I wonder how you look upon this question, “What makes a good picture?”. I believe it is when the artist manage to communicate a feeling.

This image of grass, I wanted to relay the sence off standing in a field with waving straws, the freedom. One might even start thinking about what happened to the straws not standing up any more: Crop field circle by aliens? Animals having a feast? Winds?

But the image is very simple. I have tried to cut out what I wanted to show and no distractions. That’s why I sometimes have a hard time with photographers who want the biggest effect out of everything, to use the most extreme angle or perspective or color just because they can not because the image needs it. It’s also why I have a hard time with photographers only concerned by technical qualities – they bore me to death. But that’s just me.

This field was made with the 60’s M42-lens aus Jena Sonnar 135mm/3.5 zebra on Canon EOS 350D.

A Woodland Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) in the national park, shot with Asahi Super-Takumar 135mm/3.5 m42-lens on Canon EOS 350D. Left alone, the other berries picked.

I had some problem with the front cover and hood on my Asahi Super-Takumar 135mm/3.5 m42-lens. The front “hull” or what you might call it, wobbled… including the filterthreads and the hood. Didn’t affect the imageproperties of the lens (the glass didn’t move) but annoying to use.

This turned out to be easy…

1. Unscrew the ring where the lensname is printed. That’s just a ring screwed down in the filterthreads. Take a round object with smaller diameter then the 49mm filterthreads, cover it with a rubberglove or something that’s soft but has friction. Press down and unscrew the name-ring.
2. The front hull of the lens is atteched with three small screws. Tighten the small screws you see down between the hull and the lenses glass.
3. Reattach the name-ring. Done!

Here some pictures I took while doing this:

Read the full article "Fixing a Super-Takumar 135mm…" »

My friend Daniel insisted I should have one of these, so I went and bought one from UK on ebay. Can you have enough of normal or short tele primes? ;) I started collecting Takumar lenses, so of course I needed the 135mm. Lets see if it’s any good…

Super Takumar 135mm/3.5, angleview

The purchase
As usual with these old manual lenses it wasn’t that much hat I payed, £8.50 + shipping £9.00. Later on I also got a hood from ebay, it need an original hood – makes a lot of difference. The hood was £7.95 + shipping £3. So if you buy a lens like this, get a hood too. Since I bought from a good seller in UK, there was no problem with shipping or the purchase. Avarage price on Pentaxforums.com is set to $38. Read the full article "Review of Asahi Super-Takuma…" »

In a trip to Granbergsdal with friends I made the images of pidgins with the Asahi Super-Takumar 135mm/3.5. The black and white was converted in Photoshop and the little grain came from a layer with scanned T-Max 400 imported in photoshop and put on this digital image.

Pidgins on rooftop

A couple of takumar-lenses used in the darkness of the night in this photographs. The first with Asahi Opt.Co. Super-Takumar 135mm/3.5 and the second Auto-Takumar 85mm/1.8, both on Canon EOS 350D.

Parkinglot shot with Super-Takumar 135mm/3.5

House shot with Auto-Takumar 85mm/1.8

Some shots of Bohemian waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus), all made with Asahi Opt.Co. Super-Takumar 135mm/3.5 m42 on Canon EOS 350D, and then cropped.

100% Crop

100% crop, Bohemian waxwing with bokeh

50% crop

50% crop, Bohemian waxwing sharp

50% crop

50% crop, Bohemian waxwing

135mm seems to have been a very common focal length of lenses. There are many to choose from. Because there was fierce competition, many of them are of good quality. Let see if this lens is one of the good ones…

Pentacon Electric 135mm/2.8

My purchase
I bought the lens on Tradera (swedish ebay) for SEK 57 (about £5) + shipping, without seeing much of it in the images of the ad. I was lucky, it is in good optical condition and only fault is that it is sometimes a little stuck at the aperture. Good ones is seen on ebay almost every day, so it’s a quite common lens.

Read the full article "Review of Pentacon Electric …" »

A Zeiss-lens, extension-rings and shipping for about 25$? No it’s not a fairytale, I actually got this bargain from swedish ebay Tradera. It all started when I saw an ad with unknown lens marked “aus Jena”…

Carl Zeiss Jena S 135mm/3.5

My purchase
I could not believe my luck. Was I the only one connecting the mark “aus Jena” to Carl Zeiss? Actually, someone else competed with me about the final bid, but I still got this 135mm lens for only 140 swedish kronor (about 20$). When it arrived in the mail, I put it to good use immediately!

Read the full article "Review of Carl Zeiss Jena So…" »