really was surprised that it didn't have such. I guess its because on full frame 200mm is on the edge of hand holding and so many use it that way : thus no tripod collar needed.

I have an FD200mm f2.8 which is more or less the same design as the EF and when using it on the micro 4/3 (it being an effective 400mm) there are many times I'd like to have it on a tripod. When using my GH1 and that lens I've often thought it would be more well balanced that way too. So here it is on the adapter on the tripod...

and then with the camera mounted behind it.

which to me now feels much better.

Now in going around the internet forums people often seem to obsess with the effect of the weight of the lens on the front of the camera. The confident newbie veteran (of 5 months experience with owning a camera, but years of forum banter) knows that using a lens of such weight on the camera will lead to 1) inevitable damage their pride an joy and 2) lead to unfathomable grief.

This adapter will go a long way towards ameliorating those issues, and probably one more too (which is not an issue IMO).

The other issue which seems to be a source of anxiety among the newbies veteran photographers who are obsessed with image clarity is that of the effect of the lens not being 'tight in the mount' or that the mount may not be precise enough.

It seems that the stress of the mass of the lens on the mount may cause the lens to "tilt" and loose accuracy. Something like a few microns is all thats needed I read. This sort of incredible accuracy is the stuff which NASA would also like to obtain as well as makers of instruments such as the Hubble telescope. Microns of tilt mean that you will loose precious resolution from the system. No wonder people with large format cameras have been struggling with image clarity over the years. Such miserably flimsy wooden cameras as used by Ansel Adams could not have allowed him to produce anything of quality.
 
Such reports have been circulating the net recently. No evidence, just "a well trusted source". Probably its Jason who was being creative with his macBook Pro.

So, if the main thing you photograph is test targets on precision glass with your camera rigidly mounted then probably don't bother using anything other than native lenses. Some photographers may also require a "high speed lubricant", look for low temperature high speed in the specs. Always wear safety glasses in case something comes off.

Anyway, back to the adapter ... as I mentioned this adapter has a ring for 'engage' and 'disengage' of the FD lens iris. This has two benefits:

1. you can mount the lens easier
2. you can set the lens to (say) f5.6, "open" it to focus more accurately (than you could with it stopped down) and then close it again to take.

Compared to previous adapters I've tried with this system this one has kept the ring a bit more compact and doesn't get in the way of my fingers.

Please read this blog post about the operations of the iris and the lock / open ring. However what I said of relevence there was to engage and disengage the iris control this adaptor gets around the problem of needing to engage the FD iris coupler during the mounting process and the iris coupling is engaged by turning the ring after mounting.



To mount the adapter, first move the ring to "open". There is a red dot on FD lenses, so line this up with the red dot on the adapter. Then mount and turn the lens to engage normally.

At this point the iris is not yet engaged, to to engaged (and allow it to be stopped down) turn the ring on the outside of the adapter (which moves the engaging pin as in the diagram above).

The last point that I'd like to raise on this adapter is the tripod mount.
This is essentially a foot made of a single piece of alloy that is then bolted to the adapter with two small bolts (really small) that run up the center of the foot. The kit came with two spare bolts (should you loose / break one) and a 'patch' to cover the area if you decided to take the foot off.

The image to the left here shows the foot taken off and the bolts I mean.

The foot "keys" into a surface of the adapter so as to minimize twist, but if you had an accident with it, then its possible you could bend a bolt or shear one. So its nice to have some spares.

I'm intending to put a smear of fingernail polish on these bolt threads when I put it back together as a form of 'poor mans locktight'. This will actually be a good thing because:
* it will provide a firm bed for the threads to meet
* will prevent any metal expansion differences (the adapter body is alloy, the bold steel) which in winter can cause bolts to loosen
* keep them from vibrating loose over time.

such things are common in manufacture, but are absent here.

Actually it would perhaps be good to do the same with the three stainless steel threads on the front surface as I've found them to come loose after time too.

drawbacks

As you may guess, the entire system can't be rotated. So unlike proper collar designs (as on my FD300mm f4). I really like the FD lens tripod collar, it allows smooth and precise adjustment of camera alignment (vertical and horizontal) and is very nice on a mono-pod. The tension on the clamp is adjusted by rotating a knob on the side



and can be released by pulling it out popping open the clamp to allow you to quickly remove the lens from the tripod (if you decide to go hand held or pack it away leaving the clamp on the tripod.
This is something this adapter can't do ... but then you previously couldn't mount the lens on a tripod anyway ;-)

UPDATE: usage observations

Today out in the field with it I was attempting a HDRI and found that the camera was 'moving' around in the horizontal plane. I checked the tripod and found that it was actually the adapter foot moving on the mount. So I'll need to add some locktight there too. The keying of the foot into the adapter is not precise enough.

Then I discovered that I forgot to 'engage' the aperture stop down. So I ended up taking everything at f4 even though I was intending f5.6 ... not a "big" deal but a lesson. Get used to an adapter and have that in your routine so as to not introduce to many factors into your routine.

conclusion

So there you have it. A low priced adapter (in this case for FD) to put your longer lenses onto your micro4/3 camera and mount the lens on the tripod (rather than mounting the camera onto the tripod). For the price I reckon you just can't loose.

Now if precision is your gig (and it might not be) then I reckon you can't  go past the adapters made by ciecio7 who sells on ebay (and aside from having bought his adapters and thought them great have no financial kickbacks or interests). His stuff is top shelf, machined from a single bit, he even declares the materials his adapters are made from!

His adapters like this one are $90, so you get what you pay for (in this instance higher quality ;-)