Serena With a $15.00 Lens

[rpcrowe]

I shot these with my Sony APSC A6600 using a M-42 mount 135mm f/2.8 Sears Auto Lens which cost me $15.00,... It was adapted with a Fiodox M-42 to NEX adapter which I think cost me around $12.00... I have several these old 135mm manual focus lenses and plan to do a comparison video of these very inexpensive lenses for head and shoulders portraits to see if they are a viable low cost alternative to very expensive prime e-Mount lenses.... Although the effective focal length of this lens on a crop format camera is a bit over 200mm, it is relatively easy to use on mirrorless cameras because of focus assist and focus peaking. IBIS was manually selected at 135mm but, perhaps I should have selected 200mm...

1/40 second @ f/5.6 ISO 320


1/200 second @ /2.8 ISO 320 - it looks like the focus was the eye lashes rather than the eyes...

[Manfred M]

I don't know if it is the lens or something else, but both shots look somewhat soft, even on the relatively small screen of my iPad.

[xpatUSA]

On my NEC P242W, the focus looks good enough for Government Work:



Good but slight front-focusing indicated by the aliasing on the hairs but not excessive aliasing i.e. not over-sharpened.

Certainly not a lot of DOF though and I do see a lack of micro-contrast giving an impression of softness.

[rpcrowe]

Thanks for the input! I got this lens because I really liked the 55mm f/1.4 Sears Auto (made by Tamioka) on my Sony mirrorless cameras and wanted to see if this model was any near as good as the Tamioka version. It's not!
But apparently, it can produce some acceptable results... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMnHG5WnkBI

[rpcrowe]

This time it is wide open using the 55mm (Tomioka produced) Sears Auto f/1.4 M-42 mount lens on my APSC A6600. The equivalent focal length would be 82.5mm. I selected 85mm as the manual IBIS setting for this camera and used focus peaking...

The ISO was 160. Obviously at this low ISO, no noise reduction was required. I focused on Serena's eyes...

[xpatUSA]

Focus is spot-on. I like focus-peaking too.

Is such a narrow DOF commonly used in pet photography?

Is the post a 100 pct crop from the original, or was it resized, Richard?

[rpcrowe]

Oh no! I would never shoot a serious pet portrait wide open at f/1.4. This was more of a test to see how the rather famous Tomioka produced lens functions. Judy did not want her picture shot and my manikin head is not a good subject for a lens test since the eyes of the manikin (including catch lights) are painted.



I'd really like a manikin with glass eyes and eyelashes.

Serena says, "you can shoot a picture of me anytime you want to, dad!" Sasha is also willing to pose - this is wide open at ISO 640 using 1/100 second.



When I have the chance to begin human portraits again, I want to play with a variety of legacy lenses.

Usually, I only shoot with Legacy lenses because of the special renditions that they produce. However, I have read several Internet evaluations which say that the IQ of the Sears Auto 55mm f/1.4 is quite close in quality with the 56mm f/1.4 Sigma but, costs less than $50.00 USD rather than $350 USD (used on eBay for the Sigma). Of course, it is a manual focus lens and I wanted to see just how easy it is to use a MF lens for portraits.

Generally, for human head and shoulder portraits, I like a 55mm or 58mm lens on a crop format camera because the equivalent focal lengths are close to 85mm on full frame camera...