Monday, January 9, 2012

Glassware

Recently I have been shooting with my Canon DSLR, but using my 45 year old Pentax Super Takumar 50mm f1.4 lens.  I bought the lens on a Pentax Spotmatic while in high school.  I worked in a camera shop after school and was able to buy the camera at a special dealer discount.  It was still a very expensive purchase back then... the most expensive thing I had ever bought.

Having adapted the lens to the Canon I have once again been able to experience what it is like to shoot with a fast prime lens, something that I have contemplated as I think about my next possible camera purchase (maybe a four-thirds or some other compact systems camera).  What I have discovered is two things: a zoom lens really is not all that important for most picture taking, and second; manual focus takes time to be accurate.  Of course the Canon does not have any special focus aids in the viewfinder, and shooting wide-open (as I did in this photo) there is very little depth of field.

1 comment:

  1. It's good that you have been able to breath some fresh life into this lens. I've never used such a fast lens, experienced such narrow depth of fields or light gathering power, but I imagine that it would allow you to develop an interesting style of image. I've not tried it, but I think the 3/4 cameras are supposed to be pretty good for manual focus, probably a lot easier than with your DSLR; that and also the extra information one gets with an EVF, I certainly miss continuous the live view "heads-up" display on my DSLR. I certainly subscribe to the view that creativity is blunted if I am hampered by equipment and the process can't "flow".

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