St Martins Degree Show

The art school, Central St Martin has been drifting place to place, like a 

hermit crab changing their shell larger to even larger.  Among the declining

English industrial, economical trend, they must be one of the few rags to rich

success story.  The first time when I visited their degree show more than 30

years ago, they were in a non assuming shabby building in the Covent Garden. 

(after the St Martin moved out, the place became to an art material shop =

London Graphic Center.  I wonder if they are having business connection ?) 

Then St Martin moved to a huge grey building in the Charing Cross Road.  

Then, next to the Back hill.  Now they are north of  King’s Cross Station,  

over the Regent Canal, place called Granary Square, a building called Granary 

Building.  As the name suggests, it must be an old day’s Granary, storing the

grain brought by the barges through the canal.

The inside of otherwise featureless big building, its courtyard has been

transformed to a huge shopping mall like space. ( gone too far !) 

It was an archetypal sample of the Capitarism.  Invest for a package, and use

it to create (or collect £9000 tuition fee) = profit to buy even larger property.

This is called the growth of enterprise !

This was a gimmick like exhibit to show a physical phenomenon.

Like an old fluorescent light, a cathode discharge lamp (used in a video light

or video projector) is flickering in very high frequency, — to see, it need to 

have a high speed moving screen.  —> Then, we can see the split colors.

Demonstration of phenomenon itself, like a fallen apple by the gravity wouldn’t

make an art.  The art has to show its apple fall in a very special beautiful way.

Likewise, the instrument makes sound is just a physical phenomenon.

When its sound was formed as an impressive melodies and composed in

harmony etc, we call it a musical art.  In Photography, the object makes its 

secondary image by the light through an optics, is a physical phenomenon.

= so that, unless the image showed the intentionally made interference of 

the author, it is not an art but mere reflection of the object.

While seeing every years work, what I found was that when the place get

larger, the works get smaller and boring.   Have look other’s, such as this;

https://tokyobling.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/godai-art-university-graduation-show-2015/

Once in a year event was in the same time, reunion with old friends or teacher.

And young graduates’ chance to meet the old boys, girls network.

(By the way, in this photo, the Left is the Top)

I think, a sweet on the hand must be a joke of a visitor.  🙂

This said to be an interactive performing space. (when something performed)

This was the Animation Corner. (Some were already in the professional level) 

The most funny story happened was,

on the last moment, I was told by this

woman that the photography was not

permitted, of which even the 

security didn’t mention so.  😀   😀

Hate crime or jealousy against a Japanese camera ?   🙂

There are chilling out spaces for chattering (or for serious discussion ? )

(but, £5 for a glass of apple juice was definitely a rip-off !)  

Out, out, — OUT !

It was a nice evening and a beautiful sky — at least.

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Zeiss and Zeiss — (Last shot on the Flower Patch)

It’s still a day before Summer Solstice though, the flower patch

I’ve been photographing was coming to the end.  So, seemingly this

was the last shot there and for this occasion, I used the recycled 

£1 Zeiss Talon lens and the genuine Carl Zeiss Planar 85mm F1.4 

T* lens on Canon 5D Mk-III for a comparison.

On the photos above, left was shot by Talon lens and the right was

by the Planar F1.4 lens.  Since Talon lens was F2.8, the F1.4 lens 

 at F1.4 showed much shallower depth of field.

And here, the left photo was taken by Talon lens and the right photo 

was by the Planar F1.4 lens, but as the modified Talon lens got quite 

long focusing helicoid (it was not a screw helicoid but a rotating cam) 

which allows the 1/3 close-up, against this, 85mm F1.4 lens can close 

only to 1m (1/12), hence the photo right was a heavily cropped image. 

—– still, they showed amazingly similar characteristics, such as

the type of Bokeh.

And the rest of the photos here were from the £1 Recycled Lens = “Zeiss Talon Lens”

In fact, I was rather impressed by this quality performance !

