Winter with the beautiful Helios 44-2 lens

The camera geeks the Helios 44-2 needs no introduction. It's got legendary status. That swirly bokeh!

Bokeh????

The out of focus loveliness.

Some lenses are better than others; soft, harsh and sometimes swirly.

I'm not sure any of these images are swirly but they have got some absolutely fantastic lens flare. I'm really into shooting into the sun although it can't be good for my eyes or camera! Shooting into the sun get some amazing looks though.

I've got 3 copies of this lens. Each from a different year/era. Each apparently have their own characteristics. All versions together though make this lens likely to be the most mass produced lens ever. In production from 1958 through to the 90's in Soviet Russia.

This photowalk was cold, very cold.

The big coat was on and so were the big head phones to keep my ears warm and you can't knock a pair of walking boots to keep your feet warm and dry.

Damn I love these old lenses.

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!

A month with the Pentax Q10. The smallest interchangeable lens camera ever made.

Now I'm a self confessed camera geek!

I see a camera and I think "I want that!"

And more often not it's not even a good camera, I've got good cameras I don't need anymore (as of yet), so it usually ends up being some quirky thing that just looks like fun.

I'd seen the Pentax Q range before and thought it looked cool.

Early March, I was watching a Youtube video and see a Pentax Q on the shelf and that was it, the eBay search begun.

These cameras and lenses are not cheap!

Yeah they're not extortionate but after all they are over 10 years old and they're not great either.

So let's just say they hold their money well.

I didn't know what to expect when mine arrived in the post.

This little bad boy is tiny! I haven't got massive hands at all but the camera and  lens fits easily in the palm of my hand.

So what can you expect from such a small camera?

Autofocus; Yeah it's got autofocus but it's not going to set any records. In fact make sure you've got plenty of time.

Battery; the battery is tiny so therefore the battery life is awful!

Image quality; nothing special. I think I'm right in saying that a modern mobile like an iPhone has a similar sized or  even a larger sensor. So you could be better off just getting your phone out to take a photo.

The rear screen; oh god it's bad, good luck with seeing anything in the daylight. I did try turning the brightness up which did work a bit but that drains the battery even quicker.

But!

Did I mention that this camera is cool already?

It's a challenge. 

It's tiny!

With the Pentax Q10 body I purchased 2 lenses; SMC Pentax-Q 02 Standard Zoom 5-15mm F2.8-4.5 & Pentax Q 15-45mm f/2.8 06 Telephoto Zoom.

The 02 standard lens combined with the small sensor; image quality is terrible, I've only used it twice starting with a photo walk in the park.

Shooting the flowers; pointing the camera towards the sun with a crap autofocus and a rubbish rear screen was a little trial & error. And because these were some of the 1st photos taken with the camera I didn't know how the images were going to stand up with regards to highlight and shadow detail. So I erred on the side of caution and went for a darker look.

The next time I used the 02 standard lens was during some street photography in Wisbech.

I used to shoot a lot of street photography in Wisbech and it was great to be back again documenting local life; the good, the bad & the ugly.

It was like a trail of bread leading me to a photo opportunity.

I love a bit of lens flare and the 02 standard lens flares like mad.

As always it was a difficulty composing using the rear screen and getting the focus right.

The next challenge; the Pentax Q10 is no athlete. When you press the shutter button there's a delay whilst it thinks about it. So I admit that shooting people I'm using the continues shooting mode hoping that one of the images will capture the people before they disappear.

And usually I've pre focused because I haven't got time to wait for the camera to try and do that again!

All of the below images are taken with the 06 telephoto zoom.

The image quality is better than the 02 but don't go zooming in and pixel peeping because it's not that great.

Being more than a little rusty at street photography, I'm not so confident at getting up in peoples faces anymore. So using a zoom lens has been a nice easy way of getting back into it. 

Plus I'm usually pushing Florence in a stroller so I can stand a little further back with her and stay as inconspicuous as possible.

Street photography in Spalding; playing with light and documenting details.

So let's see where my journey with the Pentax Q10 leads.

Until next time.

Thanks for reading and keep shooting.

