My Journey with Vintage Lenses | Vintage View

This is my Favourite Macro lens (canon 50mm 2.5) taken with a 1980 vintage, manual lens.

I'm really starting to enjoy vintage lenses.

At first I wasn't sure what all the excitement was over vintage lenses. Sure they're inexpensive, but they're so much more work. It's not so much that you focus manually (I'm no stranger to pulling focus) it's the super small focus throw, combine with how stiff the mechanics can be that creates the difficulty.

Aside from that, the don't resolve at the same level as modern lenses*. It's also much harder to control light when using these lenses. Flairs and blown highlights are everywhere.

Sure, some of the flairs looked cool & there where some other effects I liked, but had no idea how to control. All-In-All I wasn't sure the benefit out weighted the work & missed shots.

Brick wall, Vintage lens,  I'm happy.

But, I kept trying and playing & even got a few more vintage lenses.  That's when things started changing. These additional lenses where so much easier to use than the lens I had been using. Turns out the Canon 50mm 1.8 FD (from my old AE1) wasn't a good place to start. These other lenses focused more easily & where generally easier to control.  So I played with them more & got a little better with them.

Hazy

An images that made me think 'these lenses CAN be useful'

Now I'm starting to see the appeal. They're not for every project, or even most projects, but they can really do some interesting things when used on the right projects. I wouldn't say I can control all of the 'vintagey goodness' & I'm still a long way from confidently using them on a paid gig, but I'm enjoying thier use a lot more & slowly getting better with them.

I went full funk on this shot taken with a 1980's vintage  lens.

More Bricks & Vintage

So for me the next step is to start using them more for motion (video) work with them. I'm a little daunted to start this.  When taking stills I can take the time to set up each image and change the exposure and manage flairs etc. This will be a little more challenging when shooting 24 images a second.  I'm going to have to find new strategies to get the images I want.

 

I like that it has the vintage characteristics of super smooth bokeh, really high highlights & a nice warm tone, while while not going to overboard

Sometimes when using Vintage lenses, I go too far and end up with a big blurry mess.  I've been told that this image isn't that, but I think it's pretty close to that line.   What do you think?

* As I understand it, the optics of these older lenses won't give you best levels of colour fidelity, contrast & sharpness that modern digital sensors are capable of capturing.

PoTd - November 2

Pic-of-The-day

 Pic-of-The-day - "Close to the Edge" & "Lost in a Dream".

Glassy in the Foreground & Vintage Bokeh in the background.
Yes Vintage Bokeh, to my eye the bokeh from this lens* is different than all of my modern lenses. To my eye the 'bokeh balls' from the lens can have harder edges sort of like a ring around the edge. ... Which you prefer is (to my mind) mostly a matter taste.

This series was all taken with a vintage 50mm (*canon 1.8 FD) on a 70D.  It's a small waterfalls in Duff, that has the advantage that there is a little staircase that lets you get reasonably close to the water.

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PoTd - November 1

Pic-of-The-day

Pic-of-The-day - "Off the Beaten Path". A shallow eddy to the side of the waterfall.

This series was all taken with a vintage 50mm (canon 1.8 FD) on a 70D.  It's a small waterfalls in Duff, that has the advantage that there is a little staircase that lets you get reasonably close to the water.

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PoTd - October 31

Pic-of-The-day

Pic-of-The-day - "Frozen".
I was surprised how much light gets in with this lens*. In fact it often lets in more light than I want/need. I've learned that I can stop it down and still get some interesting vintage bokeh.  But sometimes (like this shot) I don't stop down enough and end up with some blown highlights.

This series was all taken with a vintage 50mm (*canon 1.8 FD) on a 70D.  It's a small waterfalls in Duff, that has the advantage that there is a little staircase that lets you get reasonably close to the water.

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PoTd - October 30

Pic-of-The-day

Pic-of-The-day - "Rushing Water".
This series was all taken with a vintage 50mm (canon 1.8 FD) on a 70D.  It's a small waterfalls in Duff, that has the advantage that there is a little staircase that lets you get reasonably close to the water.

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PoTd - October 29

Pic-of-The-day

 Pic-of-The-day - "At the Brink".
This series was all taken with a vintage 50mm (canon 1.8 FD) on a 70D.  It's a small waterfalls in Duff, that has the advantage that there is a little staircase that lets you get reasonably close to the water.  I'm starting to feel like I'm getting better at controlling the  highlights with this lens.

