Using the Micro Nikkor 55mm f3.5 lens on my Leica SL2 camera for general photography

When you think of a general purpose lens, your mind normally doesn’t wander to a macro lens.

I have found over the years that there are a couple of Nikkor lenses in this family that work really well for the task of general purpose photography lens and this is one of them. This particular copy is an Ai variant made somewhere in the late 1976 to early 1977 time frame so this lens is almost 50 years old and just look at the image quality it produces… Lens manufactures were on their A game at this point and Nikon was a force to be reckoned with in this area. This lens isn’t even their best macro lens either… That is something that to this day surprises me a little. It has an external aperture ring that is detented in whole stops…except the very first one where it goes from f3.5 to f4 for some reason… Who knows why they did this, but they did so it is there if you want to use it.

Minimum focus distance is a surprising 9 1/2” from the image plane. So this is right at 4.25 inches in front of the lens when mounted on my Leica SL2 camera. This also gives you a preproduction ratio of 1:2 on the image sensor, that is to say that if you have an object that is 1 inch across in reality, it will be 1/2 inch across the sensor. To get to 1:1 reproduction ratio you need help… The PK-3 extension ring will get you half that distance and to the true 1:1 reproduction ratio at minimum focus distance. All of this is conveniently engraved on the lens barrel for you should you need to look it up in the field… Also notice in these two images that the lens “pumps” air which means it has external focus movement, the lens grows and shrinks when you adjust focus, it is common belief that this is where dust gets into the lens from, when you open the lens fully to minimum focus distance the lens intakes a full charge of air and doesn’t have dust seals to prevent dust from entering the lens mechanism, so you get a little internal dust…

One last thing to note about this focus mechanism is that the reason I like using these lenses for general purpose photography like travel and such is that as you can see in the above photo, the focus throw from infinity to less than 1 meter is short, so focus is fast with this lens. It also has a range focus scale, but since it is 55mm, the scale is rather small and not easy to use, it will give you rough numbers to work with but that is all.

Enough with all this tech talk, let’s take it for a spin and see what the photos look like on my Leica SL2 mirrorless camera since it has IBIS on the sensor and I can hand hold photos at unheard of shutter speeds with it.

First thing I notice when using this lens is how good it feels in the hand. The location and feel of the controls are literally in the perfect location.

Another thing I noticed was that it is sharp, like incredibly sharp. To this point, it makes sense that is would be this good due to the design intent of the lens but it has a really nice general purpose focus throw too. This lends itself to being a wonderful walk about lens. The following photos were shot on my Leica SL2 using this lens as a walkable lens. I have used another Nikon macro lens before in this same capacity, the 60mm Micro Nikkor once lived on my D810 as a general purpose lens. It works flawlessly in this capacity.

In the above photo you can see what I love about a camera with stabilization in it. The camera sensor is rock steady so I can capture shutter speeds like in the photo above where I was running something like 1/30 second and some of my water blur shots were 1/4 second!!! Like the one below is a 1/4 second handheld exposure and if you will look, the rocks are crisp and the water has a really nice blur to in. This is at f32 as well so there will be some diffraction in the image from that but all in all, it looks really nice.

Below is a crop from this image. As you can see, the spider webs are even visible and this is handheld no less! As long as you have some decent light this combination is really nice. When you move to a mirrorless camera body that has IBIS on the sensor, it unlocks so many possibilities with lens / camera combinations. I dont know why hobbyists dont see this sooner but a lot dont.

So in conclusion, I highly recommend this little guy if you need a macro lens on occasion and want a nice general purpose lens the rest of the time. The f3.5 maximum aperture also allows the glass to be smaller and lighter as well. This is also a huge perk to everyone except those people who shoot with big glass… until next time, get your camera out and take a picture with it!

The Hanimex 28mm f2.8 lens is a really interesting little lens...

Sometimes I just throw the dice on a vintage lens and occasionally it comes out really good and sometimes it is a dud…this time it is a winner.

I went to Ashville NC on a small trip recently and on this trip I was doing photography. Well, when it is a photography trip I always make it a point to go to Ball Photo and just “go shopping” for something interesting. They have SO much vintage gear to choose from that it is almost overwhelming to be honest. It is not for the feint of heart to be honest about it. But today found me at Ball Photo and while there I started looking for some glass to pick out… Well I found some.

We all know how much I love to shoot with vintage glass and I am always on the hunt for a new lens to play with. I have Leica glass for the Leica SL2 and use it quite often but I still really enjoy adapting some older lens to the camera and then seeing what I can get with this lens and camera combination when I go out with it. It is almost a challenge to see if I can come away with something good using this old lens… What generally happens is that I slowly build a collection of lenses that I REALLY love to use and I am starting to collect a full set of these lenses. Some examples would be the 28mm f3.5 Asahi Optical M42 mount lens that I keep in the camera bag, this lens is literally one of my favorite lenses of all time for some reason. I just love the results I get with it on the Leica SL2 camera. Well today finds me using a lens that is 2/3 of s top faster and a little bigger too.

The Hanimex 28mm f2.8 is a well made lens with the whole thing made of metal (probably brass from the way it feels but it could be anodized aluminum too I really am not sure) and has some really nice accents like the little silver bands around the focus ring which also has a faux leather appearance but I am almost certain is rubber. The range focus scale is graduated for every aperture marked (sans f4 for some reason) on the aperture ring, which is a nice touch for street photography. The detent clicks on the aperture ring are nice and pronounced as well as solid, no mushy aperture detents on this lens! All in all, it is a great little lens by design engineering standards. It is even a well designed attachment scheme as well with the M42 mount as it is easily adapted to about all mirrorless cameras on the market.

