The Crappy Commie Camera Party: In Aveiro With The Zenit 11 And The Deakinizer

Preface: I’ve been a bit sluggish in publishing this post, many because I was so disappointed with how the images turned out after such promise from what I could see through the viewfinder. However, checking the negatives, they were really ‘thin’ and from what I can see need a couple of extra stops of exposure. So I’m going to have another ‘stab’ at this and thought I would publish the original version. 

For the past month, at least, I’ve been waiting impatiently for June to arrive. It’s the start of the Crappy Commie Camera Party, the latest iteration of the Shitty Camera Challenge, and is a celebration of all things 20thcentury Eastern Bloc. Back in March, which seems like a lifetime ago, I picked up a Zenit 11 single lens reflex camera and two lenses, a CCCP compliant Industar-50-2, and a Cosina 50mm f1.8 lens. I also have a Pentacon 50mm f1.8 lens, but it’s stuck at the widest aperture.

https://flic.kr/p/2r8GBzs

Now the CCCP is upon us, it’s time to see how the Zenit behaves. For my first outing, I thought I would hit the ground running. I went to Aveiro to collect some film (and drop off some other rolls), and took the Zenit 11, the Pentacon 50mm f1.8, and the Panavision wide-angle converter, my ‘Deakinizer’. If you’re not familiar with the Deakinizer, it was a lens invented by cinematographer Roger Deakins that creates an image with a sharp(ish) centre to the frame and blurred edges. A cheap way to make a Deakinizer is to hold a wide-angle converter reversed in front of a camera lens, and I have the Panavision wide-angle converter (among several  others, now) just for this purpose. 

https://flic.kr/p/2r8C7Nd

The filter thread of the Panavision is 67mm, so I created a 49-67mm step up attachment to fix the Deakinizer securely to the front of the lens. Through the viewfinder the images looked great, though at wide open aperture the shutter speeds required are beyond the capability of the Zenit. So what I’ve done is put an ND64 (6-stop) neutral density filter between the camera lens and the wide-angle converter that should allow me to use the fully open lens with the Deakinizer and get a decent shutter speed.

https://flic.kr/p/2r8GByL

I loaded a roll of Lomography ISO 100 colour film into the Zenit (and remembered to reset the frame count to zero. For exposure I used the Camera Meter app and rated the film at its box speed of ISO 100. I didn’t have much time in Aveiro, so it was a quick walk to the area around the Melia Ria hotel and up to my favourite little row of Buga bikes near the Forum shopping centre. I rushed through the film, sometimes taking photographs of the same subject from different angles, and hoping that something came out. After completing the film, I rewound it carefully — I’m always afraid of tearing the film I’m these old Soviet-era cameras — and dropped it off at the lab with the other films.

https://flic.kr/p/2r8JhPm

The results were not what I had hoped. Although the Zenit and the Deakinizer, and the ND64 filter,  worked a treat, the final results were very soft and heavily vignetted. Yes, I nailed the exposure, but it was difficult to see what was going on in each of the frames. I’ve uploaded the complete album to Flickr so that you can judge for yourself, but I reckon I need to go back to the drawing board and test out some of my other wide-angle converters. 

https://flic.kr/p/2r8Hxsv

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#CrappyCommieCameraParty #Deakinizer #M42MountVintageCamera #Macro #Pentacon #Retro #Shittycamerachallenge #SovietCamera #Zenit11

Lens Artists Challenge #350: Zooming

‘Zoom, zoom, zoom!’ says, Anne, who is our host for the Lens-Artists Challenge this week. Unsurprisingly, her choice of subject is ‘Zooming‘, and she adds: ‘It’s one of my favorite types of photography, and it is fun!’ Zooming, or ‘zoom burst’ photography as I’ve seen it called, is certainly great fun. As Anne says, at the core of this technique is mounting a zoom lens on the camera and, when taking an image, changing the focal length of the zoom lens during the exposure. This gives a wonderful ‘burst’ effect, though my attempts have never been as spectacular as Anne’s examples. 

But what if you don’t have a zoom lens? Can you still achieve the same effect with a point and shoot, or even a smartphone? Actually, yes. You can, with one of my favourite bits of kit, the DIY Deakinizer. I’ve used the ‘Deakinizer’ in the Lens-Artists Challenge before. Back in January, during the ‘Shoot From Above‘ challenge, I used it to take images of objects around the house. This time, I’ve used it on a ‘walk around the block’.

The DIY Deakinizer is simply a wide-angle converter, one of those odd-looking lenses that screws onto the front of the lens you are using, but held reversed over the camera lens. Positioned correctly, the centre of the image is (roughly) in focus, while around the edges is a lovely starburst effect. It’s not a zoom burst, but it’s pretty darned close. You can pick these up for about 5€ or less, depending on the manufacturer, and like most things I’ve found in my photography accessories, the cheaper, the better. The results you’ll get will vary depending on the camera/converter combination that you use, so it’s a bit hit and miss sometimes finding the right combination that suits you.