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PoTd - October 28

Pic-of-The-day

 Pic-of-The-day - "Small Cascade".
This series was all taken with a vintage 50mm (canon 1.8 FD) on a 70D.  It's a small waterfalls in Duff, that has the advantage that there is a little staircase that lets you get reasonably close to the water.

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PoTd - October 27

Pic-of-The-day

Pic-of-The-day - "Wide & Tall".
This series was all taken with a vintage 50mm (canon 1.8 FD) on a 70D.  It's a small waterfalls in Duff, that has the advantage that there is a little staircase that lets you get reasonably close to the water.

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PoTd - May 13th

Double Vintage

Pic-of-The-day - "Double Vintage".
Shooting Vintage Cameras with a Vintage Lens. So Double Vintage.
More playing around with a Canon FD 50mm 1.8 lens from the 80's on a nice new 70D.

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PoTd - May 12th

Leading Lines

Pic-of-The-day - "Leading Lines".

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PoTd - May 8th

Red, White & ... Yellow?

Pic-of-The-day - "Red, White & ... Yellow?".
More playing around with a Canon FD 50mm 1.8 lens from the 80's on a nice new 70D. 

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PoTd - May 6th

Street View

Pic-of-The-day - "Street View".
More playing around with a Canon FD 50mm 1.8 lens from the 80's on a nice new 70D. 

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Old School

I should have made this post a while ago, but better late than never.

A while back I got out my old 50mm F1.8 FD (manual focus) lens & spent my afternoon off playing with this vintage lens.

The manual focus & manual aperture took a while to get used to. I couldn't get (what I considered) a reasonably good image wide open, around f8 I was happier with the sharpness of the image.  A lot of this could be do to my inexperience with type of lens. I do focus manually a fair bit with modern lenses, but this was not quiet the same thing.

Outside in full sun it was f11 or slower, not to get a sharper image, but to control the light a bit better.  It seemed to let in more light than I would expect at a given F stop and faster f stops increased the glow & bloom that seems an inherent part of shooting with this lens.

The slightly soft focus & glow/bloom are part of what makes shooting with a vintage lens unique interesting.  At the same time I tried to gain some control over how much of these characteristics where in my shots.

Aside from trying different things in camera I also tried different approaches in post processing. Some images I tried to lessen the vintage feel and make them look more like what would be expected from a modern lens. Some images I didn't compensate for the effect of the lens & a few  I even pushed the "vintage-ness" even farther.

I only spent one afternoon shooting with this lens & initially wasn't too crazy about it, but then started to enjoy playing around with it.  Shooting with a fully manual vintage lens seems a lot more alchemical than shooting with modern auto everything lenses, its' more try this, try that, a little more, a little less, be more aware of light positions, reflections etc.

It's not my new 'go to' lens, but I will be playing with it some more, when I have time to play.

FD Lens

The Season has Ended

or                   

A dreamy reminder of the past vs a starker version of the present.

In actual fact it's not nearly as dramatic as it sounds. Now that I've sufficiently buried the lead, 
Pumpkin Ale is no longer available at Taps (until the Fall).

To the chagrin (I wish i could that word more often) of many regulars, their most popular seasonal brew has expired. Maybe expired is a bit dramatic, but the current supply of pumpkin has come to an end. Many consider pumpkin their 'go to' beer at taps.  I am part of a different group. We enjoy pumpkin (almost) as must as the pumpkin monobrewists (the beer version of mono theists) , but we don't drink it exclusively. We drink it occasionally or (as I prefer) in an alchemical mixture with other beers. (see: Sinister Pumpkin  )

The current incarnation of pumpkin has ended, but hopefully it clears the way for a new summer brew. No one knows what taps, phil & the beer gods have in store for the summer, but I suspect we will enjoy it.

P.S. a new batch of pumpkin traditionally appears in September or very early October, so for those dedicated to pumpkin, it's really not that long til it's return.

Sidenote: If you have noticed that the photos in today's blog look ' a bit off' it could be that I've been playing around with a new/old lens.  the photos where taken with a canon FD (read old film) lens adapted to my EOS550D. Please, don't be too harshly. It's early days with this arrangement.  The 1st image is sort of 'as is' & the second has a bit more colour & contrast added, which is more common with modern lenses.  not sure which I'd go with in the future, but it's still early days with this combo.