Many people also don’t realize that the M42 adapter can be adjusted to get the lens top dead center of the adapter too. There are three tiny set screws on the adapter that hold the threaded ring in place on the lens adapter to adjust this. To make this adjustment is simple, just screw the lens into the mount till it seats and snug it well so it wont work loose while in use. Next get the Allen key that came with the adapter and loosen the three set screws till the lens can spin in the mount and simply turn the lens till the center mark is top dead center of the adapter and then push in on the mount while tightening the set screws back down to make it hold the ring again and your done. It is that simple. Mine is slightly off center here and I have simple been too lazy to adjust it as it is close enough for me to be able to get out and shoot anyway. I don’t normally worry about it too much as once you set the adapter once, then all the lenses will time up and you don’t have to mess with it again. Installing lenses over the years on this adapter and tightening them has slipped the timing a little and this is why it is slightly off center. Once again, it is no big deal to me and i just go out and shoot…

So the first official outing with this lens was to go to the mall in Chattanooga TN with it and capture some Christmas spirit with it…on black Friday no less.

Well to be quite honest, it performed wonderfully. Now to be fair, the camera does have IBIS in it and this allows me to shoot at pretty slow shutter speeds without the need for a tripod. As long as you go into the camera settings and tell the camera it is a 28mm lens, the camera can compensate for movement really well allowing for incredibly slow shutter speeds like the last photo in this string from the mall where it was 1/10 of a second…hand held. Most of the other photos are shot at 1/250 second to freeze the people so that I can show the current clothing styles as well as the general appearance of the mall in 2023.

All in all, the Hanimex performed extremely well in this role. The images are sharp and the colors are easily adjusted in post processing to give any look you want. It also doesn’t hurt to have that Leica “look” from the camera processing the colors before saving the RAW file too, Leica does something special with their processing to give the colors a look that is unique to Leica cameras. It is hard to explain, but it is a thing.

In the next photos I didn’t show all the images as they just reflect what it is like to shoot indoors where there is controlled light and no sun to deal with. The following photos show what happens when you have the sun shining on the front element.

Above is the same photo as the one right under this text except that I shaded the lens from the sun. This lens cant handle the sun shining on it from any angle without showing you that it was happening with some sort of sun flare in the image. In the below image there is geometric artifacts as well as a overall glare from the sun.

In the below photo you can also see the geometric glare in the center of frame, this could be used to your advantage in some applications like vintage style portraits where you position the subject to where the flare adds to the aesthetic of the image. Here the flare doesn’t do that though and is more of a nuisance that anything else. So this is something to keep in mind when using vintage glass, you will run into these kinds of problems from time to time like the older generation has to do…lol.

Lastly, can you make portraits with the 28mm lens? The answer is yes, you can as long as you are careful with the composition and keep the subject centered like I did here. The 28mm lens can distort toward the edges so it is imperative to keep the person in the center of the photo as much as humanly possible if you want the image to turn out like anything you want at all. Maria was gracious and allowed me to make her portrait at the mall using one of the advertising lights as a “studio light” to give us nice diffused side light and I think the image turned out really well for a 60 year old lens with improvised lighting.

As well as this blog post, I also have a video sharing some of these points and showing more of the old Sitton’s mill location should you want to go check that out at the link below.

Thanks and if you are into vintage glass, this is a keeper in my book and for pennies too, so with that, get your camera out and go take a picture with it!

Discussing my Leica SL2 and a Yashica 28mm on a photowalk in Chattanooga TN

Well, I have finally made time to go take photos again and to be honest about it, I wanted to let it cool off a little too. Well, it is nicer weather now and I am starting to get out and look for photo opportunities again. I have a few I am looking into but for right now, it is still a good ole case of urban photography that I so love to do.

Today we find me in Chattanooga yet again and this time I am setup on a side street off of Main street called Rossville Avenue and this road has some really neat old buildings on it, some of which I have photographed in the past but I like to get photos of them as I go along to show how they change with time. I get parked and pay for one hour of parking so I have to make it count. Putting a little pressure on myself to come away with SOMETHING of value in this time allotment.,,

My first stop is the Hamilton Parts Distributors building that has been NOT a parts distributor for quite some time as of this point…2023. The building is really starting to show its age too with numerous windows bricked up on the sides as well as the front giving it a sort of dystopian imbalanced look. This could be a set right out of a movie or something. I took several photos from different angles today and some look better than others. I really like the front door and the corner that I get today for some reason… Here they are, what do you think?

I love how the building still has remnants of the signage that was painted on it some time in the past too. Also look at the foundation material, today it is all either poured concrete or cement blocks and has been for many decades, so I am going to speculate this is pre-war construction meaning before World War 2, due to these limestone foundation stones that look like they were repurposed from another construction site that existed before this building did. I have evidence of these cut stones going back to the mid 19th century so I know these are probably something left over either from a fire or was just cast off and the people that built this building saw a chance to save a few dollars on this part of the construction. Also notice that they didn’t seem to think that these stones were very appealing as they hid them behind a mortar stucco finish as seen in the front door photo.

My next stop was right next door at Zarzours Cafe.

This cafe has been in business for over 100 years, Yeah, you read that right…a century and as you see on the sign. It is closing in less than a month. I have never eaten here either. I will change that in the next few days. I have to be able to say that I sat at their café and enjoyed the fine cuisine they had to offer for a century! How could I let that slide???

Back to the walk at hand. I took a couple of photos of the restaurant and parking area and headed on down the street.

The next stop was at the Koch Foods Processing plant. This is one of two processing plants inside the city that I am aware of. These have been here for decades too so they are pretty much fixtures of the city at this point. One is on Broad street and the other is here on Rossville Ave. It being such an iconic location coupled with the skyline containing Lookout Mtn as well makes for a cool photo to me.

