Thanks. I did try a higher contrast version, but did not spend enough time to get to the right level. In the end, I gave up and posted the neutral version.
Wayne - I love what you did with the spikey balls. I've got to do more with my Biotar 75. BTW, what mount is yours? Mine was converted to a Nikon F mount before I bought it.
partitura wrote:
Wayne - I love what you did with the spikey balls. I've got to do more with my Biotar 75. BTW, what mount is yours? Mine was converted to a Nikon F mount before I bought it.
Thanks Partitura!
Mine is Exakta mount and I haven't gotten my adapter yet in the mail, so I have been free-lensing it by first putting on a spare C/Y adapter onto my 1ds3 and then holding the lens against the front flange of the adapter. Even with adapter, it may not get infinity focus according to some posts on other forums but I will try adapter first and then if it doesn't reach infinity, then try getting it converted. With this lens, not getting infinity focus would not be the end of the world as I would not be using it for landscape or distant shooting. I would use it more for portraits and shorter range shooting.
Is it the young man sitting on the ancient woman's lap, the shadow figure in the bricks, or is it the devil face at far right? No, wait... it's that gawd-aweful pink hat right?
Hi Carsten, thank you for your comment. Your question made me think about what I am doing, which is a good practice. I think I am following my interest which sometimes may appear it is a new project, but it isn't really so. During work week, my interest is. as Philippe said, 'making a lemonade out of a lemon'. In particular, I look for scenes, setting that are ignored, unnoticed, but has potential to be interesting. I tend to be drawn to interesting spatial relationships, transparency, layers, framing, lighting. One thing that I am paying more attention lately ( slightly ) to is when to avoid parallax, and when to ignore it, or use it for dynamic composition. But that is rather minor change. Oh, one more thing, as I got a new toy (35/1.4) I have not shot with other zeiss lenses at all the last few weeks other than when I was doing comparisons. Over weekend, or during break, I go out hiking, or walk around the park. During which, my practice is to make composition from trees and the surroundings. So subject is different but intent is still similar.
Few more shots with 35/1.4 from recently (finally) completed new Pier 15.
It sounds more like you have two parallel projects than that you don't have a project Certainly projects do not have to be static, and your experience can certainly inform (to use an older, little-used word which is all the rage in the States at the moment, for some reason) your strategy, and the whole thing evolve. Once you finish it, will you exhibit and call it "Lemonade"?
Really nice shot, Robert. Is that a stitch, or a single shot?
Bifurcator wrote:
Is it the young man sitting on the ancient woman's lap, the shadow figure in the bricks, or is it the devil face at far right? No, wait... it's that gawd-aweful pink hat right?
@Robert: Excellent! Thanks for posting a big version.
I'm thinking it would have been better with infinite DOF though, because my eyes are drawn to the mountains in the distance and they look kind of sharp (because of sharpening probably). What's in between the foreground and the mountains is OOF though, which looks a bit strange. Alternatively you could use a layer mask or the history brush to not sharpen the mountain ridges, so that they actually look OOF.
Thanks ahamB. Yeah I think I made the mistake of refocusing the brighter exposure foreground shot. I hoped that the dof would have been sufficient for the blended layers to meet with a sharp enough crossover but obviously not. even though I was using a tripod I think it was shot at 2.8, I blame being half asleep but am annoyed I didn't stop down.
Other errors are the totally out of focus foreground. I wanted this to have maximum impact like some other shots I've seen here, but I feel it ended up sitting in some kind of limbo between faked photoshop and impactless epic attempt! More practice needed...
Wow, M&M's in flight! That's as rare as hen's teeth marks on the neck of a unicorn!
On the dog shot I find that not seeing the eyes in focus detracts a little from the image. If it was more of a tele effect with that jaw it would have been cool. Awesome bokeh on both shots. Very psychedelic on the last one.
Thanks Henrik!
Yes, I didn't get the focus on his eyes like I wanted but was happy to get this close since I was just holding the lens to the camera and the fact that my dog does not sit still for pictures and is hard to take a narrow DOF portrait of like this.
The 2nd shot was just to show the strongly rendered cat eye bokeh rings and color.
Certainly projects do not have to be static, and your experience can certainly inform (to use an older, little-used word which is all the rage in the States at the moment, for some reason) your strategy, and the whole thing evolve. Once you finish it, will you exhibit and call it "Lemonade"? 