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A Broken Camera During Lockdown

At the start of 2020 I started a personal project of shooting a roll of film each month and then I had the audacity of saying in a blog post 'how hard can it be?' well let me tell you it's definitely not easy!

If I counted up how many times over the years I've used the word 'time' in my blogs then I would use up a lot of it doing so. I'm really like a stuck record when it comes to time. Who thinks there should be a world decision to add, let's say, 6 more hours to the day? Tada! more time!

But seriously it's now the end of July and I'm only now writing about March's roll.

I've got rolls from May to scan and digitise.

And I'm not even working that much because of the...we all know what happened in 2020...but I never seem to be able to put fingers to keyboard to blog or especially film to scanner.

But now I have! It's 6.35am, Florence is crawling around the living room and Charlie is still asleep, let's blog!

March on the film front looked like this; A roll of Konica Centuria ISO 200 in my Canon T70 SLR camera fitted with a 50mm f1.8.

The camera; Canon T70, was made from 1984 (the year before my birth) and is a chunky piece of plastic with some electronic automation, which was pretty new back in 1984. Focusing was an all manual affair.
I shot a few rolls with my copy about 10 years ago when I was crazy into buying and shooting film cameras and ever since it's been waiting it's turn to be brought out of retirement again.

March 2020 was it's time but not for long.........it broke 11 frames in to the roll!
Damn!
It still works but the battery compartment hatch has crumbled and no longer closes and stays shut, not good for a camera that relies on electronics to work!

Early on in the month I thought I'd pick up on my long lost passion of scouting for vintage cameras and on day 1 I picked up a Canon EOS50e for £7.
Now this was meant to be, seriously, the day before I was looking at this camera on the net thinking that this would be good for some experiments and the next day day there's one sitting waiting in a charity shop.

So why did I want one?

Because this camera, like it's big brothers of the era had what was called 'Eye Control AF'.

What this means is that the camera has a sensor in the viewfinder that can see where your eye is looking and will choose 1 (out of 3) of the focus points for you to focus on your chosen subject.

Does that make sense?

Basically, with a pinch of salt, the camera will focus on the thing that you are looking at.

Come on that's cool!!!

So when the T70 bit the dust, I cleaned up the, new to me, 50e and put it into work.

Right that's enough camera talk, now let me bore you with chat about the film but I'll be quick.
I've got a good amount of expired film.
When film goes past it's expiration date it looses it's sensitivity and you have to account for this with your exposures; give it more light.

They say that film loses a stop of light for every decade past it's use by.

And this is where I made a proper face palm moment. My roll of Konica Centuria was UB 02/2002, basically 2 decades out of date.
For some reason in a rush of excitement to get shooting I shot this roll at ISO 100, the roll started off as ISO 200 and this has resulted in a dark set of exposures.......it should have been ISO 50.

When I was unloading the finished roll and looked at the UB to record it for this blog I asked myself 'why did you shoot it at ISO 100???'

Oh such a proper film photographer problem!

Oh well, in the future I promise to use my brain.

Ok let's talk photos.

Dark, under exposed photos!

I'm always trying to shoot a few frames of my day job on film just to compare the shots with my 'proper' digital work.

Lisa & Lucy met me in the woods for a social distanced pre wedding shoot.

I loved using the T70 for these shots, it has a bright viewfinder and manual focusing was easy.

 

Just remember that I screwed up the sensitivity calculations, so these shot's should have been much brighter.

Babies, toddlers and tired tired parents.

The good thing about the EOS 50e is that I can use my new modern decent lenses and flashes.

For a family snapshot!

When we visited Hunstanton I found that the EOS 50e has a common problem; batteries.

It seems that some batteries are a little smaller than others and therefore can move around a little inside the camera and loose connection, making the camera not work.

Don't worry though, a piece of folded paper to the rescue.

 The expressions!

 Charlie is a sod for stepping in front of the camera just at the moment of 'click'

I wanted to shoot some portraits using my studio lights and so what better way to finish off the roll.

And there we have it, another month, a broken camera and loads of dark photos.

Another successful month!