353: CW-24 Test at f/16

This one is the f/16 version in a series of seven test photos I took for evaluating an old Tamron CW-24 24mm lens.

Settings: f/16, 1/2, ISO 100, 1mm extension (PK adapter,) fluorescent table lamp, black velvet, white card, cable release, tripod. Slight exposure adjustment to even out across the range of photos, sharpening set to 0.

282: Business Unusual

Settings: f/4, 1/250, ISO 400, EOS D30, 24mm Tamron Adaptall.

280: Tail Light Clusters

Settings: f/2.5, 1/30, ISO 400, Tamron 24mm Adaptall.

273: Perched Aloft

"It's just a pigeon..."
Not great, but not bad for an equivalent 1600mm lens hand held.

Settings: f/16, 1/250, ISO 400, EOS D30, Tamron SP 500mm adaptall, 2x teleconverter.

256: Stars & Pentagons

Settings: f/4, 1/180, ISO 100, 24mm Tamron Adaptall 1:2.5, 9mm extension, glass, black velvet, foil reflector, tripod. Crop.

135: Skull Profile Cloud

Settings: f/22, 1/200, ISO 100, EOS D30 & Tamron SP 28-105mm f/4-4.5, luminance curve adjustment.

128: Red Hairberries

Today I've also been taking some test shots with an old Tamron SP lens on my D30; with an M42 adaptall and M42-EF adapter.
I'm delighted to see that the exposure was spot-on in nearly all the shots I took - a better show than my K10D, which is a good six years newer. I know that the oft-cited PentaxUnderexposure(TM) can be better for preserving highlight details, but I don't always want to post-process everything I shoot. I am getting to prefer the Canon's more consistent exposure, even if it blows the highlights sometimes. It's just more reliable!
I would just shoot RAW if I wanted to rework problematic exposures, although I'm not so sure that the D30 has as good dynamic range in the highlights. I would use the K10D instead, as I normally do.

I used aperture-priority mode instead of manual now, because:
1. Using an old lens with M mode requires me to first focus, stop down the lens, then select the shutter speed with the control dial until it the registers roughly in the middle of the EV meter. But stopping down a lens makes the viewfinder display go dimmer; in bright daylight this contrast can make the EV meter fade into total obscurity.
2. After testing the camera with a borrowed autofocus lens, it was left on AV mode. I didn't realise until I later took a perfectly-exposed shot with an M42 lens, then noticed the mode. I didn't think of using it like this (at least not with this camera,) but AV is definitely easier now.

Settings: f/3.5, 1/25, ISO 400, Tamron SP 28-80, EOS D30.

116: Cells and Veins

I'm not going to try and estimate the level of magnification in this shot; it's almost microscopic. A reversed wideangle coupled with a set of bellows makes it possible, is not very easy, to capture some really tiny detail. The individual cells of this clematis leaf are clearly visible, though still very small and rather indistinct.

What's not so good is the significant softness of the image, even when stopped down to a supposedly near-optimum aperture. But that goes with the unconventional use of the lens - not how it was designed for.

Settings: f/6.7, 1/2, ISO 100, reversed Tamron 24mm with 55-52 and 52-PK adapters, macro bellows, 1/4 flash fired behind leaf, tripod.

104: Nasturtiums & Halos

I glanced at these well-grown nasturtium seedlings on the kitchen windowsill and noticed the fascinating pattern of shapes they cast.
I've chosen to use my mirror lens again today because I'm getting to love the weird out-of-focus highlight rings. To accentuate the effect here, I sprayed a fine mist of water onto the window behind the plants, as the background looked decidedly lacklustre without it.

Plus, yet again another one-take wonder! Maybe I'm economising on the shutter actuations because of my ~500 frame animation blowout from a few weeks ago. I should hopefully be getting another [old & cheap] DSLR to animate with. I'm quite excited about the prospect of it...

Settings: f/8, 1/30, ISO 200, 500mm Tamron SP mirror lens, tripod.

102: Soft Light Rings

Spooky effects from a hanging lampshade and a mirror lens. It rather looks like evening light seen through a bushy canopy.
Deliberately out of focus, of course. I didn't even try, as when the lampshade came into focus the whole image detracted from the effect I liked shown here.

Settings: f/8, 1/160, ISO 200, 500mm Tamron SP mirror lens, 50mm extension, tripod.

043: Nuts & Syrup

Caution: This image contains nuts; also plenty of sweet syrup and chocolate.
I tried a different lens today - an old Tamron SP 28-80 macro-zoom with adaptall mount. Using an M42 adaptall, I added 52mm of extension tubes (inc. PK adapter ring,) and the result is quite a versatile macro lens.
However, it's not without its drawbacks. First, the rubber hood is quite wide and shallow, making it harder to avoid flare. What's more, the lens has no "manual" stop-down selector; this is a bugger because if I wanted to shoot at any f/no. more than mide open I would have to tweak the mount somehow. I might try some other time, but today I just used it as it was and hoped the flash wasn't too fierce. The aperture range wide open is 3.5-4.2, so it's not so fast that I get a completely unstable result.
The in-focus areas are pretty sharp, actually. The light was quite blown out at the left side, but I managed to rescue it with some judicious slider-tweaking on the exposure control and shadows/highlights functions in Raw Therapee. It might have come out better if I had used the white card more carefully underneath, but I didn't want to get it too close that the image might get more cloudy - the lens is wide open, after all.