As this lens was designed for a projector lens, (= never used for infinity) 

it was pretty good in close-up work !  (Ordinary lens was designed to work 

best in the infinity and the macro lens was designed to be best in the x10

magnification.) — Then give a thought, if a lens of 2 or 3 lenses structure 

could give such good performance, why we DO need to have an elaborated,

heavy, expensive lens.  (Mind you, all those photos were taken at fully open

F2.8 = anyhow no Iris there.)  😀    

But, this last photo was by the Planar F1.4 lens at F1.4 (all photos’  

aperture were fully open). —– Recycled 50 years old lens costed me   

£1 and the 85mm F1.4 lens was £600 even for a secondhand.

= May be we should start to think about what we really need from

a camera lens.  Like a so-called HD sound (called Hi-Resi in Japan)

do we need such a high resolution —– Does it make any difference

on our life ? — Wasn’t that mere illusion created by the company and

a ploy to sell yet another new model to us ?

What the photo image meant to us ? — DO we ever watched the world

in 10MP details, let alone to remember in such a detail ? ? ?    😀

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Reconstruct the Lens

A while ago, I made a so-called Gaudy Lens using old Olympus Film camera’s

lens barrel.   The Lens I’ve taken out from the camera was, usable optics — still

it was disassembled state.    In honest feering, I’m not keen to the lens itself —

38~80mm F5.6 “super” zoom is not impressive at all though, I just wanted to

reconstruct the lens for a kind of a game.  🙂  —– Putting back the gears etc to

reconstruct the focus control etc — though, since the lens was no longer in the

main barrel, there was no structure to hold the optics in the position = I needed

to improvise some structure to fix the lens position.

As seen on the photo above left, optics was tested while stucked by a plastic patte.

And an aluminium plate was made to fix to the rear element and the plate was

screwed to the front unit, then the exact distance was adjusted. (photo above right)

—– by the lens design, the zooming was made by the position of the rear element

— but now, the lens was mounted on the DSLR body, and no zooming mechanism,

the lens works as a 60mm F5.6  only.  —– The game done.  🙂

(You must be amazed how the camera lens can be handled in such a casual manner.

= Yes, they were made by just another human. = It’s not a rocket science.   😀 )

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Gaudy Lens — with one F-stop “less gaudy” Image

Gaudy lens was intended to fill the gap between “Double-Density Pinhole”

and the “Two Element homemade Lens” with added convenience of the

easy focus.  In a quality of the image, DD Pinhole has no details of the subject

= totally paintary image.    And an omnifocus Two Element Lens has certain

softness, still not so strong. —– I wanted to have somewhere between.

 Though, the original Gaudy Lens 

 showed too strong halation = so that,

 I made it a bit less by reducing its

 effective aperture for one stop.

 = 33mm x 0.7 = 23mm (equivalent 

of F1.8 down to F2.5) 

(It was done by placing a black paper with 23mm hole, back of the lens.)

So, they are the answer. = fuzzy enough but not too much.  🙂

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Gaudy Lens, gaudy images

They are the pictures of the first field test of a homemade lens I described

on the previous post, the Gaudy Lens.

The lens is a single meniscus magnifier lens with no coating, hence a lots of

aberration, halation was unavoidable —– in fact that was what I wanted

and the very purpose to make this lens.

Same as a bright light, the strong bright color causes strong halation too.

— even worse, the fuzzy image needed to have a bit more contrast =

increased highlight = brighter color spread more. It’s an orgie of the color.

Thank you very much to see all through the photos.  In the next post, I’ll put

a bit more moderate version of the same flowers.

(With a trick of a piece of small paper.)  🙂

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How about a Glittering Gaudy Lens ?

Do you know, this is called “Kawaii” in the Japanese norm today.

Settle with flowers to create Kawaii image was rather casual approach though,

otherwise — kitten’s picture if not small child or young girl.

— But these days, to deal with child or young girl, the risque is too high.

So, I would rather choose a camera. —– best of all, it’s cost virtually nothing.

Here, it was a 30 years old Olympus film camera.    The camera of that

age is much easier to disassemble and to utilize its mechanism.