After the chicken plant, I made my way over to Main street and did a little photography on Main as well. Main usually has something really colorful as well as interesting too, this is why I usually always make my way over and look around for a little while at a minimum…

These two photos just go to show what all can be found on Main street even when it is not having some sort of special event. All it takes is a little creativity and time of your part to come away with some interesting photos. Now you might be thinking these are not interesting photos, and you will be right as the photo interest rate will vary from person to person, but I found that these to be quite interesting so I am sharing them with you…lol. The difference between the two photo primarily is the shutter speed as one is really slow to blur the truck and the other is faster so it will capture the whole construction scene with out any motion blur on my part.

Well, this is going to be a wrap for the post, I hope you enjoyed following along and if you would like to watch a video of this trip, just click on the link below. Thank you for you time and get your camera out!

Chasing the light...

Ok, this is going to be a short and sweet kind of post. I normally make YouTube videos about things that involve lots of images playing past the viewer and just lay some music over it to more or less inspire the viewer to do what I say at the end…”Get your camera out and go take a picture with it”

Never before has this been a truer statement than today. But we need to ask ourselves an important question…what do we like to shoot?

With world events being what they are and how the physical world around us is changing constantly as time goes on, I am not ready to just let it pass me by without documenting some of it as I go. Armed with this knowledge, I look for two things to photograph, things that will be gone soon or interesting light. That is what drew me to the photo above of the couple painting down by the river by iPhone light. The light was just too good to pass up.

You see, I am not what I would call an artist. I don’t think my photography is that noteworthy. Once I am gone, maybe someone will find these hard drives and then will think they are filled with the coolest photos and video the world has ever seen, just not today. That being said, I do think that I am a decent documentary photographer and that as time goes on I get better with it.

Things I normally photograph will be buildings that are gone now, that I could tell somehow that were probably headed for the wrecking ball or like the series below where I photo-documented the construction of the Kinley hotel and how there is a Coca-cola sign that is now hidden from view between the buildings because of the hotel. For me this is the sort of thing that is simply fascinating for some reason.

As an added bonus in these photos there is also another piece of history that undergoes a change as well. If you will notice that the sign on the corner for the ADAMS building appears in the last 4 photos where I thought to go across the street and get the image. This sign survives into the renovation and it restored and back in place at the end. The ADAMS building no longer exists but the sign somehow survives into the current day…

Another aspect of my photography is more artistic where I will shoot at night to capture interesting light in different areas of the city, where ever that might be. I have began to look for movie marques in the town square of small towns and get them lit up at night.

But the real thing I have started to do it just take photos. Things that happen around me like the photo here of the smoke from local wildfires because it hasn’t rained in something like 2 or 3 months at this point.

These next two photos were not taken on the same night, but were captured about 1/4 mile of each other. One is the river front and I just liked the way the light fell that night on the water as well as the light spill from the street lights across the river and the color of the sunset all just came together for a great photo. The next one is simply a photo of a couple of buildings on Market and 5th street. The signage and the lights just made for a cool photo to me so I stopped for a second and grabbed a few images of it at varying exposure levels so I could get the lit signs to expose properly as well as the rest of the stuff. It is just a cool photo to me.

If you have not figured it out yet, I want you to start taking a long hard look at what it is that you enjoy photographing. i mean REALLY boil it down to the simplest components. For me it was the two things I just mentioned, for you it might be saturated colors or people waving at you or blur in your photo. The point is, don’t just generalize your answer, the only person you hurt in this event is yourself if you are not 100% truthful.

If you like to watch videos too, here is the video I did on the same subject.

So ask yourself what it is that you like and then go out and make photos of that AND don’t let yourself fall into the trap of not being able to change this with time. I started out wanting to shoot urban decay only, but it turned out that was not the root of what I like to shoot, but it led me to it. Anyway, with that said, get your camera out and go take a picture with it!

How shooting with Zeiss Ikon Contina made me realize I am spoiled...

When I started out on my own in photography it was already the 90s so I really didn’t know how good things were at the time since I got a second hand Yashica SLR that was manual focus, but had Program mode for exposure control.

Once I got that camera it was a whole new world of photography since up to that point I had only owned the little “point and shoot” cameras that you could get for about 40$ at the time. Turns out those simple little cameras were a god send in technology compared to just a couple of decades earlier where we had cameras like the Zeiss Ikon Contina.

The SLR, being semi-automatic in nature, was like giving a driver of racecars his first stick shift car after driving automatics. It was a level of control that was hard to understand at first but soon became something that I looked forward to. This was because the rest of the exposure was being handled by the camera and I could easily confirm focus on the SLR as I was literally looking through the “taking lens” when focusing.

You see, the Zeiss Ikon Contina has none of these things. It doesn’t do anything for you automatically…at all. Here is the operational sequence to take a photo…

1. Find the scene you want to shoot.

2. Meter the light in the scene with the light meter.

3. Set the aperture based on film ISO.

4. Set the shutter speed also based on film ISO.

5. Guess the focus distance and set it on the lens.

6. Second guess yourself on focal distance and do it again…

7. Fire the frame and advance the film.

8. Repeat…at least once since you probably missed focus.

Notice how you have to guess the focus. That is because there is no way to visually confirm it other than looking at the numeric distance numbers on the lens and hoping you are good at range estimation. You literally have to rely on the range focus system and shoot stopped down if you really need the photo to be in focus, that is the only real way of getting it…well that and a tape measure…

Oh and that is a cold shoe on the top, not a coupled hot shoe so you have to use a sync cable that connects to the front of the camera to fire a flash module and I am not sure that is even a thing anymore…

The technology has advanced so much that we are to the point now where the camera has to focus PERFECTLY on the nearest eye of a moving subject…and that subject doesn’t even have to be a human either. On top of that we now expect the CAMERA to follow that subject while it and maybe even ourselves are moving and maintain that perfect focus as well! Isn’t it amazing how far the technology has evolved in less than the period of my mother’s lifetime?

