As the day was ending, before meeting some people for dinner I popped into a local shop and there on the shelf was a MINT Rokkor-PG 58/1.2! Needless to say I reached into the pocket and bought it straight away - let's say the price was an absolute steal!
Bif! Thank you very much!
I was specifically trying to catch some straight lines with certain background patterns...I really wanted to capture a bit of a lonsome feeling in the 3rd shot, but I think I failed somewhat...
looks great. did you put a focus confirm chip on it? looks like some of the specular highlights in the last shot are getting squared off by an obstruction.
One interesting observation - at first sight the lens seems very soft at f/1.2 and becomes suddenly sharp at f/1.4. However, the softness wide open is deceptive. The detail is there but with significant haloing due to strong spherical aberration. It is very easy to sharpen up in post to get an image that looks surprisingly sharp.
Also I have been surprised by the low LoCA wide open. Purple fringing is barely noticeable even in rather extreme cases wide open. Spherochromaticism seems to be quite common (green or purple edges around the bokeh specular highlight blobs) although I have not discerned a pattern yet.
Bifurcator, one of the reasons why I like shooting at night is because there are typically a number of different light sources which can produce some interesting colors when you set the white balance.
Jim, no not quite. I can get infinity sharp by stopping down but wide open I can reach about 20-30 meters. With live view I can get almost infinity but then the back element retainer ring pushes against the mount which makes the AF chip lose contact with the camera. Live view shuts down as the camera thinks the lens has been removed and the mirror hangs.
Anyway, it's not really relevant - wide open at infinity is not interesting anyway and stopped down (f/5.6 - f/8 works well) I get the full range. The key benefit of this lens is its bokeh so stopped down shooting at infinity is not all that interesting.
Nice shots Luka. FYI, trimming the retaining ring will give you close to infinity in normal shooting mode and the rest of the way in live view.
Which version is your, BTW? Metal or rubber grip?
Thanks helimat. I know, but it's not an operation that I would want to perform myself. I don't feel any great need for it though as I can get it sharp at infinity by stopping down and extending the DOF. Plus, I don't exactly intend to use it as a classic landscape lens.
It's the rubber grip version, so it's not radioactive
