What ? — OMG, it’s Cherry flower

On the street, I found a dropped Cherry flower.   —– ?    What ?   —– I looked up, OMG it was a cherry tree started to open the flowers.   Only few days ago, there was nothing.  It’s suddenly happened.  I picked up a dropped flower and a bud to bring back.

I put the flowers on the water in a lens cap.  And took pictures.  (After a while, a bud opened as well) —– It was a kind of my habit in these days, which was to make the photos for comparison = the photo left above was taken by Sony 30 mm F3.5 Macro and the right was by Helicoid-B lens.

So, this year’s first Somei-yoshino flowers were put next to the kitchen tap = In fact, this IS my photo studio.  (All the “Studio shot” in my Blog were taken in this “Studio” !    Another funny fact was — that all those homemade lenses were made in this kitchen work shop, and almost all of my sculptures were also produced in here.)  

It’s very simple, if we need to make, make it, or just do it.   There may not need to have any good-cause or theory or facility kind.  So, if you have a knife, you can cut.  With the same knife, you can cook as well.  If you can’t, you were just clinging an excuse of not to do or even worse you might be waiting somebody to push your back.   😀     (By the way, this is in deed the way of Zen = Zen need no cause or reason to do.  In fact Zen is to eliminate anything that kind.  Therefore Mushin (Mind of No mind) still, even a mind to think No-mind shouldn’t be there, = hence “Everyday’s Mind” (Heijo-shin 平常心). That’s why to able to be in the Everyday’s mind which is nothing special / peculiar  (is so ubiquitous as a dog shit) IS the Enlightenment. 

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Screen Copy by Fuzzy Lens

The outside is still cold and not much flower, and, I’m not keen to take picture of cut flower = so, just took photo of a flower in my old post screen using very fuzzy Helicoid-B lens.

When I try, I realized that the old screen of XP laptop makes moire pattern, so I changed it to iPad screen. (though, iPad screen makes the color a bit artificial)

Following 4 set of those photos, Left side were the original and the right photos were the screen shot. (All those photos came from Somewhere Net website —– I hope they don’t fuss about the copyright)  (If you Google, you may find the same very easily)

 

Ideally, I should take the original photo myself though, I’m no longer such keen —– (and neither the model herself keen to see dirty old man.  Ha ha ha.  😀 )

I think you may agree, we don’t need to see too much details of the girls.  We are not seeing the woman like an ological specimen.   In certain extent, the beauty of the flower is the same = We only need to feel its atmosphere. (If we go into the details of the flower, often they are rather grotesque. —– after all,  flower is the sexual organ of the plant. —– or, am I a sexcist ?)

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Maple flowers

Maple tree outside (said to be Oregon Maple though, I’m not sure) is having flowers.

They don’t looks like flowers still, they must be.  As they produce the two-winged seed later.   And it seems they can pollinate themselves (or blown by the wind ?) as I don’t see any insect around.  —– There are many forms of life. (not only cherry is the flower.   😀

(Those photos were taken by Tamron 500 mm F8 mirror lens though, as it was done through the dusty double grazed window, the image was not sharp at all.)

Two weeks later, how they looks now.  Though, I haven’t necessary been kept watching all the process how their tangled red things changed to this.  Photo above left might be the female flower and the right might be the male — but not sure. (Yes, I was wrong)

You believe or not, the one above photo, the right one was taken by 1000 mm lens.  In fact, a x2 tele-converter was added to Tamron 500 mm lens. = Long time ago I bought this £5 converter as a joke, thinking to make it for a close-up ring by removing the optics.  But now I know, this was not a junk.   With x2 converter, F8 lens become F16, so that on DSLR’s optical view finder it become too dark to focus. (Unless we use live-view on the back screen)   But, mirror-less camera can show the amplified bright image, even focus-peaking is working ! = It’s their biggest advantage.   (still, 1000 mm lens was not suite for hand-held shot.)   😀      (Since I found their dropped flowers, I’ll show you =  You  can see them developing to the full winged seed.)  Then I remember, one of my Zeiss lens for Sony showed AF malfunction (hence, I realized that’s was why it was so cheap) I gave another look. = While making a test shot on manual focus.

