Autumnal Shades

[Wirefox]

It was a wet and windy afternoon here in the UK and Autumn is starting to show through. After participating in Katy's thread this morning it seemed like a good idea try an autumn theme myself. However, determined to make things as difficult as possible for myself (a sort of penance for writing waffly posts) I ventured into the garden with my 1979 vintage Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 attached to my 40D with an e-bay flange adaptor.

[Antonio Correia]

Nice Steve. Very nice

[ScoutR]

I really like #2 and 3 Steve. 2 for the pattern and that soft detailed look that I love, and 3 for the selective focus and DOF. The colours are very nice too. We have the same thing here right now.

Were all of these shot at f1.8. The Exif says f1.$. I'm curious because DOF is one of the next things I want to experiment with. I have a 20mm f1.7 lens for my Lumix and I'm hoping to be able to use DOF to some advantage with this lens.

Wendy

[Katy Noelle]

Really stirring and inspiring. It seems like you have more "autumn" than we do. =]

[carregwen]

#2 is uber-lush, Kamera-Meister.

[Wirefox]

Thank you everyone. This was experimental. I have not used this 50mm very much at all but it does give a mellowness that I quite like.

Wendy, this exif is incomplete because this lens is an old piece of glass designed for the Olympus OM film camera range in the 70's. There is no electronic or manual linkage between the lens and the camera. In fact you have to disable the aperture lever on the lens with a bit of rolled up cardboard. The aperture and focus must be set manually. I use the camera in AV mode because the camera will still meter pretty well through the lens unit. However, you can pick one of these excellent little lenses up for around £25 (mint) and an adapter off e-bay for around £10 and for that you get pretty passable results. It lets a ton of light in as you might expect. The shots above were hand held on a very dull day (ISO 400).

The view finder on the 40D is not big enough to allow dead accurate focusing so I use live view where focusing is critical. Much easier at 10x magnification on he LCD.

You should have no problem at all getting a narrow DoF with your Lumix set-up. You need to be very careful where you focus bearing in mind that close up the DoF will be wafer thin. This can be a massive creative advantage but its a bit like patting your head and rubbing your tummy with everything else to think of as well. I usually take 3 shots of the same thing with varying apertures and even more if I think the focus point may be questionable.

All the above shots were taken using aperture of f/8 apart from No 3 which was taken at f/2.8. The quality and consistency of focus blur will vary depending on the lens, distance to subject and aperture. The Zuiko 50mm gives quite acceptable focus blur. The first image below was shot at f/1.8 and gives a fair indication of the thin DoF. The fence at the back of the shot is perhaps 2ft from the head of the sweet pea (at most). The focus blur is smooth and consistent. The second and 3rd images were shot at f/5.6 with the same lens. Not brilliant shots (they were snapped to test the lens unit) but I hope they demonstrate the DoF blur.

[CNelson]

OOOOOOh....I like, especially #2, #5 not so much.

Chuck

[Mary]

These are wonderful! The second one looks almost abstract -- like a wonderful old flamestitch patterned fabric. I love the contrast of light and dark in the last one -- beautiful!

[Wirefox]

Thanks Chuck and Mary. The white balance seems a bit off when I view on a MacBook Pro. Too much red. Maybe the MacBook needs calibrating. Is anyone else getting too much red?

Cheers

Steve

[CNelson]

Is anyone else getting too much red?

I think it might help to back off a bit of red but not so much that it looses the vibrance. These shots are about color.

Chuck

[Peter Ryan]

Hi Steve,

Great colour but maybe a bit strong on the reds but I do like #2. Great vision.