anyways, some catchup work to do: my past few single-in-march shots:
day 13: "we all get left behind"
i was a bit inspired after my candids from day 12, and i remembered seeing some compelling compositions in my head while i was transitting all over that day in the skytrain stations of vancouver, so this day, i just canada lined straight to VCC and waited by a good spot until my composition was "fulfilled" by people moving into it. well actually i cycled between 2-3 framings depending on when the train arrived, but that's basically it. i didn't get every shot i wanted, so i might go back to it sometime. doing candids can be a bit tough already, but with an all manual lens it gets even trickier - this shot here is soft, though it could be a bit of motion blur too i guess.
anyways, i liked this because i saw this old lady coming down the stairs, and being passed up by everyone else. since she wasn't lightning fast, i prefocussed where i guessed she'd pop up, and snapped once she filled the frame. unfortunately the other people slowed down once off the stairs and so were less motion blurred than i'd have liked, but it still works.
here's an excerpt from that day:
i know i was going for something here, but i can't remember what exactly - isolation i guess, but my shitty focus skills while under the pressure of being regarded as a creep made this end up being too soft for that to work out well. i still enjoy this shot, though.
day 14: "simplicity"
this was taken while waiting for my turn to have my UBC sci supplementals proofread by miss eisner. i'm so damn glad that's finally over with, and now that i've self reported my grades....it's out of my hands now, out of my control, and i'm not going to stress about it any more. in terms of editing, i was getting a bit tired of the extensive post i was doing in the past few days, so this was just...simplicity, and i wanted the shot to reflect that. quick contrast/exposure/desat, and pop it out.
day 15: no photo. well i took one, then accidentally deleted it cause i thought i'd already imported it. well apparently not, but oh well.
day 16: no title
this day, i did it. i sold my da40. the lens through which i saw corey taylor, stone sour, avenged sevenfold. the lens i brought with me for unforgettable nights. the lens i never really got into, because it was just not enough something. not fast enough, not wide enough, not long enough, not interesting enough......(this thought will be continued later)
day 17a: endgame (i took two photos for this day to make up for missing one on day 15)
i just got rise against's newest album, endgame. it is fucking amazing - the lyrics, the music....recent album releases, especially by my other favorite bands, avenged sevenfold, stone sour - i absolutely loved those too, but it felt a bit weird, since i'd been listening to their older albums so much, that to have some new songs into the mix felt a bit weird. which doesn't make sense because i've had rise against albums equally long...but it just feels so much more natural. not that it sounds the same - pretty much every song here has something that makes me go wow, this is rise against? never heard this in their songs before. and tim mcilrath's voice develops in between albums in a way that's noticeable but not obtrusive or whatever, it's pretty cool to hear.
anyways, loooooooove the new album. each song should be a theme song for something or another - architects talks about people taking the world and making it their own, taking control of their own futures. very "be the change you wish to see"-esque. help is on the way is about hurricane katrina but eerily echoes what's going on in japan. make it stop (september's children) really moved me. it's about kids persecuted for their sexual orientations, to the point of suicide - "september's children" refers to a slew of teens who killed themselves in a september due to exactly that, and there's a breakdown mid-song where the names and ages of those kids are read out. really, really moving. disparity by design is a song that took me more time to get into, cause at first it was slightly monotonous, but the more you listen the more the layers come out...it talks about the rich and the poor, and the disparity between them. satellite, i have no clue what it's abuot cause i havent' looked in the lyrics hardcore, but i'll say right now that it's my favourite song. stupidly catchy. okay, i don't want to get into every goddamn song on the album, but it's damn amazing.
day 17b: "in the fading light"
i had a cool idea for this shot, that it'd be lit by warm sunset colours with long shadows and all, but then the sun remained behind the clouds all day so the light never became what i wanted it to be. this works pretty well too, but it's not anything i particularly am into.
day 18: "the original."
reversed the lens for this. used a tripod, lit by my computer monitor and laptop screen on opposite sides of the..subject. story behind this? below:
twoish weeks ago, i sold my fa50/1.7. it was a great lens, that served me well - i was amazed that it was quick enough in AF to keep up with sprinting basketball players at f2, nailing the focus. it was sharp, bokeh was smooth, it was everything i could ask for and change. best part yet, was i sold it for twice the amount i bought it for at kerrisdale cameras.
i sold my da40 on day 16. it's been my go-to lens for a lot of things when the fa50 was simply too long - events being a large thing there. i shot both my aquarium events with it (and the 15 too; the 100/2.8 jumped in now and then), as well as my very first concert. but it was never fast enough. the 50 was sharper, the 15 was wider, why limit myself ? yet exposureplot tells me that it's my most used focal length, and since i've had multiple 50s, that means it beat out 3 50mm lenses (my old M50/1.7, long gone - sold to kerrisdale cameras. a bit ripped off on my end. actually, quite ripped off. i understand they have to turn a profit on it, but it was a bit irking selling it for $8 and seeing them sell it for $50....at least the FA50 more than made up for it) (the FA50)(super-tak50), and still came out most-used. strange, because it has never be a lens i particularly loved.
