Focus Shift (A)

Focus shift is a kind of the holy grail to me in the soft image photography

together with the camera vibration.   Since the images of both techniques

were affected by the three dimension or the depth of the subject, it wouldn’t

be replicated by a digital graphical manipulation or a soft filter.

(effect of filter appears everywhere flat, same as a graphical effect —

otherwise it needs to give days of manipulation, pixel by pixel.)

So that, I’ve been working for this quite a while, hence such as the lens

 in the photo appeared here long ago. (Lens was Canon FD 50mm F1.8)

A device I made was not so complicated electronic controller which takes

the signal of the shutter-open from the Flash-hot-shoe then to start the   

AF motor in the lens, hence focus-shift (from the pre-focused point.)

= in the effect, the resulting image has both focused sharp image and

 an off-focused, fuzzy halo around.   The beauty of this technique is,  

it is not rely on the lens’ aberration but the out of focus Bokeh, therefore 

it can be done with any focal length. (as long as I got such modified lens) 

(For another lens = “softness made by the vibration of the lens” = which

can be done with ANY = non modified lens, would become ideal.)

(Click and see enlarged photo — the sharp detail is still there. )

(The field report would be coming soon.)  🙂 

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Magnifier glass on test

A guy who’ve read my blog about the experiment on the fuzzy junk lenses,

teased me “Why not those reading glasses ?” —– Indeed, why not test.

So that a Magnifier / Reading Glass was stucked on a bellows and tested.

(This lens has about 135 mm focal length.)

— as it is (Fully open), or with improvised Iris. (Photo above Center)

—– and later, I tested Flat-lens (Plastic Fresnel Lens) as well.(Photo Right)

Photo above Left = magnifier fully open.  

And the Center = With Iris (about F11) — halation was reduced though, utterly

poor image quality.  

On the photo Right = (part enlarged center), as the flair / halation was removed, 

the chromatic aberration (=red and blue on the edge) clearly prevailed.

And this is the image made by a plastic fresnel lens. (Looks like an image

of a Pin-hole camera, made by a 0.7 mm big pin-hole. )

(Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of this kind of crap image.

But I still say, crap image is still an impressionistic photo image. 🙂 )

(And the photos above are the reference = taken by the Canon EF 70~200 mm

F2.8 at 135mm setting on F8)

In addition, this photo was by the 50 years old Pentax 135mm F3.5 Lens 

on F8.  (Not too bad from the £10 secondhand lens with fungi.)

We may need to know what is the descent standard — at least.  😀

Crap image is not same to the soft image I’m after

(= soft image still need to have its sharp core in the center.)

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Cherry on Antic Lens

This is the last cherry photo on this season (I think.  🙂 )

They were shot by the 100 year old German Anastigmat lens on Canon 5D.

This photo above was shot while Iris was fully open.

And this one was with (about) F11. —– See the deeper depth of field.

This photo was with the fully open Iris (F5.4) 

And this one was with F-11. —– 100 year old. No coating. But with lots of fungi !

Still works quite well = amazing.   🙂

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Sweetest Cherry Photo (so far)

Those photos were taken by a lens came from a Tokina Wide-converter and

its converging part of the lens has about 160 mm focal length, I call it Tele-soft.

In fact this lens can have a quite sharp image when an Iris was placed and the

spread of the light was centered — otherwise, its F4 equivalent of optics

produces beautiful soft Bokeh.     As the lens was mounted on a bellows, it is

quite awkward to use still, it can easily make a good close-up image as well.

I hope you appreciated to see them.   

(Honest ?)  🙂

PS : I didn’t use any filter or PS digital manipulation at all

—– only clopped and the brightness was tinkered on Picasa free program.

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Graffities in Peckham

Those photos were a part of the test shot of the 100 year old lens. = Generally,

the lens works pretty well — considering to its fungi infested aged state.

(Under large magnification, we can see the halation is eating away each detail.

The halation around the bright spot must be caused by the scattered light on the

fungi.  And the images near the corner is much softer = the lens’ aberration.)  

But otherwise, this lens doesn’t seemed to be worse than those phone-cameras.

To enlarge the shiny metal part, the halation is quite visible.

But the question is, who notice it and who care such details ?

— Some professional photographers may need to have the image part enlarged

for an editorial reason though, otherwise most of the camera user is using their

photo smaller than a tablet size. = so, this 100 year old lens is good enough.  😀

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Snapshot by 100 year old lens

The photos here are the first field test of the lens from 100 year old camera,

= Doppel Anastigmat of Steinheil Munchen —– so that they were just

the random snapshot in the Peckham, south-London downtown.

