Recent content by David Mitchell

Its sharper than this lens that I have just made a basic lens board for - its a single element meniscus lens with an integrated stop (guessing that is one of the original 'landscape' lenses).

Update on this...its getting there, just need to add a bag bellow to bridge the gap between lens and body Runners to allow lens to sit on the OEM focusing rack Image on ground glass Small gap I need to bridge to make it light tight:

Due to the fact that I am shooting manually with just the flash being adjusted for exposure it seems that I can get away with using the non corrected M42 adaptor (owing to flange distance), my 55mm lens is my favorite lens, I might be tempted to find a cheaper short m42 zoom lens and give that a...

Here are the test shots - please note that these are manually focused without me being in the frame - not ideal but the larger DOF @ f8 helped! I decided to take some more photos as I am standing next to a window with the blinds down which gives additional fill light on 1 side with the flash...

Ok, ive just attached my Nikon to M42 lens adaptor (I used the one without the corrective lens this time as I didn't need infinity focus) - as everything is manually set eg ISO 100, 1/100s, I just set the lens to f8 and focused it manually. The Helios 44-2 is a 58mm lens so that works out at...

We just need a trip 35 :D

Thanks for that, I will have a look at the 18-105 then, I think the 2 lenses I would go with would be the 18-105 or the 55-300 owing to the fact that I already have 18-55mm covered with the kit lens though. I will have a look into it a bit more, there isn't much rush though, my 18-55mm kit lens...

I think its also due to shooting in my smallish living room so I can't really put anything anywhere else lol although I have to manually focus then hit the timer lol I like lower ISOs, I guess I might increase it up a bit, however it seems that I can get the result I want to get from ISO 100...

Thanks Pete, I am quite impressed as the kit lens when its stopped down, I can see that the wide open 35mm lens is good for certain things, however for a shoot like that its nice to stop the lens down especially if there isn't anything distracting in the background. Image looks good, shame about...

Just set everything up again, this is using my 18-55 lens @ 55mm @ f8, ISO 100, 1/100s shutter speed, flash was cranked up to 1/2 power, I had to drop the exposure by -1 in LR so its slightly over exposed but its a good start for the settings I would want to go with. I am going to keep the ISO...

Thanks Pete, I will set it to ISO 100, 1/100 shutter speed and bring up the power on the flash, I will perhaps try half power next - the images actually look fine on the camera screen but are darker when loaded onto the PC - I guess that my exposure would be almost right if I weren't shooting...

Just taken 2 'selfies' with my simple setup - quite hard as I had to set the focus and then guess where to stand lol - was ok with the first one as it was shot at f8, the other one was shot at f1.8 so slightly harder! Both shot at ISO 100, looks like I am shooting around 1-2 stops under but...

*scribbles notes* Thanks Pete, I am so glad that there is so much knowledge on this forum, I believe that my flash is a GN of 58, I plan to set the camera to ISO 100 as I want to keep any images as clean as possible from digital noise. I think this is what I need to look at:

Thanks for that Pete, I think what I might try next is to set up the flash how I want with the shoot through umbrella, then using the exposure compensation on the camera so that I can keep it in aperture priority mode but still allow me to shot easily at different apertures - eg if I know that...

I have quite a lot to learn as its all manual, I did use the minimum setting with those photos at 1/128, I guess I just need to test as I don't have a meter to tell me what shutter speed I need, I guess once I get what I want setup I can use the same sort of setting and just adjust the shutter...