my second meal has yet to come into existence. anyways, so i got one more -one last- lens, a super-multi-coated takumar 28mm f3.5 off of some dude from craigslist. and basically i am vowing a vow of lens celibacy from here on out. and buying stuff in general, really. my justification for buying this lens was
1) it's cheap
2) demand is rising for takumar lenses now that people are like pentax is jesus with the new cameras that were released
3) i have a 15mm lens, and then the closest is 40mm. a lot of the time this leaves me with a big gap in between - esp in landscape shots where i can't move too far back or i'd have to move up or down a hill or rock or there's simply no room - say a sheer cliff wall or something and i'm backed up against it, with the 40mm on. and with the 15mm, there's only so far forward i can walk before i fall off a cliff. hold your applause, i haven't done that yet. plus the 15mm is so wide there's often a ton of perspective distortion when i'm not pointing it level-y. of course, i also love that, but sometimes i just don't want it.
enter the s-m-c takumar 28mm. focal length is perfectly in between the two, and being a takumar lens, it will probably out live me. in fact, it's in remarkably good condition (random sidenote: i bought it from some chinese dude who also uses many takumar/pentax lenses. another chinese guy who uses pentax. how rare is that, huh?), the glass is practically spotless. there're some paint chips on the body but that's nothing to me.
here's the sexbomb
s-m-c tak 28/3.5 next to the super-tak 50/1.4
in some ways, this lens is kind of a runty, red-headed-stepchild of a lens. in the film days when this was made, 28mm was pretty damn wide, but now on an APS-C sensor, it's a "normal" lens, and normals tend to be pretty fast - around f2 or at least f2.8; this thing's f3.5 - significantly slower, and indoors/nighttime usage will require quite a bit more ISO, or flash. it's a screwmount, meaning it'll be more time-consuming to change lenses around, and more fussy metering, and manual focusing. and, sadly, it's not radioactive, like its brother the 50/1.4.
yet at the same time, using it in the photowalk today, it was my most used lens. before, i didn't really get the concept of a "normal" lens. the 50mm lenses (which are normals, but only on full-sized sensors) did keep objects at the same size in real life as in the viewfinder, but it cropped out a lot of the sides of where you're looking. on the other hand, this thing, whenever i felt like i "saw" a picture, a good scene or whatever that'd make a nice photo, it fit it perfectly. wasn't too wide or too long, its field of view was perfect - didn't really feel a need to back up or get in closer.
and focusing with this thing (it's a bit more sludgey than the super-tak, but still really smooth) is surprisingly easy (it's sposed to be more difficult with wider lenses, but this is probably easier because its maximum aperture is f3.5, which is more or less what the stock screens in the viewfinder can mimic in terms of DoF - basically, what you see is what you get in terms of what's in focus, whereas with the 50/1.4, if you're shooting it at under f4 or so, there'll be less in focus than it appears in the vf).
and basically, after this lens, i now have primes of various focal lengths from 15 to 100mm, and then a 70-210mm zoom. since i don't plan on going into birding (which requires insanely expensive and heavy long lenses), i won't be needing anything longer, and 15mm is really quite wide for me already - sometimes too wide. i have a flash, i have a tripod, i have a polarizer and ND filter, i basically have anything i'd ever need. so from here on out, i am not spending a penny on photographic equipment (with the sole exception being a (keyword) cheap autofocus 28mm that's faster than 2.8 (ie if pentax makes a new one, cause no such thing exists in pentax mount right now). okay little things like lens hoods or whatever don't really count. it'd be nice to get that Timbuk2 camera bag, but i don't really need it. so, yeah, equipmentspending celibacy.
but anyways, enough of boring shit. ONTO THE PHOTOWALK.
i originally meant to go to the train tracks/factory/thing, in north van, on low level road. i drove past it a few weeks ago and it was all cloudy and it just looked such an epicly moody place. well i got there today and it just felt off to me. there were more trains there, which made it seem congested. and then my mom couldn't find parking, but we did find many signs that were saying private property and all that. at that point, i had two choices:
a) be a BEAST and say fuck the signs, and photo to my heart's desire all over the trains and whatnot. unleash my vision.
b) pussy out and go somewhere else.
if you picked B, we're not friends anymore. you're right, but we're not friends. and if you picked A, i'll buy you a drink even though you're wrong. a nice coke zero or something. cause i'm hardcore beast like that (y).
anyways so yeah, we drove over to deep cove instead, and it turned out pretty amazing because, drumroll...
it was foggy. JIZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
and of course, i made good use of the epic, moody fog hanging over the water. i went the opposite direction, into the woods. and it was awesome.