In certain extent, Peckham said to be a nice vibrant place though, when I walked around,

I’ve come across a Police cordon, notice to seek a witness for rape attack kind etc.

When local MP Harriet Harman (local though, she is living in the much nicer hillside

miles away   🙂 ) walked about the town with Police, she was wearing bullet-proof jacket

(hence created big public uproar).     The place was dubbed as “Little Lagos” as lots of

Nigerians were living here still, these days, I saw many Kosovars,  Vietnamese,  

and ever increasing Chinese. (used to have a lots of Afghans as well) 

With its ethnic mix, the vegie shop is selling from hottest Habanero Chilli

(Photo top), Plantain Banana, huge Yam to Bok Choy etc and the meat

 is Halal (for Mosrim). 

Since the lens got awful lots of fungi which I can’t clean as they are between 

the stacked lenses, the halation is inevitable, still it’s managed to capture 

some details in the shadow ! = rather amazing.

And even Peckham has Cherry too ! 

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Camera Hack — or Lens Hack (by a Hacksaw !)

I’ve been kept saying that the Canon DSLR system is the most versatile, flexible

camera system known to us —– though, there is a funny contradiction within their

own system. — Among their DSLR lenses  there is the EF-S series which was

designed to be used on clopped format camera body such as a cheap EOS Kiss.

 As the EF-S lens’ image circle was smaller, lens could be made smaller, lighter 

 therefore cheaper = in theory, if such lens was used on the full frame body, the

image will be somewhat a rounded smaller image though in practice, it wouldn’t 

be happened because the protruded bottom of the EF-S lens was blocked by the

camera’s mirror box. 

   

Yet still, with an “intention”, I got a discarded EF-S 18~55mm II lens.  

—– My intention was to modify the lens to create “Soft image by Focus-shift” = 

Drive the AF motor during the exposure.  

With a Hacker like hack, it should be hacked into the 5D camera’s OS and hi-jack

the AF motor’s control though, the risk is, completely spoil the £3000 camera

of which the Canon will only laugh at me and refuse to repair the poor camera.

(We can find the code to hack in the camera’s OS in the Net though, the matter is 

not just drive the motor.  There will be a feedback from Encoder, position sensor etc, 

= With a conflict, soon camera tend to stop work with an Error signal.) 

What so ever, I need to mount this lens to my 5D body to test the feasibility.

So, simply, I cut the protruding part of the lens mount. (Photo above)  

Now the lens could be mounted on the 5D body (anyhow, everything is in the

manual mode) = (This is THE most Canon hated kind of the practice ! ) =

the test shot of the EF-S 18~55mm on my 5D body was like those.

= (Photo above Left) On 18mm setting, the bottom of the lens which was 

protruding as well was hit by the mirror and only a top part (in the Camera, 

it was a bottom part) of the image was recorded,  then an Error message 

was appeared and the camera stopped working.  🙂    

Still, somewhere 20mm position, as the lens doesn’t penetrate too deep,

 the captured image was like this. (Photo above Right)  

And on the 24mm (25mm would be better), no cut-off of the corners.

(Photo above Left)  (Photo above Right was at 55mm)

= It’s mean, this lens could work as a 24mm~55mm zoom lens on full frame

body though, what was a point to have such a hassle while not so expensive

proper lens is widely available (not mention secondhand) is a good question. 

Yet still, to test “Focus-shift” experiment, this is the perfect lens for me

 —– which costed almost nothing.  🙂

(Another more expensive lens is using more complexed motor, such as an

Ultrasonic Motor, but this lens’ DC motor is the easiest to modify.)

The circuit is taking a signal of the Shutter Open from the Flash Synchro Socket,

then start the AF motor, hence the “Focus-Shift”.

— So far this analog approach is working —> Make it to a compact package 

and to have a field test would be a next step.  

Then, whether worthwhile picture could be created or not is a different story.

(Never mind, it took 6 years for the photos of my “Yoshi-Handy” were recognized.)

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Wide-converter to Soft Telephoto Lens

It may looks a bit drastic action to deal with camera optics.  🙂 

Though, today’s camera lens made by a plastic was often fixed by a

liquid glue hence impossible to disassemble. = So, it calls drastic action !

