7Artisans 55mm f1.4

I’ve been keeping an eye on the 7Artisans lenses for a while now but only recently decided to take the plunge for one. Having researched the various options, I went for the 55mm f1.4, which on my Olympus equates to 110mm on a full frame camera. This moves me into a bit of a telephoto area (although pretty much the same focal length as some of my vintage lenses such as the Zuiko 50mm and Helios 44-2).

Anyone who might stumble across my ramblings on here will know that I like putting vintage lenses on my Oly. However, once the adapter is on the camera with an old, sturdy piece of glass…. it gets kind of heavy and cumbersome at times. So I wanted to get something in the 50mm area which would be a native lens - small, well built and light.

Both the 50mm f.1.8 and 55mm f1.4 looked good. But which one? Slightly different focal lengths and slightly different max apertures. Do I need f1.4? Hmmmmm…

My decision on the 55mm came down to this:
I don’t tend to need the f1.4 aperture but it’s there if I want it.
The 55mm was a little closer to my Helios which I’ve been enjoying working with recently.
The minimum focus distance is closer.

I think overall, it just seemed like a slightly more flexible lens.

7Artisans have now got a distributor in the UK, so no more need for buying over eBay. Service was excellent - good response to emails and quickly dispatched lens. The lens arrives in very nice packaging. This does not look like some a cheap lens and on first picking it up, it doesn’t feel it either. A nice solid, metal lump in my hand. A reassuring weight without being heavy.

One concern I’d had before buying was the aperture ring being clickless. A couple of my vintage lenses are clickless and they are too loose - I never know where my aperture is set. No worries here; the aperture ring is very nicely damped so you have to be quite decisive in adjusting it. And I’ve not knocked it whatsoever once set. The same with the focus ring - just the right amount of give to allow for quick, snappy focussing.

Just so you know, this review is not going to be overly technical. I’m not a pixel peeper. I’m more interested in making images than dicking about checking if the corners of a picture are perfectly sharp after zooming in 100x. That said, here are some shots before my thoughts on using the lens in the real world…

I’ll start by saying that I gelled straight away with this lens. It works really nicely for my style of photography.
There were some shots I missed my focus through not being used to the focus ring, but that’s just down to practice. Overall I was getting nice shots within an hour.

The colours look great. Nice and natural with good contrast. I usually shoot aperture priority and dial my exposure compensation down 1/3 - 2/3 of a stop and everything was coming out of the camera great. Once into Lightroom, I just added a little bit more contrast, sharpening and saturation to my taste and I found a lovely pop to the shots. If anything, it might saturate the greens a little bit; but nothing I couldn’t pull back a bit.

I’d not shot with an aperture as wide as f1.4 before but gave it a go to see what it could do. Depending on the subject, it is quite hard to nail focus perfectly when that wide. And even the shots which were shot that wide open and had a good focus point were a little soft. Not offensively so - still useable, I just wouldn’t be able to fool someone I had a £1000 piece of glass on the camera. It also has noticeable chromatic aberration at wider apertures. These were easily cleaned up in Lightroom, but were noticeable without even needing to zoom in. This is being picky, though. Because having an f1.4 lens at this price is not going to be perfect.

Stopping down to about f4 definitely solves all that, though. Like many MFT lenses, this is the sweet spot. And it looks gorgeous. Plenty sharp for me and with lots of character. This is where I really started enjoying it.

As a manual lens, it is definitely one of the easiest I have used for focussing. On a par with my Zuiko 50mm and Panagor 35mm. If I need to grab a shot quickly, is it as fast as autofocus? Probably not. But it’s a lens for taking a bit of extra time and effort to get the shot - something which is suiting how I’m shooting more nowadays. Compose, nail your focus and fire away.

I’m really loving this lens. It’s very much like a vintage lens in the way it feels to use and also in the picture quality. It’s not pin sharp like some modern lenses, but it allows me to capture natural images with character. It’s excellent. And a bargain at the price. Snap one up whilst you can.

Here are some more images….

365 Challenge - the halfway mark!

I’ve suddenly realised that today was a milestone in my 365 challenge. I’ve only gone and hit the halfway point!

It being a leap year next year (and me ending the challenge at the end of February), then the 365 challenge is actually 366 shots. So today’s image #183 is the milestone!

There’s been a variety of reasons I’ve gone for a particular shot each day. Sometimes something has just been asking for it out of many photos from that day, sometimes it’s the only shot I’ve got that day. Sometimes it has been an interesting face, sometimes it has just been an interesting composition.

I think this one falls into the latter category for me. It’s probably not my best photo ever but I like the old woman’s face (which is what I first noticed) with the sign above her. I also like her being framed by the window, the different textures within the shot and also the random face appearing on the left. I wanted someone to appear in that space and was quite pleased when it was just half a face.

This was on my trusty Oly Em10ii with my 7Artisans 55mm f1.4 lens.
Standing in the middle of the road.

Night street photography workshop

On Saturday night, I decided to skip watching Eurovision and get myself over to Bristol to attend a night street photography workshop with Edo Zollo (organised by Wex Photo Video). I’ve not shot a massive amount at night and this seemed like a good opportunity to get some hints and tips from someone who is making some great work in the dark (I’d recommend checking out his work www.edlondonphotography.co.uk).

There were 13 of us in the group, all with varying experience in terms of how long we’d been shooting and also what kind of work we’d been producing. There were landscape photographers wanting to try something different, someone who was just beginning with their photography (although from what I saw they did have an eye for a good shot), motorsport enthusiasts used to working with long lenses, and a couple of us who were already used to more street-orientated work. So it made for a mixed bag of people.