So when I came into possession of the Contina, I was in Winchester England and didn’t know if it worked properly or not so I sent it home with my daughter as she was traveling home sooner. Once back home I proceeded to search out a reputable camera repair shop and sent the machine up to them for a full service. This also took a while so I finally get the camera back and take it out for its maiden voyage with me to shoot a roll and see what the lens could produce. This was also to test for light leaks to make sure it didn’t need light seals either, so in that vain, I shot the first roll then had it developed and scanned so I could check for light leaks. To be honest, I really liked the scans and that is what I used here and in the video as well.

Well, I was impressed to be quite honest about it . To lack any semblance of automation, this little camera came away with a surprisingly high number of keepers in my book. Now, I am not talking about Pulitzer prize winning “keepers” but rather properly focused and exposed photos. I did use my handheld light meter a lot that day, making adjustments to the camera as I went along to keep the exposure where I hoped it would make good photos.

I did have 400 speed Ilford HP5 in the camera so the maxed out shutter speed of 1/300 second was my only real choice when the sun was out fully. I then ran the aperture all the way down to make up for it so the images would be close to correctly exposed. I figured out once I got the camera back from service that it was designed for film from an era where there was no 400 speed film…yet.

Anyway, after spending the day with this camera I learned what it meant to be spoiled by the technology that we have today. It is akin to them getting this camera back then and the people doing wet plate talking about how good the new people have it. LOL. There really isnt anything new under the sun… Well, I still enjoy the little camera and I take it out on occasion for some “me” time where I will be by myself and just immerse myself into the activity of shooting with little camera.

Link to video on YouTube as well.

Charit Creek Lodge Off Grid Retreat

Charit Creek Lodge Off Grid Retreat

We decided to spend the night at this wonderful little place and this time, we came when it wasn’t scorching hot like last time.

Yes, we have been here before. This is why we like it. The quiet and serenity makes this place wonderful to get away to on occasion. I did charge my phone prior to leaving the parking area (which is a .8 mile hike from the lodge) so I could take pictures and write some thoughts about this article.

The hike into the grounds is a beautiful walk down into a valley…just remember that all things that go down must also go back up…to get to the card.

This was also an exercise in minimalism as I was planning on bringing a bunch of camera gear but then decided that I wanted to see if I could get good photos with only my iPhone.

The iPhone 14 Pro Max is a wonder of modern engineering and has so many capabilities that it will do a great job as a snapshot camera for trips like this.

The normal rig for forays such as this would normally be my Leica CL and the 35mm lens and possibly the 17mm as well to give me two options for field of view. This worked well in England to be quite honest and I really didn’t need any of the hot rod gear like my full frame Leica SL2 or the host of lenses for it. The little Leica CL has a more than capable 24 megapixel sensor that produces wonderful images. The larger Leica SL2 having a 47 megapixel sensor does give you more to work with as well as allowing you to print larger but at the end of the day I had to be honest with myself. I rarely print my photos and when I do they are in a photo book which isn’t more than 12 inches on the longest side. So I have started downsizing my load outs for trips like this.

Here is the hard facts. The iPhone captures snapshots so well with its measly 12 megapixels that you can print 8x10 just fine and no one will ever be the wiser. So this little overnight trip is a chance to test that as I will be stopping by a Walgreens and making some 4x6 prints as well as maybe even some 8x10 prints as well just to test the idea.

Back to Charit Creek a little. It is in Big South Fork Forest. This is either a state or federal forest, I am not sure which, but it is a huge tract of protected land and Charit Creek is in the middle of it. Hence the “unplugged” nature of the operation.

When you get here, you quickly notice the lack of electricity. Even the kitchen that cooks the huge communal meals doesn’t have much more than some solar power. All of the cabins are rustic styled with wood burning stoves for heat and screen windows for AC.  They are more akin to bunk houses than cabins actually but they are nice nonetheless.

There is a plethora of games and outside activities to do (even though I wrote this blog using my well charged iPhone)… There are also copious fire rings and PLENTY of firewood is on hand for all the lodges needs. The firewood does cost you money but it isn’t that much and you get way more than you really need for what you pay. For details like that, contact the lodge as I don’t know when you are reading this and prices could have changed between now and your current time. Suffice it to say that prices are not extreme in any way.

There is also a bathhouse with showers should you want to bring shower gear with you. (I didn’t since I will be home tomorrow afternoon and can just bathe when I get home). The main lodge has the dining hall as well as guest rooms on one end and plenty of porch space containing a metric ton of rocking chairs.

The provided meals are supper and breakfast with lunch being left to you to figure out (with a few exceptions). The meals are huge though so you can probably make it from one to the next easily enough. There is a copious amount of hiking around the lodge with one trail going to a waterfall.

Happened to catch Venus the next morning while stoking the campfire.

Another thing the lodge specializes in is accommodating horseback riders. Complete with hitching posts and a horse barn with stables near the lodge. There are numerous horse back riding trails in the surrounding area as well and there is even a sectioned off parking lot just for equestrian rigs where you leave your vehicle while at Charit Creek Lodge.

I do not know the history of the lodge but the whole property makes me think that this was a homestead at some point in the 19th century what with the construction techniques used to build the buildings. I could be wrong and they could be newer but these logs look period correct for the late 1800s.

The buildings make for really interesting photography subject matter so once we got here and stowed our gear, I made my way around and grabbed some photos of everything. The whole time I was doing this, I was attempting to capture the “feel” of the whole place. I have come to do this more and more as time goes on. There is already a metric ton of photos of Charit Creek Lodge floating around on the web, so I need to do something different if I want something unique and interesting that stands out from the ordinary.

Side note: I found out that I really should have brought my camera as I was informed that the milky way has been visible the last few nights…. Lol. You never know what to expect.  I don’t regret not bringing my cameras though as it defeats the purpose of traveling light weight. Sometimes you just need to enjoy the event instead of worrying about documenting it for others.