—– There was a funny idiosyncratic subconscious = optics has to be handled

with kids-gloves on.   And this apply to a gear obtained for almost nothing.

So, the edge of the Wide-converter (and its Lens Retaining Ring) was cut.  

And the ring was (carefully) lifted-up and removed. (Photo above left)

= Then the converter’s front concave lens was separated from

the converging rear optics. (Photo right, center front. — this concave lens 

looks as strong as minus 15 diopter.) 

Mounting this “rear section” of the converter to a DSLR camera —–

I found this optics works as an (about) 160mm telephoto lens.

And as I expected, the image produced had a lots of aberration = fuzzy images

still, by reducing the original (about) F-4 to F-11 with a hole on a black paper

(Photo above Right) the quality of the images were drastically improved.

(but don’t expect a quality of thousand pound genuine lens)  🙂 —– in fact,

this optics had achieved what  I failed before with the Tamron 300 mm lens.

= Soft Telephoto Lens !

The Photo left was fully open.  ——— And the Photo right was F-11 (?) ! ! !

But to be fare to the expensive lens, they are not just boasting the quality.

(I wouldn’t play ignorant for the sake of fuzzy image.   🙂 )

This photo was taken by the Canon EF 70~200 F2.8 at 200 mm

and a clopped center.

And this photo was by the Tamron Mirror 500mm F8 and a clopped center.

In a closer range, the effect of Iris (full or F11) looks so clear. = It’s mean,

by changing the size of a hole in a black paper (white paper may

increase the halation even more.  🙂 ) we can chose the softness to the

degree what we prefer.

—– So, I had a fun. (and planning the field test)

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Antic Camera ? — Doppel Anastigmat Lens

OMG !  —– In an odds and ends box in a camera shop, among the modern

high-tec camera or broken lens kind etc, I found a 100 year old camera !

It looks pretty much like German Ihharge kind but, this one was very small.

Before roll film was invented, the camera then was using a glass plate as a 

photosensitive material.   And a contact print was a way to make a print

= hence the size of the glass plate was often “Postcard size” —– though,

this camera was using “6 cm x 4.5 cm size” so, pretty small in deed as

you can see from the photo above. 

On the lens, it was written “Steinheil Munchen Doppel anastigmat 1:5.4  f=7.5cm”

— Doppel mean Double, so the lens seemed to be a symmetrical design of

stuck of a convex meniscus and a concave meniscus placed both side of an iris.

(altogether 4 lenses)    Back of the camera has detachable focusing glass.

= After framed and focused, focusing glass has to be changed to the glass plate

to take picture. 

75mm lens for 6 x 4.5 cm photo size mean, this was a camera of so-called

medium format camera ( such as Hasselblad, Rolleiflex etc) and the 75mm

lens could easily be used on a 35mm DSLR body — which I did with a

help of Pentax Helicoid Extension Tube. (on Nikon or on Canon) —– what

I realized was that this lens doesn’t have a clear crispy sharpness of the 

modern lens, but neither beautiful softness. (of a kind what I like)  in other

word, it was just an old dull lens ! (No mythical subtle touch of “old lens” ) 

I can see the character of this lens here still, I wouldn’t pretend to be a

master to appreciate this softness = it is just a lack of sharpness which

never improve with smaller F-aperture. (this photo was fully open = F 5.4)

(Lens got a lots of fungi = can’t create any sharp photos anyway.) 

The lens was mounted on a Pronto (later called Prontor) shutter — and

amazingly, after 100 years, they are still functioning. (more or less)

The photo above left was shot by using Pronto shutter 100th. (while

5D’s shutter was open with B setting, then click Pronto shutter)

and the photo right was a comparison, Pronto was opened on T setting

and a photo was exposed by the 5D’s shutter.

Something peculiar on this type of  camera then was that the most of them

were having  “Lens Rise control” ! —– Do you know why and what for ?

Set the camera on slightly low angle (about waist high) — thanks to

the “Lens Rize” (without looking up) it is possible to take picture of the

whole body, while making the leg looks longer !   🙂  

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Images from Southbank (B)

Well, they were the rest of shots of the day at Southbank by the

“Homemade Two Element Lens”

— (This Lens was for Canon version, but I got Nikon version as well.)    🙂

I think, this lens and its images has enough significance, say raison de etre.

Anyhow you don’t need to agree.  😀

(What this lens amazed me was, despite its fuzziness, it still shows good details.) 

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