Recently I purchased a Rokkor 35mm 2.8 on ebay. I couldn't resist, it was going for $30. But using it I realized how much I am in love with this focal length on the GH2. I film a lot of interviews at work and this lens will be a perfect portrait lens at 70mm with the 2x crop factor. Yet using this lens reminded me of my slightly ignored SLR Magic 35mm 1.7. I decided to take it out again today and take some shots with it to extensively examine how it performs. I purchased this lens for three reasons, 1) it's fast, 2) it was only $100, and 3) the swirly bokeh rocks!
Basically I went around today and attempted to see if the fringing could be eliminated when stopped down to say 5.6. Most the time when I use this lens I'm shooting wide open because with a toy lens like this that's what you do. But could this be a potential street performer as well as an artistic tool? That's what I want to know.
f/5.6
f/1.7
Immediately what I noticed is that stopping down doesn't take away the fringing completely. It reduces it and enlarges the sweet spot but the edges still suffer from fringing. Stopping down also affects color rendition. The colors are noticeably less saturated and cooler as compared to wide open.
f/5.6
f/1.7
Yet aside from the reduction in color saturation and the cooler tones when stopped down, the lens is much sharper and you do pick up a lot more detail. More detail is pulled into the outer edges, yet fringing still persists, as if someone has greased the lens. Another thing I've discovered is that it tends to flare more wide open then when stopped down. So if shooting towards the sun the image is washed out. Stopping down eliminates this effect as seen here.
I will continue to test it out in the week to come but my general conclusion at the moment is it's not an exemplary go to lens and more of an artistic tool when the shot calls for it.
I am really falling in love with this lens. Upon getting the GH2 all the glass I had, and all the glass I was ordering were primes. This became a problem at weddings. I was constantly changing lenses and it was such a hassle to obtain a different focal length. Don't get me wrong, I love my primes like my Pentax 25mm 1.4, and my Rokkors. But I need a zoom lens, especially for event filming. I began looking on ebay (how I usually spend my free time it seems) for a zoom that was both wide and fast. This is a fairly difficult task. Most of the manual zooms start at 35mm focal length. On the GH2 this is 70mm. That puts me too far away from my subjects for what I want to be doing. I like getting close. And for that reason I also wanted a lens with a macro function. Yet when I was able to find such a lens it was listed at around $70. I could spend just as much and end up with a 50mm 1.4. Doesn't equate a fair value IMO. And then I found listed for $60 a Vivitar Series 1 20-90mm 2.8/3.5 Macro Zoom. My jaw dropped and mouth watered. It was a whole stop below what the other zooms were going for and yet less expensive. I immediately jumped at the opportunity.
Build Quality
This lens is a tank. It's surprisingly heavy, all metal construction. Has some heft to it. I pick it up and think, whoa, this is a lens! The focus is smooth and firm. Though the downside to my copy is that the zoom sticks at 28mm. I sort of have to pull a bit to get it to zoom out. This has been loosening up a bit the more I use it. It stops up in half stops, which I appreciate.
Image Quality
I'm really impressed with the lens. It's very sharp, even wide open. So there really isn't a noticeable loss of detail if you have to open up for darker conditions. Color rendition is accurate. It produces decent contrast. The bokeh is very soft, not busy at all, therefore easy on the eyes. And for a zoom lens it has quite a variable depth of field. Some zooms I've used tend to be too sharp all the way through and don't create much bokeh unless the background is back to infinity. That's just not the case here. It works just as well as some of my primes. And at 2.8 at 28mm, I can sell my prime 2.8 28mm because I no longer have a need for it.
Conclusion
It's an excellent walk around lens. Though the weight may be a bit too much to carry around all day. And I love its macro function. At 28mm, the shortest focal length is an inch from the glass. This distance increases as you zoom out to 90mm. It's quite a versitile piece of glass. It's fast, though 2.8 all the way through would be nice. It's changed my event work. Usually I find myself delayed by constantly changing from prime to prime. I shot a wedding just this past weekend and used this lens for about 90% of all my day time shots. The primes were reserved for night time conditions where light wasn't as readily available. This will most likely be my workhorse lens for quite some time to come.
