Playing with light ... (5)

... with a green glass apple and my Metz 45 CL-4 Digital, really a great flash for the money ...



The support is a white pexiglas sheet, back lighted by the flash with a green filter on the main strobe, the lens is an SMC Pentax-M 85mm f/1.8 stopped down to f/22 (lack of an ND filter, for now ...)

More to come ...

Happy Birthday ...

Shooting with a Pentax K10D reaches its first year of life ... Thanks to all the people who spent their time looking at my pictures, leaving comments, simply watching the pictures or contacting me by mail ... This is really paying for the time spent shooting more than 12000 pictures with my K10D in a year (13000, soon) ...
I would like to take this opportunity for a message:



RUNNING OUT OF AFTER SHAVEEEEEEEEE ........

More to come ...

Playing with light ... (4)

Rainy sunday, indoor shooting (snif ...).
This is my first attempt at using the multiple exposure mode of my K10D. The first shot has been used for the candle light, and the second one for the flashed portion (i am starting to find the colored filters set of my flash really funny ;-) ...).
Picture taken with my SMC 85mm f/1.8 stopped down to f/22, back light with a Metz 45 CL-4 Digital.



More to come ...

Isco Westron samples ...

... Here you go. Orchid Phalaenopsis, shot in sunny afternoon daylight. Crop from the unprocessed raw file.



For the whole image, and other Isco Westron samples, click on the picture or go to my Flickr photostream and select the Isco Westron set.

More to come ...

Playing with vintage Germans ...

... A minty sample of Isco Göttingen Westron 35 f/2.8, coming from the usual source ;-) ...
For the history fans, Isco Göttingen is a lens manufacturer since 1936, when it started producing lenses for the Exacta and Praktica cameras (informations collected from Internet, if someone could enlighten me ... thanks). Most of the lenses produced for these cameras had a metal barrel, in the classic chrome, zebra and black finish. Between its best performers, there are the Tele-Iscaron 180mm f/2.8, with a rotating tripod collar, the Westrocolor 50mm f/1.9, the Westrogon 24mm f/4, and a quite unusual lens, the 50mm f/2.8 Iscorama. This lens, very rare to find, permits horizontal or vertical picture shrinkage during the shooting session: using two buttons to rotate the front element, nice effects can be obtained (cannot say more, don't have this one ...).
The Westron 35 belongs to the late Isco production, when some metallic elements where replaced by more cheap plastic parts. This gives the Westron a look of toy, which certainly harmed its reputation: on the second hand market, the Westron 35 is much cheaper than the (over-evaluated, imho) Carl Zeiss Flektogon 35, in both 2.4 and 2.8 versions, costing about 4 times less ... Nevertheless, its images are really sharp, and the color rendering really neutral, without dominants, at least in my sample. The lens is subject to flare, so a shade is recommended. The diaphragm spans from f/2.8 to f/16, and is composed by 8 blades (giving a nice bokeh), controlled by a stepless preset ring: there is a button to preset the smallest aperture, then it can be focused wide open, and stopped down to the preset aperture very quickly. Useless to say, when f/16 is preset, the lens can be stopped down from f/2.8 to f/16 continuously. The filter thread is 49mm, like most of the lenses of that epoch, and it is surrounded by a collar, not threaded, which could be (possibly) used for a kind of shade ...
For the fans of history, Isco Göttingen has stopped its production of camera lenses, focusing on cinema taking and projection lenses.

Here is a picture of the "toy", taken with a Tamron SP 90 f/2.5 Macro, in late afternoon daylight.



A lot of sample images coming ...

Playing with light ... (3)

... always with the Metz 45 CL-4 and the Cactus ...
This time, a bowl of glass nuggets, on a opaque white acrylic support (to diffuse light), backlighted with the flash in manual mode, and my old CZJ Flektogon 35 f/2.4, stopped down to f/5.6 ...



More to come ...

Playing with light ... (2)

... with direct sunlight. Orchid Phalaenopsis shot with a Pentax-M 85 f/1.8, in direct daylight, overexposed by 3 f/stops.



Don't know why, but this picture makes me thinking about Japan ...

More to come ...

Playing with light ...

... with the new toy on the block ;-) ... A Metz 45 CL-4 Digital with a Pentax dedicated SCA adapter, and a Cactus radio control (from another great eBay auction) ...



Picture shot with a vintage Tamron SP 90 f/2.5 Macro, stopped down to f/8. Hands-free camera, flash with Cactus on tripod, a blue filter on the main strobe head and secondary strobe on.

Tap water offered by my kitchen, wooden cutting board used as backgroung.

Even more to come ...

Orchid Phalaenopsis

Playing with one of my preferred models, a superb specimen of Phalaenopsis.



Shot with a Pentax-M 85mm f/1.8 SMC lens, stopped down to f/4, in daylight (end afternoon).

More coming ...