I saw the following tonight:

• The Milky Way

• The starlink satellite train

• Many other satellites

• The glow worms in the grass

• We heard the great horned owls calling each other

• The barn cat (trust me on this one)

I also learned that the iPhone has a low light mode where it will do a long exposure and get great photos in super low light. I was blown away by what it could do when photographing the campfire. Just take a look!

These are 1/5 second exposures! Yeah, that is cool. They are also ISO 10,000 but it does some sort of noise reduction and it looks good.

Sometimes you don’t have to plan out this huge package of gear for a trip to be successful for photography, you just need to be creative with your smartphone and go have a good time. We as photographers want to over complicate what we need to get good photos. Most people don’t even care what camera was used to get the picture or honestly will assume you used your smartphone anyway.

Isn’t it interesting how we will do that? HaHaHa… Anyway, back to Charit Creek Lodge for a little longer. When you leave you have to return back to your car out on the same trail you came in on, the difference this time is that it is uphill almost the entire way so if your fitness level isn’t high I would suggest taking your time so you don’t over exert yourself.

Once back at the truck you can “reconnect” to the internet via cellular data and get back to the world. That is how I am able to share this story with you. Ironic isnt it? I use the internet to communicate how NOT being on the internet is a good thing. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the photos and the story and if you want to look into Charit Creek Lodge, follow the links provided. Thank you for following along and I hope to see you in the next one.

Reviewing the 58mm f2 Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar M42 mount lens

When Aaron offered to loan me his 58mm, I had no idea that it was a Zeiss and over 60 years old.

Well, it didn’t take long to figure that out and to round up a simple M42 to Leica L mount adapter so I could get this lens on my Leica SL2.

The next thing I did was look the lens over really closely. The usual controls are there of aperture and focus but it has a third ring as well. This ring is spring loaded and is some sort of adjustable stop for the minimum aperture. This is how it works, you pull the ring towards the camera, compressing the spring. While the spring is compressed, you rotate the ring and align a mark on it with the aperture you want it to stop at. Once here, release the spring and it will seat in this position stopping the aperture ring from stopping down past this point. This was for cameras back in the day as you had to meter the scene manually then set the aperture for the meter value. To compose though, you needed all the light you could get so you set the ring for the aperture you plan to shoot the photo at then you would open the aperture all the way to see good and get good focus. Once this was done, you could simply spin the aperture ring to the stop and it was set to the metered value and you didnt even have to come off the camera to do it. Pretty slick if you ask me.

Another item of note is that the aperture ring is ”clickless” or in other words, it simply turns smoothly through the range without any detents to locate it at specific settings.

The next thing I noticed is that the machine work is impeccable…which I have grown to expect no less from the German people. The focus ring is smooth as silk even with its advanced years. Quite the opposite of some of my other lenses to be quite honest.

Something else I noticed is that the lens has incredible close focus with about 330 degrees of focus throw. Of that 330 degrees it devotes probably 250 degrees to close focus. Crazy precise focus for a lens this old. The first 1/4 turn though is the normal use range so it will go from infinity to 2.5 meters in that 1/4 turn and then the rest of the throw is for close range work. Pretty neat how the normal range stuff is in such a short throw so you can get focus fast with it. Just a little practice and you a can get street photos of moving subjects and fairly large apertures in focus. You just learn how to use it with some time.

It is not a bad lens in any way either, just look at the photo of Teresa I got at the local state park one day with it. Razor sharp and great rendition too. This is what makes vintage lenses so cool, they still got it…

It also works great for a general purpose walk around lens too. I liked using it for my photowalks where I would jus grab a photo here and there of things that caught my eye and it would render these scenes really well.

So if you are into the vintage glass “look” then I might suggest grabbing one of these old girls if you can find one and adapting it to your mirrorless camera to see what you can get with it. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Fulaim X5 Wireless Microphone System Review

So a company reached out to me and asked if I wanted to take a look at their wireless microphone system and I agreed. I am really glad I did too. They sent me a review sample for free and I am happy to say it works exactly as advertised…at least it does from what I tested.

Link to my YouTube video is here: Fulaim X5 Microphone Video

Fulaim X5 Webpage

You see these kinds of products usually have some sort of glaring issue that makes them basically unusable for the most part, but this one is different. It actually works as advertised.

So Fulaim sent me the X5 kit to test and write a review on and when it came in I noticed right away that they were really wanting this to have a great presentation. The box is the kind you normally associate with Apple products, the really nice heavy type of card board. So once everything is out of that box, the first thing I noticed was that the charge case is setup for just the microphones and receiver, but the receiver is normally used with the mic cable and there is nowhere to store this cable… Small detail, but frustrating as on the very first outing to test the mics, I forgot this very cable…I attempted to use a AUX cable I had in the truck but it was apparently bad and introduced a ton of noise into the audio, lesson here, check your kit before you leave…

So once I get a good cable and go back out, I tested the Fulaim X5 microphone on my Leica SL2, this camera actually records great video and will record 4k video as well, so I figured I would experiment with the microphones on this camera and also shoot in 4k for a change too.

The charge case is a cool device, when you put the mics and receiver in it and close the lid, it turns them off and starts charging them, when you open the lid, it wakes all three of them up and sets them in motion communicating. That is nice. The battery life on the Fulaim X5 mics and receiver is supposed to be on the order of 9 hours, I would say it is probably closer to 4 or 5 in reality as the 9 hour claim is said for offline recording so if it is powering the radios, then it will be less. But still I have used it for several hours on two different occasions and have not have one die yet in a normal session. The charge case will charge them from dead to full charge twice before needing recharging itself too. This is nice as you are not hunting an outlet after juicing up the mics one time.

