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Galaxy on the Shoreline

Summit Path

Just to close the week off, here's another from near the summit of Mount Douglas showing the pathway that leads to the top. Here we are looking southeast. Today's photo and those of the last two days were all taken with a Takumar 17mm fisheye lens that is about 50 years old.

Fisheye Fun

Fisherman's wharf struck me as an appropriate place to try out a fisheye lens - another of these old Takumar lenses I like. This one is a 17mm f:4. The distortion increases towards the edges of the photo. In the center the perspective is almost normal.

Songhees Point

A bright clear afternoon after a morning's rain inspired me a few days ago to revisit some of my favorite Victoria views. Above is the view from Ship Point Pier at one end of the Causeway. Here we are looking at Songhees Point with the Johnson Street Bridge on the far right and Laurel Point on the far left. Just to the right of the center is the Delta Ocean Pointe Resort. We'll have a closer look at that tomorrow.

After Dark in Old Town - Lower Johnson Street

The southern side of Market square is marked by lower Johnson Street, where many of the most colorful and interesting of the old town heritage buildings can be found.

All these night shots for the last week or so were taken with an SMC Takumar 28mm lens. This is another of these old Pentax lenses I rave about from time to time, this one made in 1971. These night shots offer good examples of some of the qualities I prize in these lenses. First, they are incredibly sharp. To illustrate this I have left the larger version of today's photo at full size (7360 pixels X 4912 pixels), although I have compressed it into a smaller file so it can be uploaded and viewed without waiting for five minutes. Click the photo and then click it again to see it full size. Scroll around and look at the details - the moldings on the building and the writing on the parking meter for examples. Secondly I love the way this lens renders color. It's accurate but just a little richer and more saturated than reality. I often find myself taking phtos of stuff around the house and marveling at how it looks better through this lens than it looks through my eyes.

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For those of you who may be interested in the technical aspects, the lens is a fully manual lens - I have to choose the aperture (for these night shots I closed it down to f5.6 or f8) and then focus manually. The camera selects an appropriate shutter speed. I used a tripod for the night shots - shot them at low ISO (80-100) and long exposures. The lens was made originally for Pentax cameras. I use it by putting an adapter on my Sony A7r mirrorless camera.

Legislative Assembly Building

Last week I was down on the Inner Harbour taking advantage of some warm and sunny weather to try out a "new" legacy lens - a Super-Takumar 35mm 1:3.5. This lens was made for Pentax film cameras about 50 years ago. I use it on my Sony camera with an adapter. Since the sun was behind the Legislature, shooting the building while facing it didn't work well so I took this shot from the side. I think I like it better than the head-on shots that are more typical.

Songhees Point

The weather here has warmed up and we've been getting some sunshine too so I took a walk around Songhees Point with another of these old Takumar lenses. It sure is nice to see the sun again.

Black and White Walkway

I've been shooting black and white lately because with the weather so overcast and gray it seems that most of the color is drained out of the landscape anyway and black and white just avoids the problem of the colorless environment. And sometimes like in the photo above, black and white actually looks warmer than a color shot of the same scene. This photo was shot during a brief moment when the sun peeked through the clouds. I had one these old Takumar lenses on my camera, this one a 28mm f3.5 prime lens. It gives a quite a wide field of view with nice detail from from a few feet away to infinity.

Bonus

I'm still shooting with these legacy Takumar lenses and as well as lovely colors and amazing detail and sharpness, they have another additional quality I haven't gotten around to exploiting yet. When there are bright points of light against a dark background these lenses turn them into wonderful star shapes as in this photo of the sun reflected on the water. This is particularly attractive with night shots of city lights - something I plan to do soon (or as soon as it warms up a bit!) Of course, this characteristic is not limited to Takumar lenses. There are other lenses that do this but there are many lenses that do not and it is an effect I like very much.