For this Challenge, I’m using the Canon Powershot G12 fitted with a lens hood and the Sakar Super Wider Fish-Eye 0.42x wide-angle converter. The converter is fitted to the camera with step-up rings, and the whole arrangement is quite secure. The results were quite spectacular. Reversed, the converter gives the most amazing chromatic aberration that reveals a wonderful multicoloured image with a pronounced zoom effect. 

I also tried a different wide angle converter, the Sigma x0.5 Wide Converter for Video, which gave a much cleaner and more subtle effect than the Sakar. Cinematographer Roger Deakins created the Deakinizer in 2007. A lens that would fit over the lens of a movie camera to produce an image with a sharp centre and blurred edges. This became known as the Deakinizer effect and has been used a lot in films ever since. In this case, the combination of Powershot G12 and Sigma x0.5 Wide Converter gave an image more reminiscent of of the Deakinizer effect than the Sakar.

I was really pleased how well the faux zoom-burst effect worked, and I hope that you like the results. All being well, I’ll be using my original Panavision ‘Deakinizer’ with a Zenit 11 single lens reflex camera for the upcoming Crappy Commie Camera Party, and I’ll be sure to post the results — successful or otherwise. 

Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can po3st their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here, and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag ‘Lens-Artists’.

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.

#Blurry #Burst #Challenge #Deakinizer #Lens #LensArtists #LensMod #ReverseLens #WideAngle #Zooming #LensArtists

Gearing up for the Crappy Commie Camera Party, Part 2: Testing The Zenit 11, a Soviet-era Single Lens Reflex Camera

At the beginning of March I picked up a Zenit 11 single lens reflex (SLR) camera for the Crappy Commie Camera Party (CCCP). In the first post, ‘Gearing up for the Crappy Commie Camera Party’, I introduced the camera and ran through some of its … features. In this post, I managed to take the camera out on a rare sunny day and put it through its paces. 

Although it was in the ‘Not Passed’ category of the Kamerastore website, with ‘flaws that will affect typical use’, in this case it was just the ‘light meter doesn’t work properly … Otherwise it is in good working condition!’ I also picked up two extra lenses, a CCCP compliant Industar-50-2, and a Cosina 50mm f1.8 lens, since the aperture on my Pentacon 50mm f1.8 lens is stuck at the widest aperture position and it turned out that even at its fastest shutter speed the camera would overexpose most films.

To test the camera I found an old roll of Lomochrome Metropolis that I’ve had sitting around for a few years now. I reckon this expired around 2022, but it’s new enough that I didn’t really think it needed much exposure adjustment so I exposed it at ISO 100, at the low end of the ISO 100-400 range of this film. To measure the exposure I used the smartphone app Light Meter.

Images taken with the Cosina 50mm f1.8 lens came out really well. I set the aperture on ‘auto’ mode, and the app suggested an exposure of 1/125s at f16. Looking at the final images, I think that the app is overexposing by around 1 stop, which I have noticed before and always seem to forget, so next time I might try adjusting the exposure accordingly. 

Along with the Zenit 11 I bought an M42 lens reverse ring for macro photography. On one side is the M42 thread that screws into the camera, on the other side is a 49mm filter thread that fits the Pentacon and the Cosina. With the Cosina mounted on the reversing ring, I set the aperture to f16 in manual mode and tried some close up photography.  Again this came out really well, and the macro photographs showed some really nice detail in the images. With a 50mm lens, the macro scale is roughly life-size, so I think I’m going to get some nice close ups with these during the CCCP challenge. 

Finally,  I wondered if I could use my homemade Deakinizer with the Zenit 11. If you’re not familiar with the Deakinizer, it was a lens invented by cinematographer Roger Deakins that creates an image with a clear centre to the frame and blurred edges. A cheap way to make a Deakinizer is to hold a wide-angle converter reversed in front of a camera lens, and I have a Panavision wide-angle converter just for this purpose. 

The filter thread of the Panavision is 67mm, so I created a 49-67mm step up attachment to fix the Deakinizer to the front of the Cosina lens. At the full aperture the image looked great, with a fairly sharp centre and blurred edges. However, when the aperture was stopped down to f16, the image was restricted to the centre of the frame. It did work, though, and I really liked how these came out. What I have done is to order a 6-stop neutral density filter that should allow me to use a 50mm lens fully open at f1.8 with the Deakinizer. One of the benefits of this arrangement is that I’ll be able to use the Zenit with the CCCP-compliant Pentacon lens, and not the Cosina.

In conclusion, I was really happy with how the Zenit 11 performed and it’s certainly a camera to be used with the CCCP.  I have recently obtained another Soviet made camera, the half-frame Chaika II, and I’ll be  posting how this performed shortly. 

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#CrappyCommieCameraParty #Deakinizer #M42MountVintageCamera #Macro #Pentacon #Retro #Shittycamerachallenge #SovietCamera #Zenit11

Lens-Artists Challenge #332: Shoot From Above

This week Ritva is hosting the Challenge, and her instruction for the week is to ‘Shoot From Above‘. ‘Let’s Shoot From Above this week!’ she says. ‘Let’s get creative with a top-down perspective. Let’s have fun.’ Well, I’m certainly eager to have a bit of fun with the Challenge, so here we go.

