Notes From The Top Left Corner

[Wes Hall]

I sold my old Canon dslr last week, a 50D, with which I've taken some of my favourite photos. It made me think about all of the manual lenses that I have which can't be used on my current full frame 5D because of the potential for a clash of the mirror at infinity focus. Now, that's a terrible waste, because I do love a lot of them and tend not to use many of them for digital shooting at all nowadays, as my other digital camera has that great Sigma 30mm f/1.4 mounted as an almost permanent feature.

I felt that this problem had to be remedied, so I dusted off the old Canon 20D that hasn't been out of its box for years, and strapped on something appropriate. Reacquainting myself with its features, I noted several things missing which I have become used to having.
A decent sized screen
Mirror lock up buried deep in the menus
No live view
No ISO setting displayed without deliberately calling it up

I guess most people would bemoan the lack of megapixels, but I'm comfortable with that - no problem there.

My first foray with it was a shot I've been meaning to take for quite a while now. I actually ended up taking two 20 second exposures and stitching them together.

View attachment 16721

Castle Park, Lancaster.
Canon EOS 20D,
Pentacon 30mm f/3.5 at f/11,
2x 20 sec. exp.

Great shot Chris, that street at the side of castle is very atmospheric, it'll be good to see what the next ones bring.

 

[Chris Bennett]

Great shot Chris, that street at the side of castle is very atmospheric, it'll be good to see what the next ones bring.

Thanks Wes. I only intended to take the right hand shot but when I got there, I took the second one just to see what a 20 second exposure would do to those shadows under the trees. When I got home and looked at them, it was obvious that they were crying out to be clanged together to complete the scene.

 

[Pete Askew]

A few days away in the Borders, I spent the day yesterday mooching about in the woods close to Duns castle, about 15 miles from Berwick. A bit of autumnal juiciness. The lake in the photo is called Hens Poo (not chicken shit).

View attachment 16651

I see that face too, although the first thing that sprang to mind was corroded metal. I love the way it blurs the abstract with landscape.

 

[Pete Askew]

A very interesting experiment with the 35mm 'adapter' and I do like that second shot very much. I also like the stitched panorama that you have created. I don't get too hung up on pixel count. I still love the output of the Nikon D3 and my Phase one P20 still walks all over some of the more modern smaller format cameras with much larger counts. I have never found the need to migrate beyond a P45 for even heavy-duty technical stuff.

 

[Chris Bennett]

I regard pixel count as the camera industry's attempt to provide the male of the species with a single number that defines 'good'. It's the same as watts per channel used to be regarded in the hi-fi industry, isn't it?

 

[Pete Askew]

You are probably right. Foveon certainly threw a spanner in the works with their chips!

 

[Dave Farnes]

Wow! That is a genuine work of art. Love the colours, the contrast between the cool greens and warmth of the lights is great. The softness adds to it, has the look of a painting.

 

[Chris Bennett]

Wow! That is a genuine work of art. Love the colours, the contrast between the cool greens and warmth of the lights is great. The softness adds to it, has the look of a painting.

Thanks Dave. It's very kind of you to make a comment like that.

 

[Chris Bennett]

Back in November I went to an annual local event called Lancaster in Light, which I have talked about on RPF before. This time, I took a dslr and a film camera. The film was Kodak Vision3 500T and it was loaded into my Minolta Hi-Matic.
I shot the whole roll that evening but didn't have it developed until just recently.

Here are some of the results...



Neon Tulips





5 metre tall sunflower





Remote control child-baiting snail





Bike





Grand front





Grand side

 

[Wes Hall]

Some beautiful results from that 500T Chris, the luminosity in the flowers is fantastic- the warm hue of the Grand front creates a charming and welcoming feeling to the image.

 

[Chris Bennett]

Some beautiful results from that 500T Chris, the luminosity in the flowers is fantastic- the warm hue of the Grand front creates a charming and welcoming feeling to the image.

Definitely a film to keep on hand for night time use, Wes. I have some plans for trying out the daylight version soon.

 

[Russ Butner]

Way cool

 

[Chris Bennett]

I've had a couple of Helios 44 lenses for years and I like them a lot. Sometime last year, I looked at the idea of reversing the front element but it wasn't possible with my copies. So, for the last few weeks, I have been keeping half an eye open for another cheap one that would allow the modification. The thing to look for is that there needs to be a good amount of thread left showing after the vanity ring on the front has been screwed in. Once the front lens is reversed, its front face is further forward, so the screw-in ring needs that extra thread.

I spotted a possible candidate on Ebay, put a bid in and won with a final price of just £13. When it arrived, it had the oiliest aperture blades that I have ever seen. After cleaning both it, and the elements up, it scrubbed up quite nicely. Everything worked fine - this lens is extremely easy to dismantle and rebuild.

So, I took a few test shots to see how well it performed before I did the modification and all was well.
The front element was duly flipped and so I took it out for a quick trial.


Footling around in a local hedge, I first took a couple of shots to try to discover what we were dealing with. This first one is my best attempt at focussing on some ivy on a tree.





Next, the same scene at minimum focus.





OK, so now we're looking for a subject at minimum focus, with a busy background...






Now to try a really busy background.

 

[Chris Bennett]

My favourite from my 20 minute experiment, was this one.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

A very successful experiment, I'd say, Chris. The last is perfection, but I also like the last in the first post, with the really busy background. Brilliant!

 

[Chris Bennett]

A very successful experiment, I'd say, Chris. The last is perfection, but I also like the last in the first post, with the really busy background. Brilliant!

Thanks Rob, I'm glad you like them.
Just to be absolutely clear, the first two were demonstrative and not taken for their artistic potential!!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Yeah, yeah…

 

[Chris Bennett]

After being a member of Lancaster Photographic Society for two and a half years now, I have studiously avoided entering any of the competitions. I think photographic competition work is a genre in itself and not one I want to get into. But the most recent was a street photography themed one and the judge, Wayne Critchlow, made it clear that he was not going to be working within the usual parameters of judges. So, I was persuaded to enter, after being leaned on by a couple of friends. Four images, two colour and two black and white.
The upshot is that I did rather well! My aggregated score made me the overall winner and one of my images was declared best overall in the event. It was a diptych of a couple of my phone box shots.


The best outcome of the evening was that it got quite a few people, who would never normally have attempted street photography, to give it a try. Hopefully some of them will keep it up.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Congratulations, and well deserved too! I've always thought the one on the left there was the best of the bunch, reminding me of side-on Renaissance-era portraits. But the arrows outlining his thoughts going every which way really raises it to another level. And the pairing with the one on the right doesn't take away from it, and in fact they combine to make a really powerful diptych. The guy on the right is straight out of a dystopian noir movie. Brilliant!

 

[Chris Bennett]

Thanks Rob. Thse two are pretty scary and I thought they work well together. I am still building up a large and varied body of images from this box but think that it might be best not to bore folks with too many of them.