A Learning Experience

Photography is a fascinating hobby. I've taken several hundred thousand photos over the last 5 or 6 years and I am still learning more about the art every day. I mentioned last week that I have been experimenting with Pentax Takumar "legacy" lenses. They are called "legacy" because they are left over from the days of film cameras. Most of the Takumar lenses I have are 40 to 50 years old. Fortunately their metal and glass construction ages well. They mostly come from the time before autofocus and autoexposure so they are nearly fully manual - not quite in that although I set the aperture and focus manually, I am happy to let my camera choose an appropriate shutter speed. Lately I've been experimenting with de-focused backgrounds, mostly using these Takumar Lenses. This technique is widely used by photographers to isolate and accentuate the subject of the photo - particularly portraits. I can't say as I've got it under control yet but here are a few examples of the technique.

Westsong Walkway

Here's a little different view of the Westsong Walkway that goes from Vic West to Songhees Point (just off screen to the right). This photo was taken from the RV Campground on Work Point.

Inner Harbour

More dramatic light and clouds looking towards the Delta Ocean Pointe Resort from the eastern end of the Johnson Street Bridge.

WOW Lighting

Rain from those clouds cleared the air and then the sun peeked out low on the horizon from beneath the clouds to produce this amazing light.

Dramatic skies

I mentioned that we've been having dramatic clouds and lighting lately. Here's one taken on the West Bay Walkway. All of this week's photos are taken with one or another of the Takumar lenses I wrote about yesterday. Click the photo to see the detail - these lenses are awesomely sharp.

Snow 2

Our snow is pretty much gone now although that's not to say we won't get any more. Actually the snow on the walkway here just provides me with an excuse to post this photo. It's taken using an adapter I just got that allows me to use old Pentax Takumar lenses on my Sony camera. I have accumulated a bunch of these lenses from thrift stores over the last few years (50mm, 55mm, 105mm, 135mm, 200mm) and with the new adapter they are producing pictures I like very much.

Homing In

When I came out of the local swimming pool the other day I found parked beside my modest plastic fendered scooter a motorcycle of such stunning and immaculate shininess I had to get my camera out. And when I had gorged on the chrome and polished steel I looked up just as this tiny insect was zeroing in on the bright pink blossoms cascading from a hanging container above my head. Photography can be wonderfully satisfying. All these photos were taken with one of my favorite lenses, the Takumar SMC f2.8 105mm, originally made for Pentax film cameras. I have to focus and set the aperture manually but it's worth it for such crisp contrasty photos.

Morning Dew 2

Early this month I posted a photo of morning dew. I didn't mention in the post that it was taken as an experiment in that I used a telephoto lens. It worked well to give the effect I wanted though it is not what a telephoto is generally used for. Today's dew photo is another experiment that used a unique feature of the Sony a55 DSLR Camera - one of Sony's newer models - and a legacy lens - a Takumar SMC 55mm 1.8 lens with an extension tube. Unlike most macros the camera was not mounted on a tripod. This is a handheld photo. Usually the amount of blur due to shakiness would be more noticeable but the Multi Frame Noise Reduction feature of the Sony A55 was used here. The photo was shot using ISO 3200, a setting that would normally produce considerable "noise". However, the Sony A55 enables one to set a high ISO (up to 12,800). With a single press of the shutter release it rapidly takes five exposures and then merges them to reduce the noise. This enables one to shoot relatively fast so that reasonably sharp hand held macros are more possible. The photo above was shot at 1/200 of a second with the lens stopped down to f11. If you look carefully you can see the photographer's head (baseball cap) and shoulders silhouetted in the dewdrop and some clouds in the sky above his head.

Chinatown

Regular visitors here will know I have a penchant for old or legacy lenses. Yesterday I was lucky enough to find (for $15) a lens that some call the best 50mm lens ever made - the Super Takumar f1.4 50mm. I've only just begun to play with it but I like what I've seen so far. It may require a bit of work - there is a slight tinge of yellowness but I know how to cure that. Today's post is just a few shots of Victoria's Chinatown I took to test this lens.

Dave K.

Just to continue with shots made with old lenses, here's another of a very interesting and entertaining gentleman I met while on holiday earlier in the year. Like the shot I posted on Thursday, this one was taken with the Takumar 105mm lens (but without the extension tubes). These Takumar lenses, originally made for Pentax 35mm film cameras, are renowned for their sharpness and colour and although one must manually focus and set the exposure and shutter speed, they are still very popular.