I shoot with all manual lenses. The moment I purchased my GH2 I decided to get old film lenses and save money on glass. Yet as my personal obsession with lenses has grown, I doubt I've saved much money in the long run. I'm becoming fascinated with lenses and how they affect the picture, how one lens can make the picture look flat and the other render everything sharp with great contrast. As my eye becomes more refined I'm able to notice these subtle differences in picture output. So I have decided to use my newly refined senses to determine the better of two lenses. Through my unhealthy lens hoarding I have acquired a Rokkor-X 50mm 1.4 Minolta MD as well as a Rokkor-PF 58mm 1.4 which is a Minolta MC I believe. Build Quality
Of the two, I prefer the build quality of the R58 over the R50. I looks more vintage (which it is). It's larger and heavier than the R50. It feels like a tank, gives off this air of "this lens is important." It has eight iris blades as opposed to the R50's six. They don't necessarily make an octagon shape, though. It's a bit more circular. The iris blades on the 50mm maintain a perfect hexagon shape throughout. So the first decision factor between the two would be to choose between hexagonal or circular bokeh. Both of them range from 1.4-16; however, one plus for the R50 is that it stops up in half stops. So it provides more variance of light, which is pretty sweet. I had to admire it for that.
Now this test wasn't completely fair because I remembered only just now that I had an FD filter on the R58. What affect that had on image quality I have no idea. This was the optical performance test. I looked at sharpness, and bokeh. Though I could rate color definition and contrast, I was filming on my custom flat setting, so it's not fair to judge either of these. However, if I were to make a selection I would say the R50 does a better job in color and contrast. The 58mm just looked more flat. But if my intention when shooting is to shoot flat, is that really a bad thing?
Sharpness
This ought to be obvious from the video but I'll go ahead and throw my opinion around anyway. I mean, it's my blog, dammit. The R50 is much sharper wide open than the R58. It picks up a lot more detail. Wide open, the R58 is very soft and dreamy. Could be a useful aesthetic choice for portraiture. Yet at f2.8 the R58 becomes EXTREMELY sharp. I feel it surpasses the R50 in sharpness at this aperture. I only tested up to f/4 because that's about the extent of my aperture flexibility. I really enjoy narrow depth of field. Plus due to the new hack the camera stopped recording at 5.6 so I figured I'd change lenses if I already had to take the camera off the tripod to pop out the battery.
Bokeh
The R58 produces a smooth and circular pattern. In comparison the R50 seems harsh, like theres more going on. It has definite hexagon shapes and detailed bokeh patterns. Not sure which I prefer though. This would also depend on the project and which lenses I were to be using them with.
Conclusion
I hadn't mentioned this earlier but didn't create a category for it so I'll mention it now. The R50 has a greater focal depth. You can focus on objects a few inches closer than you are able to with the R58. At the moment... I can't pick a winner here. I was leaning towards the R50, but the more I look back at the sharpness of the R58 at 2.8 and on, it's very impressive. I like the dynamic of the lens, being so soft at wider apertures and sharp as a knife at 2.8, which is still fairly open. You can expect more tests coming soon. I need to settle this fight somehow.
It was a sad day last week when my Computar 12.5mm 1.3 decided to call it quits. It was my poor machining which did it in. I had glued it together but the job came apart. When I reglued it together, something went wrong and it would no longer focus to infinity. I was quite upset. The lens was very fast and sharp and it will be dearly missed. However, had that not happened I wouldn't have been able to purchase the Lumix 14mm 2.5 pancake lens for over $100 off the street price. Thank you ebay!