The picture here was by Zeiss (Sony) SEL55F18Z (55mm) Aperture was set to F8 (about 1/100 sec, hand held) and to show the enlarged center as well — pretty good isn’t it !  (By the way, Winged Seed pod right was the same pod wrongly appeared as Male, before.  Well nobody is perfect.  😀 ) 

But, it might be too unfair to the other lens.  I did the same test by Micro Nikkor 55 mm F3.5 = this was the lens, the Nikon themselves named that “their best lens ever designed.” (Canon EF gives  no F-setting on Sony (unless use a £100 Sigma adapter)  and the others such as Contax, Pentax, Olympus, etc, I would give sometime another occasion.  😀 )  —– If we use the lens careful enough, and the camera has Hi-res sensor (Nikon D850 has 47.2 Mp / Sony A7R has 32 Mp ) they could produce pretty good image, without using a heavy tele-photo lens. (Just crop the picture.  Forget the “Purist’s brah brah kind”)  Anyway, Net is for harmless / useless info’chat or Joke.  😀

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Canberwell Cherry by Other Lenses

You may think, the camera was rotated but this swirly bokeh was the lens’ own aberration.

Those two were by Helicoid-B lens 

And those two were by G9 lens

Those photos above were by G10 lens

What I don’t like about this camera was, its AWB (White Balance) changes frame to frame.

And those two were by SZ lens

—– The hardest part in those photography was, to sort the photos without mix-up, not mention the trouble to capture them while holding the camera high above the head and shoot by guess-work. (You know, the Photography is a hard work)   😀  

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Camberwell Cherry by NZ Lens

While passing through by bus, I noticed that a Cherry tree in a corner of the Green was in full bloom.  So, I went back there with my camera together with some homemade lenses. 

(In this photo the red cast seemed to be created by the camera’s image processor — may be non genuine lens may not work well with this camera (Sony A7R)

Cherry itself seemed to be a primitive wild cherry, we called Yama-zakura (Mountain Cherry) in Japan, not the well cultivated Kan-zakura (Winter Cherry), nevertheless Cherry flower is the Cherry flower. (May be from the mountain standard, the climate in the town was warm enough to open their flowers.)

(The photo above left was the other tree nearby — this one seems a Plum flower)

The photos in here were taken by the lens called (or, I named) NZ lens.  It was a Nikon Zoom lens which I utilized its front element, and made it as an individual lens. (Works as a 90 mm F1.6 and able to focus down to 45 cm)  Its macro quality was not too bad though, it got a strong aberration and together with its “Fully open” F1.6 aperture (Think, 90 mm F1.6 is pretty big), it’s creates “Fantastic” fuzzy images like those top photos.  They were shot while using 10 mm extension ring.  And this fuzziness IS very unusual = it looks like a halo in the highlight which spread around still, the details and the contrast in highlight was maintained. = I never seen the image like this.   (If you agree with it.  😀 )  

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Rice Beetle

This is the Rice Beetle I found in the Italian rice after more than 60 years lapse of time.  When I was a child, we were told to pick up and remove the rice beetle from the rice, before the mother cook it.  So, we spread the rice on a news paper and corm it to sort out the beetles.  It was the norm then that the rice was infested by the small beetles, elephant rice beetles.

I don’t remember exactly when its became we no longer needed to look for the insects. Anyhow, when the Co-op rice producer started to fumigate the rice with insecticide gas, the beetles were disappeared from the rice.

Many years ago, when I demonstrated the Japanese cooking to my friend’s family, while seeing me washing the rice, a daughter of the family shouted “Hey mum, he is washing the rice” —– it seemed, that the family has been eating the rice without washing.  Then the Mum started to preach me that the goodness of the rice is in its brown skin and the bran, therefore if we wash the rice, we will lose its remaining goodness etc.  So, I told them the story that there used be a lots of insects in a pack of rice and the reason why they disappeared was because the insecticide fumigation.  To wash off its remaining chemical is far more acute problem than a bit of nutrition. 

