A grey day with the Ensinor 28mm and the dogs

Another walk with the dogs.

Another camera & lens combo to try out.

I'd used the Ensinor 28mm with the Pentax Q10 for the HDR images of the lighthouse and I didn't have high hopes about using it again but it was there on my desk and the dogs needed walking.

Winter dog walks in the mud, yuck!

Dodging the you know what that other people leave behind too. Well other peoples dogs! 

I think any lens can be sharp enough if you get the focus right.

28mm makes it easier too as you're never going to get wildly out of focus backgrounds.

The wider the lens the deeper the depth of field.

The longer the lens the shallower the depth of field; all that lovely creamy out of focus stuff!

Focus peaking and magnification on my Sony A9 makes it easy to focus too.

So what did I photograph? Not a lot!

Autumn in Sutton Bridge with the Hanimex Automatic MC 1:2.8 35mm

Another cheap lens with a poor reputation on the internet.

The Hanimex Automatic MC 1:2.8 35mm is apparently a cheap and rebranded bag of crap that you could pick up from Argos when people were wearing big hair and shoulder pads.

I can't quite remember when I got this lens. I can think of 2 possible times both easily 6-7 years ago and it has sat in a cupboard ever since. But put it this way, both possible times were bulk buys of camera and lenses so this lens cost me around 50p at a guess. It can happily sit in the cupboard.

But 2022 was the year for the Hanimex 35mm lens. Out it come, pretty much looking brand new apart from a loose manual focus ring and by that I mean the grip is loose; it focuses perfectly fine.

Another head clearing bit of exercise out in the cold and grey of Autumn/Winter in Lincolnshire; a little village photowalk with my headphones on just shooting what I see.

So leaves, leaves and more leaves.

The lens wasn't as bad as what I thought it would be; it's not super sharp in the middle and the corners are smudgy but just don't put the subject in the corner and it will be fine.

Shoot close and you can soon get out of focus backgrounds too.

Happy.

Winter with the HOYA HMC TELE-AUTO 135MM F/2.8 EXC. Manual focus and the amazing lens flare

One of the best £10 charity shop buys ever!

It could have been a total waste and better spent on a couple of beers in Spoons; yeah you know me!

But on this occasion a cheap ol' lens for the 1980's has done wonders.

I could find much out about the HOYA HMC TELE-AUTO 135MM F/2.8 EXC on the net. This time google come up pretty much trumps apart from other people trying to find out more about this lens.

In my search whilst walking around Lynn I read peoples opinions on forums saying that it wasn't great and I was gutted that I'd wasted that tenner; those 2 beers!

But it was now in my possession and it went in the cupboard until I had time.

Come the start of December and I'd caught up with Autumns weddings and I had a couple of weeks before they started again. I needed to get away from the computer (funny that as here I sit again in front of the screen typing this) and out of the house. Winter was in full effect and it was bloody freezing outside. Time for the big coat, hat and cold hands as well as my Sony A9, the Hoya 135mm 2.8 and a cheap Sony FE to M42 adapter, so I could mount the lens on a camera far superior to what it was ever intented for.

Thats the thing about these old cheap legacy lenses; they were produced in the days of film, a media a little more forgiving than modern digital cameras with ever growing pixel counts. On a modern digital SLR or mirrorless camera their weaknesses are soon highlighted.

So don't go diving in the deep end thinking you're going to get crystal crisp images like you do with a nice new lens.

They're often soft as hell wide open and a mission to manually focus.

I've set up a custom function button on my Sony A9 to zoom in (digitally) so I can get as close to spot on focus as possible; with focus peaking too I usually manage to get something acceptable. A bit of wind blowing a leaf though and you'll have to fire a few shots to get one in focus.

But....

This little Hoya 135mm 2.8 is....little. It's easy to carry around so why not carry it around.

And then...

That f@#*ing lens flare is amazing!

Rainbow lens flare. I've never seen anything like it; not without trying to by using lens prisms etc. With this lens its straight out of the box.

Yeah I was lucky with the weather; the sun being low in sky and easy to get in the back of my photos, ready to give me all these perfect imperfections.

Sharpness? I forgot all about sharpness!

AMAZING!

Same place. Different person. Wisbech.

If you stand in one spot and wait, things will eventually happen. 

Just pre focus, set the exposure and wait. 

And if your really lucky, well not that lucky because the majority did, people will look at you and give you that 'ugh!?' face.

Gedney Railway station; waiting for a train since 1959

Gedney railway station was a station in Gedney, Lincolnshire. It was a station on the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway network. It opened on 1 July 1862 and closed on 2 March 1959.

Good ol' Wikipedia helped me with that info, hardly an essay but useful and to the point.

I've driven past this building many many many times over the years and a couple of years ago I visited it and took a couple of snaps of the outside. As the weather was mild on Saturday, I thought it was finally time to go in.

The building as I found out last time is a wreck, though I suppose any building that's been left for 56 years probably will be. Especially those that have been used a rubbish tip.

The place is not safe to walk around and I really should know better; the ceiling is caving in and in some places it's already fallen down, the floor has holes in it so you HAVE to look where your walking, the stair case is rotten and moves when you take a step.....the list goes on. The building really hasn't got much time left before it really does collapse.

The best thing about the site, is the platform that's still there, however the brambles have taken over so there's not too much to see. There's also still the station name board but again its hidden behind 6 foot tall thistles that are guaranteed to give you a bad time.

As far as the camera goes, I used my Fujifilm X-Pro 1 and I still continue to love the thing. It has its downfalls, in particular the way Adobe Lightroom renders it raw files, they're so smudgy and no real sharpness or details. Oh well.

I used an old Canon FD 50mm lens that I mounted via an adapter. Shooting with an old manual lens is difficult when shooting in a dark environment as its tricky to get the focus spot on when using a wide aperture to let the light in. I also used the 18mm f/2 which I purchased with the X-Pro 1.

Taken with the Canon FD 50mm;

I love the softness of this image.

You always find a chair when urbexing.

Taken with the Fujifilm 18mm f/2




I thought this was pretty cool. These people left a discrete little reminder of their presence. I wonder who they are?