After introductions and a natter over our kit and a drink, it was time to head out into the night.

Edo had been scouting out locations already and had found some dark alleyways around the Lewins Mead/Christmas Steps area. We were looking for capturing shadows and light - usually one light source and seeing what that gave us.

From the outset we were to try and get all our shots manually. No cheating with auto ISO, exposure and aperture. We were testing ourselves to get these shots old-skool. I did go a bit overboard and thought we were meant to be manually focusing everything too… and after finding out I was in the minority doing so, I thought I’d carry on just to make life interesting.

So I was shooting completely manually - ISO, exposure, aperture (which was pretty much on f1.7 throughout the whole shoot) and focus. It was pretty hard work in a couple of places to nail the focus in the dark, but generally speaking I got there.

One thing that surprised me was Edo saying to set our ISO at 400, maybe pushing up to 800. This wasn’t what I was expecting in such low light - I was just expecting to be at 1600 and possibly getting grainy at 3200. But I’m glad I went with his suggestion. Although some shots had a bit of motion blur, they did end up a lot cleaner and had more punch. Besides, most of my favourite photographers were shooting on film when the fast ISO that we’re now used to wasn’t available - and they somehow managed it!

I was using my trust Oly OMD EM10ii with the Panasonic 25mm f1.7. I did have my Pany 14mm f2.5 and Zuiko 50mm f1.8 in my bag but found they probably wouldn’t have been practical for how we were working. Thirteen of us in tight alleys meant I’d be further back getting heads in the way with the longer lens, and having to get up too close with the wider lens… which would mean getting in every one else’s shots constantly. Now, I’m probably guilty of getting to the front to get my shot quite often and am usually pretty mindful not to get in the way too much… but that wide lens would not have made me popular!

It was a fun evening, added to with some unexpected interaction from a lass from a nearby bar who came over to see what we were up to and then became our model for the next 5 minutes. Edo was excellent - very personable and making sure he went and chatted to everyone as we walked between locations. And I certainly learnt a few things, probably mainly on a technical level; shooting with a lower ISO for example is going to give me cleaner shots with more punch but is also obviously affects what I take a shot of. So if I’m doing that then I want a subject which is more static.

At the end of the evening we were to look through and find our five favourite shots to share. We didn’t actually get around to all sharing five, but I think I’ve narrowed mine down to these…

365 Challenge - the first couple of weeks

Somehow the past two weeks have zoomed by and I appear to be in the thick of my 365 Challenge.

As I said in my last journal entry, my 365 Challenge has two rules: it’s all to be in monochrome and there has to be someone in shot that is important to the composition.

I’ll be honest: I’m finding it a bit trickier than I thought. Some days more than others.
This is for a couple of reasons….

Firstly, my rule of getting someone in shot. That in itself isn’t an issue, but getting someone in there which is important to the composition and isn’t just incidental makes things hard at times. There have been a couple of days when I’ve become very aware of not many people around, although a wander round town at lunchtime always seems to give a couple of photo opportunities. Added to that, weekends have been tricky - working in town means weekdays aren’t such a problem. But there’s less people on the weekends near where I live.

Secondly, sometimes finding the time to get some shots is harder than I thought. I usually shoot quite a lot but some days I don’t get anything. Now I’ve set myself a challenge I have to get something! But I don’t want it to be anything - I want good shots (even though I’m well aware that not every day of the year is going to bring something fantastic). And this past week has been hectic at work so I’ve often not had the time to get out with my camera.

However, I am finding that it is changing my approach to my photography already. I’m finding that I’m shooting with more sense of purpose and also noticing possibilities for a shot more than before. I’ve taken to hanging around in a spot for something to happen to make a shot work (see the puddle shot below) or scouting out a location (the guy on the rooftop - I walked round that building several times for a good angle), as well as my usual opportunistic shots.

The Flickr link to the 365 Challenge is here

These are some faves from the last couple of weeks….

A big new addition to my lenses...

A couple of months ago I bought myself a 135mm Zuiko lens (see previous post). And since then I've been using it quite a bit - particularly on my OM10, although I need to scan the images from those once I buy a new scanner (more on that in future posts).

However, I knew that for a telephoto I'd still need even longer for the occasional use at race circuits. So I started looking at 200mm lenses - mainly Zuiko, and also some Vivitars. I wanted as fast as possible which is f3.5 or f4. And after casually watching things on eBay and looking at various secondhand sites, I discovered a 200mm f3.5 Mitsuki lens.

Mitsuki? Never heard of them. But it was £15. And nobody else on eBay seemed interested in it. So I did a bit of research. And it appears that it was a rather obscure lens from the late 1970s which was made using the (at that time) state of the art computer system at Tokina. So really... it was made by Tokina. And even more interesting (if you're a geek like me) is that it came out of the Tokina factory at the same time Tokina were making lenses for Vivitar. Which is a good thing!

So, I got it for £15. And I've taken it out and about a bit.
And here are some tests I did with it.
 

I think it was quite a bargain. Wide open it does have some fringing - on high contrast areas there was a bit of purple but I soon managed to clean it up. And in the last photo you can see a bit of green fringing. But stopping down sorts it out too.

Quite heavy though!
And long. Very long. Even longer with the retractable hood out.
To be honest, it's so long it looks a bit silly on my Olympus.

But hey.... it was only £15 and should work nicely for shots of Fernando Alonso heading in to Stowe corner in August!