 The camera then had auto-winding-up, rewind (Photo above left = the 

train of gears on the bottom of the body convey the power of the motor in

the winding-up spool to the rewinding fork), auto-focus, collapsible lens

etc, very useful mechanism though, “fully auto” then did not necessary 

had everything. = The exposure control was done by one mechanism = 

= two L-shaped blades worked as a Shutter and an Iris same time.

(Photo above, right)   Under the bright light, the blades open very little  

and close quick = worked as high speed shutter with small F-aperture.

And when it was dark, blades will fully open and close after a while, 

so in any condition, it gave a combination of somewhere between.

(Though, such mechanism is not useful anywhere else.)

What I found useful was their zoom lens barrel.  I removed all the lens

and the mechanism then I put a single meniscus lens. (So that the zoom

barrel became a focusing helicoid for the lens which can give the focus

from infinity to 1/2 close up.)  This lens has about 60mm focal length

and the diameter of 35mm = effectively F1.8.

The lens had no coating and such single lens has a lots of aberrations and

the halation of which I’m after and this lens got glittering gold encoder.

— isn’t it gorgeous or bad taste ?  😀       ( I didn’t put — it was there.)

Incidentally, this lens showed this character (and see the difference)

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Forget me not — by Focus Shift (yet again)

Yet again Focus Shift photos — in fact all of those flower photos in the park 

were taken in one session, just in a different corner.

The lenses used were either Canon FD 50 mm F1.8 or Canon EFS 18~55 mm IS-II.

The photos which showed closer, hence more out-of-focus bokeh were taken

by 50 mm lens otherwise they were taken by EFS zoom (often on wider setting).

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Rhododendron in the Park — by Focus Shift

Long time ago, I was seeing the Rhododendron in the mountain.  

Then I saw them in the Kew Garden —– I’m afraid those memories

 are getting afar and fading.   Now, I’m seeing a bit in a local park,

— may be I should be contented or I need to be thankful that I did

have the struggle to go through gorgeous bush of Rhododendron.

I don’t know why the fragile sister of Rhododendron was named Azarea.

To know about the “Focus Shift” please go to the previous post and the links.

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Flower Patch (5) — by 2-Element Homemade Lens (B)

2Ele Nikon

And the lens here was the other one, for Nikon mount type.  

Nikon fitting can be mounted 

on a Canon Eos body but not 

the other way round because 

the Nikon body (its frange-back 

on the Lens mount) is 2.5 mm

 thicker = Canon Lens on a Nikon body

can’t have an infinity focus but in the other hand, a mount 

converter on Canon for Nikon can have 2.5 mm to play with.

(Photo above, the lens was fitted with Nikon to EOS adapter.)

—– the reason why I further made Nikon type of this lens was,

“I wanted to have this fuzzy image in 32 MP sensor”— serious !   

(but the Canon is going to have 50 MP soon, how interesting.

—– Why 200K kind of image needs 20Mb size details ?

= this is THE Paradox — or joke Sir.   😀  )

Those two have a similar structure though, looks very different.

= Nikon type is much smaller still, as its front lens got stronger

curvature, it got stronger distortion.  And unlike Canon type,

I didn’t put an Iris (hole in a black-tape) the image has more flair.

—– (for a sake of choice, I left this fuzziness as it is.)

I got quite few lenses which give me sharp image, so it’s nice to have other

choices of the lenses which could create fuzzy, painterly images from subtle

to utterly impressionists painting like one.  The beauty of this exercise is,

I don’t need to rely on the tool (so called program) somebody else has made.

My art has to be created by myself and for it, I don’t use a readymade template.

(of cause, I didn’t make 5D camera myself, still some time I do.)   Ha ha ha.

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Flower Patch (3) — by Double Density Pinhole

When the sun was bright and the distinctive (esp’ in color) subjects were there

= it’s the time to take the Wide-angle DD-Pinhole out.    As a kind of image, this 

lens could produce the most typical “Impressionistic” painterly image.

I very much like the image though, I may not have found the best subject

for this Lens yet.     (May be I need to go to the countryside where 

old masters took their canvas out.  🙂 )

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