This is a lens I bought on ebay after hearing good things about it, well at least the small amount of information I could find. The price was $22. I have discovered that Yashica zooms is very hard to find information about, specially now since earlier source of information cdegroot.com is gone. Well, here are my thoughts on this…

The lens
This is a slim little zoom. Filter threads are 52mm. The zoom is wide when you slide it out, tele when you slide it back – quite the opposit(?) to the normal, modern zooms which is tele when extended. The aperture range is from f 3.5 – f 22. My copy of the lens was in very, very good shape. In fact it feels new.

Read the full article "Review of Yashica MC Zoom 35…" »

As you know I use manual focus, but do you need autofocus for moving objects? It’s an argument often raised by people when I write for exemple my article “5 resons to love manual lenses”. Well then, I guessmanual focusing is not a skill to learn, and I should really avoid photos like these since they are impossible to take with the lenses I use. Or…? ;)

(clicking on the images opens Flickr in a new window)

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When you use a digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) with modern lenses, you can always go back and look in the Exif to see what lens you used for each picture. But with the manual, old lenses there is no Exif-data from the lens. So if I use my Canon EOS 350D on a photosession, and 3 manual lenses – how do I remember which one I used for a single picture?

Well, I have come up with this rutine. Simple, I know – but useful. Take a picture of the lens before you mount it. If you use some kind of filter, take a picture when you mount it and when you dismount it and put it back in the bag.

Heres from my session the other day… I started with Pentax Super Takumar 35mm/3.5. Added macroring to shoot some flowers.

Add macroring

I took my flower-pictures. Removed the macroring.

Remove macroring

Took some pictures without the macroring. Then changed to Yashica ML 35mm/2.8

Change to Yashica ML 35mm

Read the full article "How to remember your manual …" »

Why not try to catch a swallow with a 50mm lens? Good practice, don’t know how the image turned out though ;) Show me your’s! This is taken with Canon EOS 350D and Yashinon DX 50mm/1.7 (m42):

Fast fast fast birdie