"One reason I like blackness in photography is because it often changes mood of the picture. In darkness things become more ambiguous and not so easily defined. When we don't see everything, our mind fulfills hidden details and bends the interpretation. If you ever walked alone in forest at night you know it's a short cut to our subconscious. Everyday things, which are boringly ordinary, change to something else."
sebboh wrote:
that's a shame i was thinking about both of those lenses. any idea how the nikkor ED 180/2.8 compares to the nFD 200/2.8?
Sebboh: I haven't used the ED 180/2.8 ever, so no first-person user report from me. I did see some posts that indicate the same/similar issues. I will just go back to using the FDn 80-200 f4 L (I have two copies) for the time being. I have been considering the Leica 180mm f3.4 APO, based on what Rich (Naturephoto1) has had to say about it. He has one hell-of-a stable of R-series glass, so I respect his owner/operator opinion.
Here are two from the FDn 300mm f4 L (all at f4), on the NEX 7, from this morning, and it has no CA issues....
Day 5 of 365 - Heading home in black winter weather
"We are heading home from Christmas holidays. This particular winter in Finland has been abnormal because the lack of snow. Usually we have had a lot of snow by January, but for some reason there is none, at least in southern Finland. Scenes and landscapes look black and ugly because there is no white snow to illuminate them. But this suites me fine."
A visit to the neighborhood park. I know this stuff looks a bit like HDR but it is really the quality of the winter sunlight in the afternoon at this latitude. Part of the lake was icy but most of the lake was ice free.
Nex 6 and a Contax Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 4/80-200 lens at the 200mm position.
Day 6 of 365 - Still life in darkness
"At daylight everything is obvious and photographs taken in such circumstances often encloses self-explanatory characteristics that makes us interpret them with 'declarative eye'. If you are a fledgling photographer like me and you've shown your work to others you know exactly what that declarative eye is. They glance at your work and immediately state the what it is: 'it's a door of apartment house' or something similar. Photographs are swiftly consumed by the declarative eye and often not given a second thought afterwards. It's a frustrating experience not having a appropriate connection."
Some beautiful images here! Please let me know if I am posting in the wrong place; I did not find a NEX discussion thread. I just purchased a NEX 7 kit and am very interested in using it with alt lenses but I'm a little overwhelmed as I don't know much glass that doesn't say Nikon or Canon on it. With the kit I get the 18-55 and the little 20mm 2.8. I'm interested in adding a fast general/portrait lens and a telephoto prime. There seem to be lots of these; where is a good place to start? My favorite lens in the world is the Canon 50L so something in that vein (but hopefully a lot cheaper!) would be great. I've read great things about the Minolta/Rokkor? lenses. As far as the telephoto, anything between 135-200 should do well. This will be for longer portraits, condensed landscape and the occasional bird if I can manage it. I prefer a fixed aperture prime but am open to suggestions
Also, I've seen adapters that cost anywhere from $10 to $400; is there a big advantage to the expensive ones? Metabones stuff seems to have a good reputation on here and they seem reasonably priced.
For legacy manual lenses, I've used cheap ($10-ish) Chinese ones for Minolta MD, Canon FD, Olympus OM etc and they've all been fine. I've read about occasional bad experiences with both cheap and expensive adapters. Standard adapters are usually "dumb" mechanical spacers for correcting the registration distance and providing a lens mount (a few also provide focusing or aperture control for lenses that don't have it manually available e.g. Contax-G).
Most of the old 50/1.4 and 50/1.7 options were typically pretty great - my MC Rokkor-x PG 50/1.4, Canon FD 50/1.4, Olympus "made in Japan" 50/1.8, Yashica ML 50/1.7 all are. With fast fifties and similar it comes down to preferences in rendering style/colour/bokeh, wide open performance, size/weight, price etc. Search this forum and Flickr.
APS-C-cropped 50mm (== 75mm) can be a bit tight for group/social/"normal" stuff etc, so you might want to consider a wider 28/30/35mm, but of course these won't be typically as fast, unless you pay more... I can recommend the great FD 35/2 (the 2.8 is allegedly as good & cheaper of course), FD 28/2.8, Vivitar Close Focus 28/2, Rokkor 28/3.5.
And for tele I use a great FD 100/2.8, Rokkor 135/3.5, Vivitar 80-200/4.5.
Also consider a Speed Booster or Lens Turbo focal reducer which, instead of cropping, optically shrinks down most of the lens's original field of view to APS-C size, gaining a little sharpness and a stop of light (in shutter speed, but not DoF) into the bargain, but risking blue-spot flare reflections in certain light and curvature/barrel distortion in the case of my Zhongyi FD Lens Turbo. So your 50mm becomes around 51/52mm, instead of 75mm-equivalent crop etc.
Sigma do razor sharp auto-focus plastic fantastic e-mount 19/2.8, 30/2.8 & 60/2.8, and the "native" Sony E-mount 35/1.8 & 50/1.8 are both great from what I've seen.