To take a photo of this tiny insect, I needed to use x5 magnification.  (Look at its magnified details, I noticed that this carcass got only two pair of legs = its mean the chest and the head was missing. )    Among my homemade macro lenses,  I chose to use the Instamatic Macro and the LED illumination.   Still, it was always the case, improvised Hi-magnification macro is very awkward ( = x5 magnification means the image is 1/25 dark, needs minute minute focus, sensitive to the shake 5 times more etc) — nevertheless it was a fun, especially, this was the record of the very rare encounter = I met this old friend again after 60 years absence.  I was really grad to see that they ARE also surviving somewhere on the earth.  

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Instamatic-304 & its Lens

This Instamatic Camera has been sitting in my junk box rather long time = Because  1) I’m not very keen to disassemble Instamatic as I had hard time to deal with very awkward mechanism (It seemed, Kodak designer was not very smart) on the previous experience.  2) I’ve got too many similar kind of fuzzy lenses already. —– The lens on this camera has no focus adjustment, still it was made long before the Japanese one-time use camera by which omuni-focus lens became common = could mean, either very interesting omuni-focus lens or mediocre lens which rely on the small F-aperture (— when people goes out, it will be a fine day and the camera’s EE control will give a smaller aperture with deep depth of field).—– But, I’m not going to use their EE control = I’ll need to have a focus adjustment. = may need to use a not very smooth focus helicoid recently got from Ebay. —– ?

Anyhow, I disassembled the camera.  Since the camera was using only few screws to build and many parts / panels were glued down = as I anticipated, it was a very awkward hard work. (I wouldn’t recommend you to do this.   😀  )

Then I remembered,”If I need a helicoid”, I got an empty helicoid of the Canon FD lens, of which I took the lens out. (Photo left) From that empty shell, I further removed the FD mount part and the front cosmetic part. (Photo middle)

And put the lens which I’ve taken from the Instamatic-304 camera (Kodar 41mm F8 Lens) into the Canon helicoid on Sony A7R  (Photo right)

The test images of this lens were like those —–

Then, I made a fatal mistake.  After final assembly, in order to clean the lens, ( — I thought, that the white smear on the lens was caused by the plastic putty) so, I used the alcohol to clean the lens though, as this old plastic lens was not made by the today’s optical plastic but by a primitive stirole kind of plastic = the alcohol destroy the lens surface = and the image became like those.

M m m, —– even to a man who fancy the fuzzy images, these were gone too far, not funny at all.

On top of the snowy weather and CH brake down, life is hard and complicated.   Not funny at all.   😀

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Self — Phenomenology

I found a talking post in the Youtube, a TV presenter introducing and discussing the topics in the new book = what he found the interesting point in the book.   In this time, while referring to a book introducing the Phenomenology, the presenter picked up that a person expose real self when the person made a mistake, havoc or failure. (Phenomenology is a study to observe / analyse “What was happened” in such “Event” —– so, this technique has been adapted to the Sociology, Psychology etc)    This TV program has been talking about such as a popular misunderstanding, misconception, etc, = give a second thought or new idea to the many daily topics and even an introduction to the Zen kind.

So, what interesting in the matter of Self = “Self would be exposed when the person encountered a bad event” = this IS the same Phenomenon, the “Selfless” in the Zen, but viewed from the opposite direction.  We or a person IS living Selfless as the human norm.  But when the peace of norm was broken at the event, we may get into a panic, or get angry etc and “go into the emotional response”.  These responses tend to reflect the personality = “Real Self”  (Broken something may be a financial loss, inconvenience to live without, or a loss of the precious memento, even a crisis to lose the job with its responsibility = in any aspects, it was the big shock to the Ego, Greed, Sense of security, even a matter of own survival.  And as those emotion is often beyond the rational control, the person act from the deep subconscious = it’s exposes hidden “Self”.  People may interested in to know their “Real Self” though, when actually faced such own response in the moment of “The Event” it would surprise, or even annoyed the person.)

