Working Hard

As soon as Jen left the room, Patches took over the office.

More Manual Lens Bird Feeder Fun

The bird feeders are empty. I’ll get some more seed tonight. Until then, here’s my DSRL using the manual lens (Nikkor 35-70 AIS 1:3.3-4.5) that came with my ebay film camera.

I think focusing with this lens is harder than manually focusing with either of Dad’s lenses. Either that or I am just too tired for my eyes to function properly. Who knows.

One More Manual Lens on a DSLR

It occurred to me this morning that while I tried both of Dad’s manual lenses on my DSLR, I never tried the one from my film camera.

Until now.

It totally works. Nice. Expect a bird feeder pic in the near future.

Self Raking

The leaves in our backyard essentially rake themselves. If only the wind would blow them away from the house and into the woods instead of blowing them all right up against the house. Oh well.

There are still more leaves to come too. I don’t think I am going to have time to get to much of it this weekend, so they are going to be hanging out for a while. Ugh.

In other news, Candle.

I took this with my DSLR through Dad’s old zoom lens, Gemini 1:4.5 80-200mm. Aren’t they nice?

More Manual Lens Fun

My lunch break opened with more manual-lens-on-a-DSLR fun. This time I used the lesser of Dad’s two Pentax K Mount lenses, his Gemini 1:4.5 80-200mm.

A couple of test shots of the cellar window desk-swag collection.

A couple of pics of the guitar nook (that are better than the crap from yesterday).

A couple of the Japanese Peace Lilly in the bedroom.

A few woods-behind-the-house pics.

Finally, yet another blurry background/bokeh pic of the bird feeders. I think I’ve taken 20 pics just like this. The zoom lens doesn’t have as wide an aperture as the prime lens I took outside yesterday, but it still makes some cool blurry dots of light.

Isn’t this fun?

50mm Prime Lens

The lens that came with Dad’s Pentax K1000 camera when he bought it back in the 80’s was a Pentax-M 1:2 50mm. Is it the best lens I have in the house right now? I think it might be. It’s the only non-zoom lens I have access too and it’s by far the biggest aperture. Do those things make it the best lens? I haven’t a clue.

After testing out the Pentax K to Nikon F mount adapter I bought from Amazon with my DSLR and Dad’s other lens, I dared to take the 50mm off of Dad’s camera and put it onto my D90. I took a few test pics in the cellar at the start of my lunch break. Then I went to the store to get a Powerball ticket (1.2 billion dollars? Okay), and then went to the back yard. I only took a few pics and I had to use the light meter in my iPhone, but here’s what I have.

This is the first pic and it looks okay, right?

Testing my DSLR with a manual lens. Pentax-M 1:2 50mm

This one is okay too. I was focusing on the Union Jack and the aperture was pretty wide so things off to the sides might be a little soft focused.

Scenes from a cart corral. This is through the car’s windshield and I had the ISO set wrong on the camera so it took a few tweaks on the lens settings to get a decently exposed shot.

After fixing the aperture and using a high f-stop, I got this. The focus is okay here, right?

Finally, I opened the aperture as wide as it could get and took this. Dig that crazy blurry background and all of those dots of light. That’s what they mean when they talk about bokeh, right? How much ass does that kick? The foreground focus is a little iffy because the wind picked up after I set the focus and moved the near bird feeder around which messed things up a little… but that background! Epic!

Now that I know I can put Dad’s lenses on my DSLR I will put one of my lenses back on because auto focus is my friend because my vision is crappy and gets worse by the day. It’s really cool to know I can do this though. I am pleased. Squee, babie.

Squee, Again

Check it out, kids…

That’s my DSLR with one of Dad’s old manual lenses. It connects, the viewfinder sees through the lens. I can’t set the aperture in the camera like I do with my lenses, but I can set the camera to manual focus and set the aperture on the lens and still set the shutter speed in the camera. I can’t use the light meter, but I have one on my iPhone that seems pretty accurate.

Want to see if it works?

Oh yeah, it works!

I tried taking a second picture and came up with this turd…

I promise that this is out of focus because the shutter speed was slow and my hand shook a little, not because I did something wrong with the manual focus… though that would be a good guess based on how many of my film pics are out of focus.

Now I have to work up the courage to try using Dad’s 50mm prime lens. Woah, nelly!