A couple of years ago, I went through a patch where I would take a lot of photos from above. In fact if you search ‘coffee’ on my site you might find dozens of entries, many more than I thought. I can’t remember how it all started, but I became fascinated by the abstract patterns that appeared in the surface of a cup of coffee after it came out of the machine. For the record, I’m talking real coffee here, espresso, not that black thin stuff in big polystyrene cups that you see in the movies. That can’t be real, right?

Anyhow, I would pop a capsule in the machine, watch the coffee come out, and then quickly snap the pattern of bubbles and currents that would appear on the surface of the espresso with my smartphone. Incidentally, the patterns that appear when you make coffee with real ground coffee are altogether different, but we don’t have one of those machines, so I can’t do that. After I’d snapped an image I would take it into SnapSeed photo editor and edit it into an abstract, with pop effects, accentuate, desaturate, the works (I even created a couple of sequences called ‘coffee’ to process them automatically). 

So there was my plan for the week, to take a quick snap of the surface of my daily coffee with the smartphone, and edit it accordingly. And then John made a comment on my last entry to the Challenge; ‘I always love your creative take on photography and your use of tools that are out of the ordinary.’ Oh darn, I thought. My daily coffee sounds far too pedestrian now, I’m going to have to do something different. But what? I wanted to keep it simple, and the weather is awful so I’ll have to photograph the entries around the house.

And then it hit me: the Deakinizer. Back in 2007, cinematographer Roger Deakins created a lens that would fit on a film camera to produce an almost ’tilt/shift’ image, with a sharp centre and blur around the edges. This became known as the Deakinizer effect and has been used a lot in films ever since. You can recreate this effect in PhotoShop, but where’s the fun in that? I had read somewhere that a cheap way to make a Deakinizer is to hold a reversed wide-angle converter in front of a camera lens, and I have an old Panavision wide-angle converter just for this purpose. And so my entry to this week’s Challenge was reborn.

During the week I wandered around the house, smartphone in one hand and the ‘Deakinizer’ in the other, looking down and taking close-ups of things that appealed to me. Images were edited in SnapSeed, as before, and the featured image of the top of a galão (what the Portuguese call café con laite) with the Deakinizer is a loose homage to my original project.

Next week, Egídio from Seeing the World Through Brazilian Eyes will host the Challenge, so hope that you can join us. Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here, and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag ‘Lens-Artists’.

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.

#Abstract #Blurry #Challenge #Deakinizer #Glitch #Lens #LensArtists #LensFlip #LensMod #Photography #ReverseLens #ShootFromAbove #LensArtists

How To Make a DIY ‘Deakinizer’ Lens for a Unique Visual Effect

The Deakinizer lens is a specially modified optic that was commissioned by Roger Deakins for the 2007 film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" used to create an old-timey feel to the footage, giving the scenes captured in it an almost tilt-shift look.

In this three-minute video, spotted by DIY Photography, Chung Dha shows two quick ways to make a DIY version of this lens for yourself.

"The unique look was done entirely in-camera with lenses that are now called ‘Deakinizers.’ I used to use this gag where I put a small lens element in front of a 50mm to get a similar effect. I asked how we could create that effect in a better way, with more flexibility and lens length," Deakins said in an interview with the American Society of Cinematographers, as noted by DPReview.

"The lens technician suggested taking the front element off a 9.8 Kinoptic, and also mounting the glass from old wide-angle lenses to the front of a couple of Arri Macros. Removing the front element makes the lens faster, and it also gives you this wonderful vignetting and slight color diffraction around the edges. We used different lenses, so some were more extreme or slightly longer than others. Sometimes we used [Kardan] Shift & Tilt lenses to get a similar effect."

The scenes in the film using those lenses had a dreamy and almost etheric look to them. While the lenses Deakins used were unique (and likely expensive) to create, Dha shows how it is possible to achieve a similar look using much cheaper methods.

The first is to use a wide-angle lens converter and flip it around (hand-holding) with the front element of the adapter facing the front element of the mounted lens. While this is much cheaper and easier than the second method, it does have some setbacks. Not every wide-angle adapter and lens combination will work, so it may take some testing to find the right combination for the look you're seeking to achieve.

The second method, which Dha says is his preferred way, is made by using a specific lens combination. For this he has used a modified Mir 1B 37mm f/2.8 lens with the front element reversed mounted onto a tilt-shift adapter. The element flipping may seem daunting but it is relatively easy to DIY it and will only cost about $120 to achieve. The adapter will allow users to adjust the spot focus much faster, easier, and with more precision than with the first method. Flipping that front element will give that spot focus effect and the teardrop-shaped bokeh, with the spot-focus zone still being nice and sharp, thus creating the "Deakinizer" look.

The effect is definitely not for everyone but it can be very useful for creating a specific type of scene like in a dream sequence or if you wanted to create a perspective of someone being under the influence of alcohol and disoriented.

For more from Dha, make sure to subscribe to his YouTube Channel.

#doityourself #equipment #ideas #chungdha #deakinizer #diy #filmmaker #filmmaking #lens #photography #rogerdeakins #techniques #video #visualeffect #youtube