you may notice by the time stamp which is...is it at the bottom of this shit? idk. well, it's midnight and 19 minutes at this point in time as shown by my computer who may or may not be a cheating, lying, dirty skank. like my printer. not my right hand side printer. that's a goodboi. but the left....daddy no love.
son of a bitch these feathers in this pillow are painful.
anyways, yeah. part of why it's taken me forever is cause of failbook. im now on page 24 of this site. it is goddamn amazing. so many hot witty facebook chicks in this world, according to failbook.
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...sorry, was reading it. funny shit. so, anyways. one of 50 million things i wanted to talk about. technology is awesome. how so? well......
NUMBAR ONE.
consider these shots.
What's so special about these shots? Well, for one, my room's lights were totally off. Looking through the viewfinder, I could barely see the cup. They were lit by one thing only - my laptop screen playing a movie. It's crazy that you can even take pictures like this; what's even more crazy is that you can't see any noise at all. At larger/full sizes, the third one is quite noisey, but the first two aren't bad at all. And the ISOs these were shot at? In descending order, 2500, 5000, 10,000. None of these sensitivities, in over a century of film photography, had ever been reached before (I think. Well, 2500 maybe, but 5k and 10k definitely no), and now, barely a decade into digital, cameras have been able to do this, and produce clean images too.
awesome shit, no?
NUMBAR TWO.
i got a focussing screen, for manual focus. it's sex tastic. it's like those split screens that are in film cameras, where in the center you have two hemispheres; if an image is out of focus, the hemispheres are unaligned, making a split image, and if it's in focus, then it's all lined up and looks normal. and...yeah. manual focusing is super accurate and i'm really quite bored writing about this so let's cut that shit out. sounds good to me.
NUMBAR THREE.
i want to take back everything i said about takumar lenses.
okay, not really, they're still sextastic. but i mean, i had to send one in (ST50/1.4 - bit of a story i don't want to bother to write out) for warranty repair ("we reserve the right to refund or repair" <---i now hate that phrase) from the used camera store i bought it from, and as a result, i had to use my modern lenses for a photo assignment. i'm too bored to go over to photobucket to link em so live with this text of wall. basically, long story short, in summation, random transition phrase, im so bored of writing, failbook is calling, the pictures with those lenses out of camera blew me away. i didn't have to be all "sure it's less contrasty out of camera but it's really a good thing! promise! editing leeway!" it was just nice pictures.
and then that got me to thinking.
ever since i got those takumars, i think i've written more about lenses than i have about pictures. that bothers me somewhat. and while it's true i put more thought into taking pictures with those lenses, it's more the process of taking pictures than the pictures themselves i especially enjoyed. and, if you get right to the bottom of it, they felt realllllyyyyyy sexy to focus, and that's about it. not a single shot blew me away out of camera from the taks - a few did after editing, but not straight up like the moderns did.
i always thought shit like a particular lens's colours or unique rendition were fanboyism or hype or bullshit, but when i shot with my modern lenses again, i saw first hand, hell no. they looked so much more alive than the tak shots - sure, they were probably inseperable after PP, but at the same time not really. i dunno. there's just something about having a shot that's pretty much already perfect.
which then takes me to my next thought (somehow. not really, but it's what i have in mind at the moment): the takumars represent an amazing dollar-to-imagequality ratio. but does that actually mean much if i spend every morning scouring craigslist for deals? i feel like im falling for marketing, but the laughable thing is, nobody's marketing it besides the users; they've been out of production for 40 years. i say they're a great way to get great lenses while saving money. i'm not exactly saving money by craigslisting (though i did see a super-tak 135/3.5 for $25, which i would jump on any day, but the seller only replies on the full moon or something) or whatever.
which then takes me to the next thought (and it's an actual logical progression this time): fuck lenses. screw this collecting shit, just minimize on what doesn't matter as much - collecting exotic old lenses for some overly romanticized quality - and maximize on what does matter more (in this context) - taking photos. and when i reached this leap of logic, i realized - i could downsize pretty well and have a 3(.5 - if you include that 70-210 zoom. i'd keep it for the length but probably never use it so much) lens (all primes. hah, that's a bio (AP) thing i think. 3prime 5prime or whatever) setup.
