So smashpOp and I swapped lenses; I borrowed his Sony 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 lens and he borrowed my Minolta 50mm F1.4 and Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 kit lens. 18-200mm lenses are amazing travel companions, despite having dark apertures. It’s a good friend to have on a trip where the sun shines brightly.

I managed to consistently get crisp shots at 1/30th of a second at 200mm (300mm crop equivalent). This translated to over 3.5 stops! As long as the Super Steady Shot indicator went down to 1 (meaning I was steady as well) I was guaranteed a crisp shot. People who do not understand the function of the indicator would probably end up with blur shots and dismiss in-body stabilization on the telephoto end. However, I’m damn sure it works. In fact, I think it’s better at the telephoto end than at the wide end (since getting a 1/2 second shot is more prone to huge body movement than minor tremble.) I’ll write more in detail on my findings later, with shots.

I found a Tamron 70-300mm F4-5.6 lens for Sony Alpha mount at Bintang Maju, Maju Junction for an amazing price of RM657! It also had the brightest aperture at every focal length compared to every other cheap telephoto lens available for the Sony Alpha mount.

Tamron 70-300mm F4-5.6 apertures:
70mm onwards F4.0
135mm onwards F4.5
210mm onwards F5.0
300mm onwards F5.6

It also allowed 1:2 macro, and a switch allowed you to enable macro from 180-300mm. The Sigma’s switch enables macro at 200-300mm only.

Unfortunately, it was plasticky, slow and worse, when I slowly zoomed the lens to see if the aperture would change, it would sometimes disconnect and report an aperture of “—” and a shutter speed of 1/4000! That means the loose lens could cause quite a few blank black shots!

So yeah, Sigma will be my choice for cheap telephoto lens.

And now, guess my latest addition to my Olympus family! (No, it’s not a 50mm F1.4 lens. I wish.)

From left: Olympus Zuiko 70-210mm F4.5-5.6 lens; Vivitar 24mm F2.0 MC lens; Vivitar 2x teleconverter for Olympus Zuiko mount; Olympus Zuiko 35-70mm F3.5-4.8 lens. I bought it from Foto Selangor in Pertama Complex; quite an old-timer shop with a Vivitar 2x teleconverter for Canon FD mount as well!

I could also attach it to my infrared-modded Fujifilm Digital Q1 with my homemade Olympus adapter. When the 70-210mm F4.5-5.6 lens is attached to a 2x teleconverter, it becomes a 140-420mm F9-F11 lens! Of course, with the Q1’s 6x crop factor it would work a 840-2520mm lens.

The 420mm is truly 420mm in perspective. Even when I get a 70-300mm for my Sony A100 (which translates to 105-450mm equivalent crop) I would not get the same perspective as a true 420mm lens would.

The moon, resized (but not cropped)! This was difficult to focus as my homemade Olympus adapter didn’t have the correct distance from the lens to sensor; hence, I had difficulty setting the lens to infinity. I later found out that the shot was at 1/15th of a second (the Q1 has no manual controls other than being able to set the EV compensation to -2.)

My Olympus OM-2000 with Vivitar 2x Olympus Zuiko teleconverter and Olympus Zuiko 70-210mm F4.5-5.6 lens and my Sony A100 with Sony 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 lens.

Shot with the Olympus OM-2000 on the only 24mm lens I have.

The Sony A100 with the Sony 18-200mm at 18mm finally shows some distortion. I found it hard to coax obvious distortion out of this lens too.

Accidental geometry.

Sideways is about right.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the other end of it. An elevator shaft with a pool to catch your fall.

My ball. My awesome ball. (Remember Monster House?)

My painting. My awesome painting.

Look ma no distortion! 24mm using hyperfocal focusing for landscapes. It gives a surreal evenness to focus, with just a bit of uncrispness.

I picked F16, the darkest aperture, then turned the focus from infinity to touch the depth-of-field mark for F16. This means that everything from infinity to somewhere after 2 meters will be in focus, at F16.

Unfortunately, lens makers stopped putting depth-of-field scales on zoom lenses ever since auto-focus was invented, for some reason.

The Eye On Malaysia, shot with the Fujifilm Digital Q1 with 2x teleconverter and Olympus 70-210mm zoomed at 210mm, for 2520mm equivalent crop. Yep, at F11 all the dust on the sensor shows.

Titiwangsa LRT station, shot with the Sony A100 with Minolta 50mm F1.4 lens and Hoya R72 filter. Amazingly, at F2.8, it was quite in focus.

Eye (are) in IR (infrared film is supposed to be noisy as heck, and I kept the noise for this look.) Does this picture look shorter than the previous one? What a strange optical illusion.

KLCC, washed out.

Classic solid rear-wheel-drive Datsun 120Y. Durifto!