Allusion

I got myself a second-hand Sony α7 II. It arrived today, along with the adaptor for M42-mount lenses. The weather was nice, so I took it on a test drive to the local park.

OK, I used to be sceptical about mirrorless cameras, but focus peaking is so good. All these shots were taken with manual focus lenses from the 1970s. I'm shooting auto for now. All shots were edited.

The flowers were with a Helios-44-2 58mm f/2. The boats and the ducks and fish were with Soligor 200mm f/3.5. Both lenses are from the 1970s.

Jun 25 at 12:14amWeb
Show threadAllusion1d ago

Halfway through my walk, I realized I wasn't shooting in raw. Here are a couple of ones that were in raw.

The boats are with the Soligor 200mm and the iris is with the Helios 58mm.

Show threadAllusion1d ago
One more, but it's of a turkey vulture eating a dead fish, so I'm CW-ing it. The Soligor 200 again.
Show threadAllusion5h ago

I decided to try some macro stuff. My macro setup is a Takumar SMC 55mm f/1.8 (the kit lens from an M42-mount Pentax) mounted backwards on a bellows.

I had more trouble focusing. Focus peaking wasn't too happy about this setup, so I was mostly eyeballing it. It was handheld, so it was tricky staying in focus for more than a fraction of a second anyway. I might have been able to stop down more than f/8 to increase the focal depth by a tad, but I was having trouble working the aperture ring as well.

That said, image stability was incredible. If I get the hang of focusing again, I might do more handheld macro stuff again.

Show threadneville park4h ago
@giltay this is a predatory fly in family Dolichopodidae, and damn difficult to get a photo of!
Show threadAllusion4h ago

@nev I dunno, sometimes they just stay in one spot for a while.

I got this with my previous macro setup (plus a magnifying lens for extra chaos) years and years ago: https://www.flickr.com/photos/giltay/9330980700/in/album-72157629475048784

It just sat there and let me get extremely close.

Long-legged fly 1

Flickr