because a while back, i bought an FA50/1.7 for around $150, i think. I just checked on ebay. only one on sale right now is going for $350. now, that + selling my current "normal" lens, hopefully in the $250-300 range, will get me enough to get a FA43/1.9. basically, a legendary lens. but this time, i'm not buying for hype - i'm actually buying for practicality. it's a full stop faster than my da40/2.8, which is the only niggle i have about it, but it's a big niggle - 2.8 for a prime is pretty slow, and i do find myself wishing i could go faster, even though the k-x is pretty sexy at high iso. ideally, i could get the 31/1.8 instead, because i would prefer that focal length much better than the 43, but it's a goddamn $1k lens, so it's only in a completely unimaginably bestcase scenario of lens resale that i'd be able to buy that. and i'm having a bit of a chuckle now, because when i was convincing my dad to get me a da15/4 for me, i told him you could sell lens for 80-90% of their original value if it was in good condition, and he scoffed and called bullshit on it. if all goes well, i'll be selling a lens for over 200%. how's that for a deal? i, as a rule, don't like throwing out personalish numbers like dollars out on the internet like this but if this isn't an open journal than there's no point for me to write at all, so there it is.
but yeah, anyways, if i have that....then i have my 15/4, 43/1.9, 100/2.8. the biggest gap there is actually between the 15 and the 43 (focal length doesn't mean as much the bigger a number gets, which makes sense. 5mm when you have 25mm means a lot more than 5mm when you have 100mm), so i'm worried i'll be tempted to buy something to plug that gap. and you know what, maybe when i have a job of my own and a house and a trophy wife, i will. but until then, those 3 lenses, all very highly regarded, should last me literally a life time - they can all manual focus fine, are all well-built, and are all high quality. and it would be super compact and lightweight (for a dslr setup). okay, the 100/2.8 isn't super tiny, but the 15 and 43 are quite tiny by lens standards. and in terms of weight it's awesome - probably a canon 7D or nikon d7000 with battery grip and a single superzoom lens would be way heavier, and, depending on the lens, might even take more size. hell, in volume, the 7D or D7K alone probably double my k-x.
but here am i am again, talking about lenses. i have a bunch of things photographically speaking coming up, not the least of which are spring break, at which point i will jizz out photos, and another event at the aquarium to shoot at. that was in reverse upcoming chronological order, but whatever. point is, i'll probably not be selling off my shite for a while. and i'm not sure if the takumars will go or not. they're still fun to use, but it's just not healthy for me, i don't think, to be spending so much and calling it saving. hopefully, downsizing will put temptation far away. cause with a 15/43/100, i can go anywhere and shoot anything, practically. the only chink in the armor (wow. that's amazing. i used chink, and not as a racial slur. dude. i need to mark the time down) of this setup is the length of the 43 - it's a bit long for indoor use so i might get tempted to get something wider.....but the thing is, there's really nothing that's fast enough for what i want, and still affordable, in that focal length range. and besides, shooting a bit in the cafeteria today with the 40 showed that it wasn't that bad at all - just fine for across-the-table shots. group shots might need a 15, but a 15/43 combo is literally pocketable, so that's fine.
and one of my points about rescinding what i said (read: fawned) about the takumars was that i spent more time talking about lenses than pictures. and with that, i will stop.
here're the pictures that woke me up from addiction to takumars, shot with either the da15 or 40. this was a school assignment, basically, shoot some set of sculptures in the vancouver biennale exhibit (it's not actually one singular exhibit; the sculptures are all over vancouver). in particular, the colours and contrast of these shots out of camera (these've been tweaked but very minor-ly at most; not enough to really affect a lens' rendition - a word i now fully believe in wrt lenses. shit, i mentioned them again. time to stop 4rizles) were quite awesome to me.
okay the colours on this one don't count, especially the sky - i'm a noob at HDR processing.
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