love this shot, unfortunately the trunk on the right kinda ruins it imo. a nice crop helps but i didn't think to re shoot it with better framing at the time due to there being a million hikers around me, and this tree was smack in the middle (ish) of the trail.
to me, this thing is a nice cross between batman and those fat sprout-babies in harry potter.
the s-m-c tak 28 hard at work here. the 15mm would've made me go all the way up to it to not have a ton of extraneous stuff in the shot, which would've then had a ton of perspective distortion - fun in some cases, not so much in this - and the 50 would've made me back so far up i'd fall off the cliff. and then the world would be a better place. sadface.
making good use of my polarizer here. without it, those wet rocks would be all reflective-y and just look kinda meh. not really fixable in post either, so good justification for having the actual filter. it was so dark here that the polarizer's sucking up of a stop or two of light was enough to get a good second-long exposure, blurring the water into sexiness - didn't need the ND for any of these forest river shots.
i love this shot - into the mist it goes...
the only shot i took with the super-tak 50/1.4 today. it's interesting because i was so excited about it, but in practice, i don't really need it that much. that said it's not like i'm going to write it off or anything, some photowalks just favour certain focal lengths.
and here now is a lovely case of user error:
i had the right angle here set up with the tripod and the 28mm/3.5, that got the roots looking how i wanted. but, i forgot to stop it down to f11 and this was instead shot wide open - too shallow DoF for the shot i wanted. some hikers were approaching so i had to move out of the way, after which i took this shot:
and this time, i remembered to stop down to f11. but i didn't get the framing as low as i'd had it last time. sighs.
halfway through my hike upwards, my mom called me ( they went ahead instead of waiting for my taking photos every 30 feet ) and told me that there wasn't really anything to see from the top. since she promised a view and that was the main reason i didn't go straight to the docks, i started going back down the trail, and, thankfully, the fog was still there....
also, TEACHABLE MOMENT TIME. the following shots go 28mm, 15mm. 28mm, 15mm.
it doesn't really show up in the shots without the boats, but those with the boats - that, my friends, is what you call perspective distortion. it's not really a property of any lens, but more the focal length of it (ie, any wide angle lens, no matter how perfect, will have it, so long as it's wide enough). basically if you're that close and have that wide of angle, it'll exaggerate the size of things, whereas the shot with the 28mm, you can tell that it's a lot more natural in terms of proportions. anyways, yeah, i love all these 4 shots to death, but i can't pick between any of them. i do like the fourth one the least, cause the clouds are a bit bland...i also feel like i have too many shots with this sort of dark, atmospheric treatment to them, but at the same time, it's what i'm into, soooo...suck it. i'll post sunshine and butterflies and puppies in the summer.
so at this point in the photowalk, it's just started raining and i have my camera wrapped in a ziploc bag while mounted on my tripod, and after i get these last shots off, i went off to meet my mom at some nearby restaurant. it was about 2:30 pm. good time for breakfast, no?
along the way, i had a bit of a photo opp for one of my school assignments -store fronts. i normally get kinda bored by such a mundane subjects, but then again at the same time that pushes me to find something interesting out of the mundane - something i've seen some really awesome photographers do, and when it's well done, it's epic. luckily, this storefront had an old, beaten-down look - i love buildings like these. bit of a fetish of mine (next to ice, abandoned barns, and atmospheric/emo water/lake/docks).
and then i went and had breakfast.
it was good.
it had bacon. nuff said. anyways, it was a really nice day - photographically speaking. blueskywhiteclouds are nice and all, but it's just...boring. and i love my 28mm lens. it was the underdog of the trio i'd brought, really - i had the 15mm, 28mm, and the super-tak 50mm. the super-tak was faster, the 15mm, was more dramatic a focal length and fun to use, yet the 28mm took the majority of my shots today. in fact, the 50mm snapped a whopping one picture, and the 15 was almost locked in my bag the entire photowalk. it didn't give up without a fight though - the last shots with the boat simply demanded it, but even now i can't tell which shot i like better - the 15's or the 28's.
but the 28 has something which none of my other lenses have (besides its focal length - which is also really nice to use. i never feel like it's too much in either direction, a statement which is a bit much to make after only having gone out with it once, but still). it's simply fun to use (okay the super-tak 50 gets to join in on this too), and just the challenge of manual focussing keeps the camera out of the bag and in my hands. i already have shots that no other lens would've taken (even the 50 - it was too long in here) if it wasn't simply damn enjoyable to play around with it. nothing groundbreaking, but still:
so, yeah. it was a good day.
but now i'm fucking hungry.
brb sammich.
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