Imagine a situation, when a USB cable was broken — some might shout “F***”, other may get upset “What a bad luck, why today, Why me” or blame the self “Why I was so careless to pull the cable” otherwise, even started to laugh “What’s a day, how silly”   Or, just go to the spare parts box which has been kept for such event. —– Certainly, they were the reflection of each personality.  = When usual kind of the signal was going into the brain = because of the signal was just usual, those signals were ignored by the emotional region (in the limbic system) therefore the daily task would be carried out as a routine, almost automatically, without any emotion.  So, it was seen as the Selfless in the Zen teachings. (Nevertheless, even in the “Selfless” state, all the brain is still functioning just as normal (hence all the bodily function too) BUT only without the Emotional reaction. = its mean, without Ego, Greed, Envy, Fear etc = all the psych emanated from the Emotional region = therefore the tactical response, proper repair etc to the breakage will be carried out with cool rational thinking.)

Though, in a context of the human life, strangely or NOT strangely, those “Emotional Person” was seen as a “Lovable person” and the Selfless calm person was seen cold. (Because, the people can relate to those emotional person for helping, listening, advising, even despising and teasing.)  Life is complicated and hard.  😀    —– Which type you want to be ?

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Lens Comparison (2)

This photo — by the Zeiss 18mm F3.5 on Nikon D850 / ISO 800, 250th Sec —– (All the photos in this post were cropped only in its hight, and the width were kept as its original to show the relative angle of view of each lens —– for example, after the widest 18mm, next wide image was shown here by the Fun lens, which was originally an one-time use panorama camera and the viewing angle was the 35mm equivalent of 27mm lens.)

Seeing the same old sky, I took the picture of the same, with many different lenses —– and made more or less the same images.  😀

Still, they are only a half of my homemade lens stocks.  (It’s annoyed myself a bit) 😀

The first of this operation was, the Helicoid (B) with a setting of ISO100, 650th Sec —– since this lens has the brightness about fully open F2.2,and 2.2 only = no iris = needed to use lower ISO.

By the so-called Fun Lens / ISO 100, 15th

By the Helicoid (A) / ISO 100, 320th

By the G9 lens / ISO 100, 1250th

By the Double Density Pinhole / ISO 6400, 250th

By the G10 lens / ISO 50, 640th

By the Mag lens / ISO 50, 650th

By the Sony 30mm F3.5 / ISO 50, 500th —– I can not stop thinking, what this “sharper” image can give us, more than the other fuzzy images ?

By the Sony/Zeiss 55mm F1.8 / ISO 50, 2000th (It seems something wrong with this lens’ focus = even with manual setting, the lens moves away when the shutter was pressed = may be that’s why it was offered so cheap. (and lots of them in the Ebay)   😀 

100 years old Kodak lens (equivalent of 175mm F10 / ISO 400, 500th —– as a 175mm telephoto lens, the image was quite good, especially considering that the lens consists only symmetric 2 glasses, that’s all ! )

By the Koda-Fun lens / ISO 50, 4000th

By the SZ lens / ISO 50, 1250th

By the so-called Omuni (focus)lens / ISO 50, 1250th

More or less the same fuzzy images though, still got each character.  It’s not too bad to play with those lenses.  (Anyhow, they didn’t cost me much — still gave me a lots of fun)

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Squirrel

Since I obtained some Focusing Helicoid, I’ve been testing their best use etc —– so, while testing 36~90mm Helicoid with old antic lens, watching the tree, I saw a squirrel on there.

The lens, originally for a Kodak red bellows Folding Camera, was mounted on an extension of a helicoid and working as a 175mm F10 telephoto lens. (Pretty dark)

I don’t know what the squirrel was doing there, I just snapped a busily moving squirrel. (Though don’t ask fine focus to 100 years old dark lens on an awkward helicoid. — this must be an optimum result for an inpromptuous handheld shot.)  😀

(And I don’t think this photo is showing any good quality —– never mind If I needed I could have used proper Lens. —– and I wouldn’t insist “fuzzy image” for this kind of picture ! —– You can see properly photographed catkin’s image.)

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