Trip to Rome ... (1)

... A few shots from my last trip to Rome, to say hello to the last born of the family (sorry, no pictures of him here) ...
First part of the series: the Vatican Museum (well, a little portion of the museum, just the pinacoteca and the Egyptian Pavilion) ... A really harsh light, but some great places to visit ...



If interested in more pictures of the trip, just follow this link, and feel free to leave comments about the pictures.
Most of the indoor shots taken with an SMC Takumar 35 f/2 wide open.

More to come ...

Playing with light ... (6)

After some time spent discussing on various forums, i ended up trying something really simple i never thought about ... Using a mini Maglite as light source. Would have liked to say that this is my idea, but in fact i have been really inspired by the wonderful pictures shown in this forum.



Shot using a mini Maglite for lightning, a black t-shirt to hide the eventual reflections from the pot, a Tamron SP90 f/2.5 stopped down to f/16, and, of course, my K10D ...

Hopefully, more to come ...

Comparing 35mm lenses ...

Hoping to be useful to someone, last week i did some test shots with some vintage 35mm lenses, some well known, others not ...
The competitors are:

Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35 f/2.8 (alu finish)
Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon MC 35 f/2.4 (black finish)
Isco Göttingen Westron 35 f/2.8
Nikkor-O 35 f/2
Super Paragon 35 f/2.8

I have tried to do my best to perform the test, but keep in mind that:

the exposure metering has been done with a Gossen Sixtomat, but light adjusting has been required since the afternoon daylight was not really constant;

there are small differences in focal length between the lenses - i got different fields of view at the same distance;

the minimum focusing distance is not the same between all the lenses; the Flektogon 2.4 focuses at about 19cm, while the Super Paragon focuses far than others - and i noticed this too late for taking all the shots again :-( ...

the aperture is not the same between the lenses, but the difference is almost half a stop on the lower side (f/2, f/2.4, f/2.8), and one stop on the ... dark ;-) side (f/16,f/22);

the shots have been taken at full stops increments, i have intentionally avoided half stops increments because of the build tolerance of the diaphragms;

the subject and the composition are not really great, but i was testing for sharpness and some bokeh.

Of course, all the pictures have been taken with a Pentax K10D, with its default settings, on a tripod and with a remote control. All the pictures are full size, unprocessed JPGs straight from the RAW files from the camera, processed by Pentax Photo Laboratory adjusting only brightness, as i said before.

Despite what is done elsewhere, here there will be no crops nor verdict on the fight: just take a look at the pictures and judge by yourself. Feel free to download the pictures from my Flickr photostream and do all the crops you want, since they are available in full res. I have done my choice about the winner, but this is a matter of (personal) taste ...

Now, enough words, pictures are better, so, if you are interested, take a tour here and feel free to leave commments ...

More pictures to come ...

P.S.: Before you ask: some of these lenses are mine, others are borrowed from friends, none is for sale (well, at least until i will be able to afford a Distagon 35) ...