The lens came today and I brought it out to take some test shots around campus. It's a good wide angle lens. Not as wide as the computar, but it's specifically designed for my camera and covers the entire sensor: two main characteristics to its advantage. The build quality is plastic and it's extremely light. It's also really small. Easily fits into my shirt pocket. The focus ring is smooth yet firm. There's enough resistance to achieve some solid rack focusing. I am yet to test its autofocus abilities as I am so used to doing everything manually now.
Two things I was impressed with was the depth of field you're able to achieve wide open. It's pretty narrow. And it focuses very close to subjects. I think the closest focal distance is about 5 or 6 inches from the front of the lens. It could almost be a wide macro. The bokeh is smooth and circular. And it's really sharp!
So my new, and extremely talented, friend Lauren has asked me to put together a promotional video for her photography website. I tagged along with her for an engagement shoot last Monday and over the weekend had her come over to grab an interview and more b-roll footage. We have a rock quarry off the neighborhood nature trail that is absolutely gorgeous this time of year. I took a walk to scout out the area and found the perfect spot: a tree surrounded by flush green grass, illuminated from behind by the setting sun. The light was absolutely beautiful so I made note of the time and we came back the following day.
Lauren had this retro chair that she brought, along with a bag of antique cameras to mess around with. I really wanted to give this footage an artistic look so after we finished the interview I popped on my 25mm cctv lens and started playing around. I love how the lens reacts to light. It catches it and pushes it around the edges.
Look forward to seeing the finished video in a couple of weeks. Until then here's a sneak peak:
I'm sure this would have been better had my wide angle lens not broken. It was my fault, I machined the Computar 12.5mm 1.2 too close and basically sawed off the end of the lens. Was able to successfully glue it together once, yet once the glue came undone and I glued it a second time, it no longer focuses to infinity. Huge bummer because the lens is pretty hard to find. Luckily I was able to nab a 14mm 2.5 Lumix lens for only $200. I'll try to capture Huxley's acrobats with that lens when it arrives. Until then the widest angle I had was my Pentax 25mm. Being a manual lens it was difficult to follow the action and keep everything in focus. As I said, I will do this again in the near future, but for now this will have to do.
Took me a while to finally get this footage on the web. I was really excited when I hacked my GH2. I mean, the process was an unexpected struggle. So it was such a relief and thrill to finally have the delicate genius loaded into my firmware. I grabbed a couple friends together and we went to a hookah bar in uptown Charlotte. The place is called Istanbul Hookah. Pretty chill atmosphere, yet next time I go there I'll bring cards or something to do because it's a bit too chill. You could tell the regulars 'cause they were the ones with cards or word games. I was glad to have the night outing because a guy on Vimeo had asked me to do a night test of my Pentax 25mm 1.4 and I felt this was the perfect opportunity to put one together. But I also brought my new Rokkor 58mm 1.4 around as well. Only really broke out the Rokkor when we were at the table. Most of the footage is taken with the Pentax.
So I finally did it. After three days of downloading programs I successfully hacked my GH2. What did this entail? Well in order to use the ptools I needed to be able to run a windows program on my mac. To do that I needed Wine. To install wine I needed to install Xcode. To install Xcode I had to upgrade my OS to Lion. So it was $30 to upgrade my OS, which I'm not too jazzed about. Since upgrading to Lion my computer is actually running slower and has frozen on me twice. Hasn't even been a full week yet. Total weaksauce. Anyway, on top of all this frustration and program gathering, in order to install wine and the ptools I had to learn code and manually operate my computer. Wow, what a process. YET: totally worth it. I now have the most recent version of Vitaly's hack on my camera. What does this mean? Well instead of recording at 24mbps at 24p and 17mbps at 60i and 60p my camera is now recording at 42mbps and 32mbps. I now have a 5dmkii rival for a third of the cost! I'm extremely stoked.
Here's a link to a video at my vimeo account of some hacked footage taken at a weiner dog race this weekend. As I was leaving breakfast I saw a few people walking dachshunds around downtown Mooresville. quite a unique site for the area... or really anywhere in Mooresville. Turns out they were having races. I ran home and grabbed my camera to capture the action.