In the video above, I test the main factors that matter to me for a microphone I use to make YouTube videos. Distance from the camera that the audio is still good on, extreme distance function, audio fidelity, and offline recording for getting simple audio like wild sounds or when you need dialog for voice over but don’t need video with it too. It passed all of these tests with ease and done very well to be honest. The audio quality is first rate and I couldn’t tell if it was the Zoom F2 (which I have to sync in post) or the Fulaim X5 (which I do not have to sync in post)

There are so many little Easter egg type features built into them that it is hard to keep up, like the spring clip on the mics is made of steel from what I can figure and there is a round rare earth magnet with one so you can magnetically stick it to the lapel of a jacket and hide the mic behind the lapel with only the little black magnet showing. This is brilliant. The spring clips are sized so they will slip directly into a camera hot shoe, so you don’t need a hot shoe adapter at all. There is a port for a lav mic on each transmitter, there is also a port on the receiver for headphones to monitor the audio with, the wind muffs are made with little locks to keep them from falling off the mics, the mics will record in offline mode without the need for memory cards as there is 4GB of internal storage in each mic, You can USB charge them so if the charge case is dead, they can still be charged, they are compatible with smart phones and can be USB connected to laptop computers so you can have wireless mic support for things like zoom meetings…the list goes on but you get the point.

Can I recommend this microphone? Absolutely, the copy I have works perfectly and if this is the production version, you will love it too. They sell them direct on their website but I don’t get anything if you buy one, so don’t worry about using an affiliate link or some such, just get one and use it. Simple as that.

Fulaim Website for the X5 Microphone Kit

What matters more? Gear or skill?

I raise this question because there is no shortage of people from both camps on YouTube.

The odd thing is that the overwhelming majority of my channel views come from my gear review videos. Not from skill building type videos where we talk about things that you can use with the gear to get better photos.

The underlying theme with people using youtube seems to be “the right gear will make me the photographer I hope for”. I’m sorry if that stings a little as I am just calling it like I see it.

I am not 100% certain about this determination though as I have no way of proving this assumption. It may be that my skill building videos are just way worse than my gear reviews videos. That could be a fair point to be honest as it is common knowledge that I am not very good at video.

My observation though is overwhelming leaning in this direction. The reason for this is that other youtubers also make this observation as well. You hear them talk about how the gear doesn’t make the photographer over and over. Why is that?

I think it is because people dont place as much value on skill learning as they do on tangible items like cameras and lenses. Have you tried to sell your skill to someone in tough times? How about some item you had that was tangible… like say your camera? Deep down I think people place value on tangible items because they know they can cash in on them later, but once they pay for and attend a workshop, that money is gone forever in their eyes. Even though they came away with an amazing experience and new skills, we in the western culture have been trained to place value on the tangible. How many times did I hear as a kid about not “blowing” my money on cheap trinkets or things like going to the fair and playing the games? It was all to common in my little corner of the planet.

Lots of people don’t have much disposable income to spend on things like workshops, or so they believe. I see it more in the realm of Leica more so than other brands because I will see a lens come up for sale that is literally like brand new but they HAVE used it some. They just want to retain as much resale value as possible so they are very careful with it so as to not scratch it up from use. It will basically be new even though it had been used to capture images in the past. This is telling in that they never planned to keep the equipment and placed more importance on resale value than using the gear. Otherwise there would be signs of use on the gear and a lot more photos in the catalog. Now, I know that is a little bit hyperbole as well, but you get the point.

The point is that it seems like for YouTube viewers, the gear matters more. I can’t figure it out either, why not go shoot street in London for a weekend? How cool would that be? It is reachable, just use the same lens you have been using and spend the “new lens money” on the trip instead. Precious few of us will do that though…And that is sad.

Just some food for thought, not really being critical…much…just thought it was interesting to see that and wanted to share my thoughts on it.

Astrhori 18mm F8 Tilt Shift Lens Review

Camera gear is a interesting thing. ESPECIALLY for photographers as they love collecting it for some reason or another. I have reviewed quite a few lenses over the years on this channel, but never a tilt-shift version of anything. This is because these lenses are very specialized and usually very expensive too. Not having a focal length that I normally use is also another reason I have not bought one before.

Well, Phil Thach was contacted by Pergear about a lens they we’re launching and he recommended me to them. Thank you Phil, I appreciate the contact.

So after some emails, they sent me the sample lens for review. This particular unit did not come in a box but rather just a heavy ziplock bag. I am pretty sure the actual retail variant will be in a really nice box, so don’t worry about that. The lens is really neat for what is happening with it. You see, this little guy has a couple of cool features that most other lenses in the range do not have and it lacks on feature that almost all of the others does have.

The lens has the shift feature from “tilt/shift” lenses without the tilt function. It also has a rotation feature that allows the user to index the shift feature in 45 degree increments. So if you need it to correct vertically, you can do that. It will only shift in one axis at a time as well. This isn’t a real problem though as the intended use case for this lens is correcting converging lines on architecture and such. So you set the shift axis to match you framing and there you have it.

It will shift 6mm in each direction from center and this is more than enough for almost all scenarios. It does vignette the corners on full frame at the extreme ends of this range but carerful application of photo editing software should be able to fix this.

While using this lens, I have learned a few things about it though that I would like to share with you if you are consider getting one of these lenses for architectural photography. Honestly, I cant recommend it. If you plan to be a serious architectural photographer, it is worth the money if you want to dabble in this type of photography, just to see if you are interested because it is a cheaper alternative than a full on tilt/shift lens from any of the major manufacturers. But it lacks certain features that those lenses possess and that makes it more difficult to work with. Also, the build quality is lower than the Nikon and Canon alternatives and makes this lens less desirable in that manner as well. Another problem is that it is a fixed f-stop lens and it is 18 mm only. Traditionally, tilt shift lenses can be had in multiple focal lengths other than 18mm and variable F stops, this one has neither of those functionalities. It is a neat little pancake lens that is easy to use as a street photography lens on a crop sensor camera though, so when I put it on my Leica CL it worked wonderfully for just point shooting.

