Got in my 4x OM lenses from the B&S board, good price but exact quality was unknown.
The 75-150/4 needs TLC - I think something is misaligned, I'm not sure, so it's my test lens for disassembly.
The 50/1.4 is surprising - at f/1.4 it's the typical glowy older f/1.4 lens, but wow at f/2 this thing completely changes character and radically sharpens up, no just a little, but radically. A keeper!
I also got a 65-200/4, what a cool lens. I spent about 2 hours disassembling the thing to work on infinity focus, as I couldn't reach infinity at all from about 150mm-200....turns out the front element group was just loose! Doh! Oh well, no harm. I'll like this one.
Final lens is the 28/2.8 -- This thing might as well be a lensbaby At f/2.8, there is a tiny part of the image that is sharp and in focus, then everything goes crazy quickly. Unsure if something's wrong with the lens, because stopped down it's fine...I haven't done corner testing yet.
Your 50/1.4 sounds much like mine. There must be something seriously wrong with your 28/2.8 because, as I am sure you know, it should be a pretty sharp lens. I have two of them (the second was a mistake, but it was bought from a charity shop, so I never returned it) and they are good.
r2015 wrote:
Your 50/1.4 sounds much like mine. There must be something seriously wrong with your 28/2.8 because, as I am sure you know, it should be a pretty sharp lens. I have two of them (the second was a mistake, but it was bought from a charity shop, so I never returned it) and they are good.
Yeah I'm in disassembly now. Interesting little lens - tiny elements and groups basically sandwiched on top of one another...I thought everything was cemented together until I got out my rocket blower to clean an element and it came flying out!
I reversed what looks like a 2-element group, thinking maybe it was inserted wrongly (it looks and feels almost symmetrical) but that didn't help.
Also note - lens only looks crazy at f/2.8, it sharpens up pretty well but yeah at f/2.8 it's zany
edit -- So I grow a brain and decide to look at MIR's element layout for the lens and find the problem -- lens is missing an element! One can see someone has disassembled this before and I believe they lost (or forgot) to replace the third element from the rear
edit 2 -- Nope, not missing an element, I misread the diagram and after further disassembly it's all here (of course, now it's toast because there's no way I have the skill to reassemble
cputeq wrote:
edit -- So I grow a brain and decide to look at MIR's element layout for the lens and find the problem -- lens is missing an element! One can see someone has disassembled this before and I believe they lost (or forgot) to replace the third element from the rear
Thanks for the very good laugh
Last weekend I met with two other photographers (Philipp and Olli) in the Harz region and we had a very enjoyable weekend together.
Initially we had planned to climb the Brocken at about 5AM to catch the sunrise but because the forecast for the morning wasn't very good and the sky clear that moment we decided to climb it in the middle of the night. So we arrived in Schierke at about 11PM and started our ascend which led us trough a beautiful forest:
Handheld and pushed about 3 stops
Near the top the path lead us back to the road:
A look at Werningerode from near the top of the Brocken.
The image above was taken at around 1 AM.
Making of
A few minutes later and nearly on the top conditions became much worse. Very fast winds made it hard to walk in a straight line and the snow didn't add to our comfort.
At the top we spent 20 minutes in a mountain shelter, drank some hot tea and then walked back trough a now pitch dark forest and not very pleasant conditions to the car where we arrived very tired at 4AM.
Phillip Reeve wrote:
Last weekend I met with two other photographers (Philipp and Olli) in the Harz region and we had a very enjoyable weekend together.
Initially we had planned to climb the Brocken at about 5AM to catch the sunrise but because the forecast for the morning wasn't very good and the sky clear that moment we decided to climb it in the middle of the night. So we arrived in Schierke at about 11PM and started our ascend which led us trough a beautiful forest:
A few minutes later and nearly on the top conditions became much worse. Very fast winds made it hard to walk in a straight line and the snow didn't add to our comfort.
At the top we spent 20 minutes in a mountain shelter, drank some hot tea and then walked back trough a now pitch dark forest and not very pleasant conditions to the car where we arrived very tired at 4AM.
Seems like a lot of folks got snow recently. We got about 30 inches (or 75cm!) on Friday and Saturday. Couldn't go anywhere scenic before the streets are cleared. Just a few in front of the house.
I have heard many times that the Sony A7 series of cameras are not good for sports/action photography. I very seldom do this type of photography, but decided to take my A7II to a college basketball game. I was obviously sitting in the stands, so not in the optimal position. All shots were made in manual mode with a Nikkor 180mm lens at f5.6 or 8. ISO is around 3200 in most shot, but I think they are still very usable. I have done very little post processing and haven't done any sharpening.
Maybe this camera isn't fast compared to pro-level DSLRs, but it's still faster than my old Nikon F and F2 that I used years ago when I was doing some sports photography. I didn't have to worry about autofocus speed because I was using a manual focus lens. I just prefocused like we used to do in the days before autofocus.
The African buffalo is not an ancestor of domestic cattle, and is only distantly related to other larger bovines.
Owing to its unpredictable nature, which makes it highly dangerous to humans, the African buffalo has never been domesticated unlike its Asian counterpart, the water buffalo.
It is widely regarded as a very dangerous animal, as it gores and kills over 200 people every year.
Phillip, Werner, Ronny, JaKo and everybody else, impressive shots.
Kevin: Those shots from Huangshan are jaw-dropping.
I was in the snowy woods as well the other day, hoping to find owls, but to no avail. I ended up finding something colorful, but alas without feathers . a7rii with the 35 1.4.
At f/2.8, there is a tiny part of the image that is sharp and in focus, then everything goes crazy quickly. Unsure if something's wrong with the lens, because stopped down it's fine...I haven't done corner testing yet. 
