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Today I received my long wanted adapter for Exakta lenses to Olympus 4/3 body. I have two lenses for Exakta, both Carl Zeiss Jena. One is a Tessar 2.8/50. The other is what I used for the image below, a Pancolar 2/50. From the limited colors available in my yard at this time of year, I am very happy with the result.

Olympus E-510. Exakta mount Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 2/50 @ f16

Loudon NH Fall NASCAR Race

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I finally got some time to go through the pictures from the race. Next year I think I may invest in one of those super small video/still cams for this event. I have never been happy with any of the images I have taken over the years at various race tracks. Bottom line for me is it takes motion to convey the feeling of speed. Still images just don’t hack it. Anyways, here are the pics I gleaned from over 200 I took that raceday.

Camera: Canon XTi Lens: Canon f2.8 200mm L in manual focus mode

As usual. click on any image to expand.

Manually Focused Lenses (MF) Are Alive And Well

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Sadly, as I look back now to the time of my first real DSLR – the original Canon Rebel, I wish I could have most of the money I spent on auto-focus lenses in my hand. Don’t get me wrong, I have four AF lenses for my Canon’s that I would never part with.

The rest are flawed in ways I never realized possible reading the glitz and glamour of the reviews.. Mainly, the inability of accurate auto focus with the 28,50 and 85mm f1,8 Canon lenses under many lighting conditions is a disappointment; however, they do work very well as MF. The very limited 100-300mm L Canon and the generally useless kit lens are other let downs.

The AF lenses I would keep to use as AF (and MF if I choose) are the 200mm L f2.8 Canon, The Sigma f2.8 105mm, the 28-135mm Canon IS, and the Sigma 15-35mm.

Why would I like my money back? Very simple , the MF lenses of the 1940’s to current time are mainly prime lenses. The greater part of them are as good or better than current AF primes at much lower pricing.

I won’t get into all the ins and outs of MF lenses since there is a website that covers the subject already. Refer to mflenses.com The forum sections are a wealth of information that keeps growing by literally hundreds of new messages each day. And it is free to use !

This blog will be a place for me to put images I take with my small supply of MF lenses. I won’t have galleries as such, I will simply post a message containing images from a single lens.

In the near future I will post images from my four different brand DSLR’s. Among the lenses I will be using are: Peleng 8mm fisheye, Meyer Optik Lydith 30mm,Pentacon 135mm (15 blade aperture), and the pancake Industar 50-2. These are sitting here on my desk. Others are waiting in the wings. All lenses will be unmodified in any way.

As a note: The current header image to the blog as of 09-27-2009 was taken at the Fall 2009 Loudon, NH NASCAR event with the f2.8 200m L Canon lens in MF mode. It was set at the hyperfocal distance. This is a crop from the RAW image. Notice the cross hatch pattern? That is the debris fence about 30 feet from our seats (yup- front row). Guess where the AF focused in about 50% of the time? Correct- right on the fence! Think the AF would have allowed me to get four shots in this sequence? I doubt it as it attempts to find focus for each shot since the camera was being panned. AF is pretty much worthless in this situation.