The F8 aperture and the 18 mm focal length gives you very deep depths of field that makes most everything in focus in your photos. So simple that it only required you to do little more than point the camera at the subject and fire the shutter. This is very beneficial for street photography purposes. A problem kept arising though, when I was shooting street photography with it using my Leica CL was that if I bump the lens, it would shift it or just letting it ride on a camera strap around my neck would be enough inertial force to shift the lens off axis. This is a problem as you could guess. So I really do not recommend this lens unless you were into novelty lenses or you were wanting to dabble in architectural photography with a little correcting shift lens, otherwise I would honestly say do not buy this lens and spend your money on something else.

My loadout for flying with camera gear.

Traveling over the years to locations that require flying commercial has taught me a few things about what to take.

I once carried almost everything I owned when I traveled so I was sure to have whatever I needed for a certain photographic event. Well, with time comes wisdom… I have been adjusting the loadout and searching for the best solution as far as bags go and have finally found the perfect setup…FOR ME. You see, different people have different needs and your loadout will vary depending on your personal needs and wants.

When I traveled early on, I carried a large shoulder bag, very large mind you and a ton of kit in it. I had to fill it up you know! Lol.

Well after a couple of trips like that, I learned that I needed a different bag. So the giant Vanguard bag was retired and replaced with a Thinktank Airport International v2. This was a nice upgrade and allowed me to travel with more confidence in knowing my gear was protected better and it was also a roller bag! No more lugging that massive shoulder bag all over creation!!!

Well, I still use this bag from time to time, but only for roadtrips in my truck. The irony of this statement is not lost on me. I bought a literal aircraft carry own style, camera bag and now I dont even take it when I fly at all.

Thinktank Photo Airport International 2.0

So I learned the hard way something about marketing with this bag. Thinktank Photo will tell you, probably with an asterisk, that this bag will fit in standard overhead spaces. This isn’t so and I learned this the hard way on a trip coming home from Hawaii one year. On the last leg of our long journey, we boarded a small commuter jet and the overhead storage bins were just too small. This is when I got a VERY sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. You see, this meant I had to valet check this bag at this point. If you have never watched baggage handlers loading luggage then you dont know the horror movie I was imagining my expense and fragile camera gear was about to experience. They can be quite rough with check bags, we have had them arrive at baggage claim with wheels missing and such. So I tell the flight attendant my plight and she saves the day by stowing my roller bag of camera gear in what amounts to her broom closet. I almost cried in appreciation. That was the straw the broke the cameras back of roller bags for me.

Pictured here are the Peak Design Everyday Messenger bag and the Thinktank photo street walker backpack.

After the Airport International “incident”, I decided I needed to downsize my kit for multiple reasons. The main one being that I didn’t want to have to valet check my bag because it wouldn’t fit in the overhead bin.

The next reason is the most important though. I was tired of carrying gear I didn’t use or even need.

Taken with the Nikon Z50 handheld and using the kit lens.

So I decided to get something new and smaller. I chose something that had been on the market for just a short time at this point. I chose a Peak Design Everyday Messenger Bag. It is a wonderful way to carry camera gear for the most part with one exception. I cant really carry my big telephoto lens I use for wildlife. I tried it for a couple of years and at the time, I was using a large system consisting of a Nikon D810 with battery grip and the 200-500mm super zoom lens. This combination is very large and would leave me with room for just a couple of smaller lenses. It also came with another problem…pain. Single strap bags are great as long as they are not heavy, which is exactly what mine was at this point in time. So the search continues and I found another Thinktank Photo bag.

The next bag I chose was the Streetwalker v2. This is a smaller bag that is backpack style and is really comfortable. The single shoulder strap on the messenger bag would make my shoulder incredibly sore after just a couple of hours of carry. I tried this for a couple of years and paid the price. The streetwalker solved that problem in short order. It was at this point in my photography journey that I was finding smaller cameras like the Fuji XT3. I took this camera to Israel for a ten day trip and it was on this trip that my eyes were opened to carrying excessive equipment is wasteful. I took three lenses with me and only used one of them. Yes, I used the KIT LENS for the whole trip and it worked gloriously!!! All the while I was carrying around all this other crap and just getting back to the kibbutz tired every day.

Current travel load out, Z50, 500mm PF, 16-50mm Z Kit, and 10-20mm F mount Nikkor/FTZ adapter.

Well, I finally figured out that the smaller pack was the way to go, but it really didn’t have room for the big wildlife rig I liked to use… It also had one other critical shortcoming that I noticed from regular use. The pack opened to the top when unzipped. What this means is you take off the pack and lay the side that normally sits against your back, on the ground facing down to access the gear area. At this point, I was doing a great deal of photowalks and hikes to waterfalls and such and this caused lots of dirt on the back of my shirt… To say this was frustrating is an understatement but I carried on till…

Enter the Thinktank Photo Retrospective 15L. For my needs, this is as close to perfect for a camera bag as I have ever found. It opens from the back, the side against my body which means you lay to outside one the ground, keeping all the leaves, twigs and dirt off of my shirt. It is slightly larger (15 liters in size) so there is room for my wildlife kit. It is REALLY comfortable and it is made of stone washed canvas. So it has a nice look (it doesn’t look like a nylon camera bag) and has a great feel. This is a hallmark of Thinktank Photo from what I have seen. Their backpacks are very comfortable. So now that I have landed on the perfect camera bag after almost a decade of searching, I can now shift focus to the gear I put in it.

Taken with the Nikon Z50 with the FTZ Adapter and the 500mm PF Amount lens.

The gear loadout for my photography usually involves at least two bodies, three general purpose lenses and then my special purpose lenses and all the support gear too. Like a whole cleaning kit complete with blower bulb, dry wipes, wet wipes and solution and sensor swabs… way too many batteries, like I must have thought I was going to take 10,000 photos per day or something. I never needed most of this crap either. I mean almost none of it. What I had was a case of “fill’er up” syndrome. If there was bag space I felt compelled to put something in that space for some reason. This is a terrible way to operate if I must say. You end up tired, sore and resentful of the hobby as you brought all this kit for nothing.

