Thursday, June 26, 2008

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] More Glass Things...

Excellent!

Earlier today, the mail came as it usually does (you know. That whole neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor dead of night stuff), and in this batch of mail, I received another handy lens.

It's a 55mm f/3.5 Micro lens, and I'm kind of wound up about it (it's the one on the left in the picture there).

The thing is, it requires a little knowledge to operate since it doesn't really communicate with my digital camera. So, I have to keep things like aperture, metering, exposure, yadda yadda yadda in mind every time I take a shot. It's like old-school photography, and it's actually a hell of a lot of fun and about as far away from point and shoot as you can get these days.

It's a nice, beat-up little lens, and it's about thirty-five years old. It's got some dings and scratches on the outside, but all-in-all, it's in better condition than I was at that age.

That's clear, I think.

See?

That's pretty sharp, and it's nice to see the glass is clean and scratch free.

As far as macro-sharpness, well, I grabbed this shot of the inner working bits of a petunia earlier, and I think it's pretty impressive.

55mm macro test.

Pretty...

For $50, I'm thinking I got a pretty decent deal on this clunky, old piece of pre-disco technology. Of course, I've got a lot to learn about this whole photography thing now. As it stands, however, I don't think I can say a single bad thing about this lens. Now I can see why people have been raving about this thing for the past thirty or forty years.

Ah well... I'm just babbling at this point. I hope your daysare going great, grand, or otherwise good.

-DP

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 6/26/2008 01:30:00 PM

3 comments:

  1. Wow, yes, and that's part of what makes photography so daggone fascinating.  I can imagine someone cleaning out his or her dad's house, what the heck, no one uses these things any more.  Hey, some sucker gave me $50. for it.  Nah, you're the richer one here.

    (I think that mail that comes in the dead of night is typically not the type that one wishes to receive.......)

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  2. Loverly!

    I'm looking forward to seeing even more remarkable pictures. Can I ask what kind of camera you have? Ken (my hub) is planning on getting a Canon SLR soon, because he has a couple of lenses for his Canon 35mm and those lenses should work on the digital.

    Beth

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  3. ... since I have started reading your journal, I have given more thought to photography ... I wouldn't mind taking pictures and adding them to my little world, but I doubt if I would capture the quality of shots that you have ...

    ... I really like the one of the globe in the lens ..!

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