i think that'll change. after selling the da40 and fa50, well.....
my day 18 picture is of the pentax fa 43mm f1.9 limited. a pretty goddamn legendary thing in the world of lenses.
it's the only pentax lens that was so amazing, it was made in a special edition for leica mount. leica being the best lensmakers in the world, hands down.
it was, apparently, the very first limited series lens, the one that got pentax to design more limiteds - and they're a huge differentiator for the brand: tinyass fast primes that've got amazing rendering (FAs) or tinyass primes that are relatively fast, but even faster, and evenly sharp corner to corner (DAs). in both series, amazingly well built, and image quality to match the best in the world.
it's a bipolar lens - not soft wide open, but has a glow to it as if it were. i think my super-tak 50/1.4 does that too; it's probably why these lenses are incorrectly labeled as soft wide open: there's plenty of detail at 100% if you want, but it's also surrounded by a bit of a glow which could look like softness. and then at f4, it says fuck you to detail: this lens at f4 gives the highest measured sharpness on any lens in the pentax world, and probably is right up there among the other brands too. it's used as a reference in a lot of review sites/magazines.
while the DA limiteds are technically impeccable - as sharp as anyone could ask for, corner to corner, smooth bokeh, and low aberrations - the FA limiteds are like the rebellious kid counterparts to the studious DA limiteds - a bit softer in the corners compared to the center, more chromatic aberrations, occasionally mindfuckingly busy bokeh, yet.....so much better. on pentaxforums a lot of people call it the "pixie dust", the "x-factor", the steroids the fat kids are taking, whatever - that extra something that gives them an amazing rendering, microcontrast that just makes shots from it seem 3D and pop. and that's what the FA limiteds, and this lens in particular, exemplify. the DA limiteds are more clinical, and that's something i can attest to - the DA 40 limited looked good, but in a boring way. the DA 15 does that a bit too, but it's so wide that the fun factor from that overrides it; the 40 didn't have that to help it out.
so, a pretty legendary lens.
funnily enough, i didn't actually buy it for any of the reasons above - i just bought it to simplify/consolidate my lens lineup: my fa50/1.7 was fast enough but too long, my da40/2.8 wasn't too long, but too slow. this was best of both worlds. so the fact that i got a hugely sought-after lens by selling them both (which adds up to this nicely) is a sextastic bonus.
anyways, im not one to do unboxing videos or some shit like that, but i don't mind taking a bit of lens porn:
this packaging is damn classy/sexy. the DA limiteds' pouch is a plainer leather with "PENTAX" engraved into it, and the interior is some plain fabric. this FA limited pouch has the gold lettering embossed, and the inside feels like faux felt. so sexy. i mean i'll never actually use the pouches especially cause i just got the lowepro slingshot, but it's still a nice touch.
in continuing with the nice touches, the push-on cap is lined with felt which feels like pool table type felt. and it attaches/stays on firmly by friction, yet is never hard to put on nor does it slip off. adds to the sex appeal of this thing.
and finally, enough foreplay, here's the lens itself.....
a very, very sexy beast. with my first few shots, i found one of two things. first of all, i was a bit apprehensive about its useability wide open as many a reviewer said it was soft wideopen. either their definition of soft is incredibly different from mine, or they be brickshitting, but i found it pretty damn sharp wide open - probably better than my fa50/1.7 (and i was quite impressed by it). anyways, here're some shots straight out of camera, i believe all wide open - i think i see what people meant by having a "pop" to them, my very first shots with this were already pretty damn impressive to me in terms of rendition.
sitting next to my mom and then looking at the back LCD, i loved the rendering of my mom's blue jacket.
slightly front focussed here, though this was my fault.
nailed the focus this time, and all those awesome things i talked about earlier are evident here. love the colours from this lens again, and plenty of detail wide open.
this one i did do some stuff - just a bit of fill light and then contrast to make up for it, to brighten up the hair somewhat. this one's soft cause my mom FCKING NEVER STOPS MOVING ON THE PHONE HOLY SHIT. also, she blinks so much it's not even funny. the above shots are like 3 out of 30, because i have so many where she's mid blink, jesus christ.
and here, a few more processed camwhores (er, self-portraits).
these're at f4, and at this ungodly sharpness, details on my face nobody should ever have to see are pretty damn evident. aside from that, again, i really love the rendering here and the pop-i-ness of it. also, looking at it again, holy shit my eyes look demonic in this 2nd one.
how the fuck am i supposed to take a photo a day with my super-tak 50/1.4 when i have this sexy lady going after my attention now, hogging up my camera time?
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