The Nikon Z50 with kit lens makes for a powerful little general photography kit.

So this trip, the bag is scaled WAY back. I mean, there is room in the bag for stuff and nothing is in those pockets. This is a milestone for me, as I am a prepper at heart and want to cover every conceivable contingency under my normal mindset. To be honest, I probably brought at least one lens more than I will need and could have lightened the load some more there, but we will see. So my takeaway from all this is, your hobby is a journey and you will have to figure out your kit for that hobby as you go. For me, it is still an ongoing journey to be honest. Hopefully I can stop spending tons of money on it and just enjoy it. Let’s be realistic though, probably not…Lol.

Altering the world around us with strobes and a camera...

There is an alter ego that I have and sometimes I have to do things as this other person that dont seem quite so glamorous… This is the job of product photographer. I have a business that makes and sells little devices and I have to take photos of these for the website and then edit them to be “floating” on a white background. This is pretty standard stuff to be honest, not “cool” but still very much needed and important.

Anyway…I also get to do some of the social media photos and on occasion, I will go to the trouble of setting up a light and trying to make something artistic instead of the usual Instagram snapshot.

For product photos, I have bought some studio strobe kits from amazon and these run on wall power and have sync ports to fire them, they also sympathetically fire from a light sensor if you turn that feature on as well. Simple strobe with a power knob and you plug in a sync cable and plug that cable into your camera.

Your camera doesn’t have a sync port you say? No problem, I also use an adapter from Nikon to allow a sync cable to be connected to any camera with a hot shoe on it, which is almost all cameras. So if you want to use a studio strobe and it requires a sync cable, then fear not, I have a solution for you!

I really like to use the sync cable and wall powered strobes as I really dislike batteries and avoid them whenever possible. It just seems that EVERY SINGLE TIME I go to do something with my radio trigger (I have owned several pocket wizards in the past), they would be dead, needing charged batteries. This really is annoying in the commercial setting when time is of the essence and hunting batteries or having to charge them before I can do a project is frustrating to say the least. Hence the sync cable…not batteries and works EVERY TIME…

So this is the photo I got the other day. It was late morning and the machine shop was in full operation. Knowing what I know about strobes and aperture, it was a non-issue though.. I grabbed one of the lights and take it out to the shop floor and rig it to shine down from overhead. I am fortunate in the Sierra thought to grab a photo of the setup for me by the off chance she wanted to see what I got versus what she got. Sierra was blown away by the difference in our images, she had to have the one I captured to show her friends so they would understand why I had such a silly setup just for a photo! LOL.

I wanted a spot where the background was still fairly clear of clutter and we moved a couple of items out of the way to make it a cleaner “in camera” image, but for the most part, you will see in Sierra’s photo that the shop has a lot of stuff sitting everywhere.

To keep the light positioned like that, I just wedged the high leg under a rolling cart that is just outside of frame. This way I could get the light down low and parallel to the floor. This stand is budget and doesn’t have a feature to do this built in. Improvised and got the shot.

I laid down in the floor and manually focused a vintage 75-150mm Pentax zoom lens and got this SOOC photo. I did a few images at different flash powers to get the carbine exposed the way I wanted.

You can see the soft box in the top part of the photo, but since I was going to fade the background to black anyway, it is a non-issue. I next imported the image into GIMP and cropped it to get rid of the excess floor and ceiling, then just painted out the light that was left over. Simple as that. The next step was to take it into my phone and run it through an app I have there called Afterlight. This app allows for several adjustments that I enjoy using, but it also has a framing feature as well and that is my primary desire for the app, so I framed it and then put it on the Gram… Done. You cant see the frame on here because the background is white on this webpage, but on Instagram it shows up just fine, and gives it a very clean appearance.

My takeaway from this whole article is this: you are not tied to the light you see around you. If you have a strobe then all bets are off as to what you can do with your camera. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the mindset that you can only shoot “available light”, that limits you greatly. Build the light in the scene yourself and you will never be beholding to the sun again!

Now get your camera out and go take a picture with it!

Chattanooga Life #5

Tonight I was waiting on a phone call from the wife about bringing some food to her and thought I would grab a few photos while I was there. I used my Leica CL and the 35mm Elmarit lens and tried to capture what it felt like to be out tonight while it started to rain. This is an example of seeing the setup and taking the time to get the photos while the conditions were right, the time passed pretty quickly and once it was dark, I had to completely change the way I was looking at the scene and come up with new compositions that didnt involve the sky. These photos are not technically in Chattanooga, but Trenton Ga is in the greater Chattanooga area so I consider it basically a suburb of Chattanooga. I had to work the scene pretty hard as the light diminished pretty rapidly due to it being blue hour when I started. Raining is part of street photography and these moody clouds really helped set the mood. What is your favorite time and conditions to capture street photos?

Chattanooga Life #3

With the coming of fall in the air, people are starting to get outside a little more, even though the pandemic is far from over… I honestly think people are simply getting tired of being scared of it and are just going back to daily life with the added inconvenience of wearing face coverings. Horse and buggy rides are back in operation and people are enjoying the time spent with them. I’m personally glad to see people getting on with life…#streetphotography #photography

Chattanooga Life #2

“Windowshopping with dad” This image was taken on Market Street 31 JUL 2020

I wonder what she is telling him… Chattanooga street photography is a lot of fun.

Chattanooga Life #1

Ok, so this is going to become something that I work on regularly for the next couple of years. The plan is to post a square photo of something to do with life in Chattanooga as viewed through my lens a few times a week. The first one is of a fellow on a bicycle on Cherokee Street, this city is very “outdoorsy” if you have never been here.

If all goes as I hope, these street photography photos will form a life of their own and might just become a book at some point… I hope you enjoy them as I share them. ~David Saylors