Guess what lens this was shot with. (1/50s)

Homer J. Simpson would love this. (1/15s)

There is something mysteriously alluring about the Sony 500mm F8 auto-focus catasdioptric mirror lens. (Yes, it’s the only mirror SLR lens that can auto-focus.) It’s very, very light, with a rubber grip to focus, and looks deceivingly shaped like a wide-angle lens. However, when you look down the front you are greeted with a hollow chamber of reflecting light. (1/8s)

Note the out-of-focus double-lines, especially around “FFEE”. (1/20s)

It is also constantly at F8. No, you can’t stop down. You can, however, unlock a little tray at its back and pull out a transparent filter, to replace it with a 2-stop Neutral Density filter (which does not give you more depth of field… just 4x slower shutter speeds.)

With Super SteadyShot on, I’d theoretically be able to get 1/50th of a second sharp. The second shot at 1/15s was probably a fluke in crispness, while the out-of-focus-ness of the third picture at 1/8s hides possible handshake.

Are the donuts really, really, honestly ugly? I don’t know. I found it more pleasant than expected. It would make for great effects, if properly used. I can imagine lights lining a road leading to the horizon… and you’d see donuts growing larger and larger. (1/80s)

Maybe, the thirst haunts me because I did not buy that 500mm F8 for M39 mount (for RM50!) back in Buy Sell Trade, Old Town, and returned to find it gone.

Also, I have been eating donuts more often, after not eating donuts for 5 years since college. What’s happening to me?

Anyway, while on the subject of photo geek:

Question on 1.4XII converter and D60 (forum post)
Read through the replies, and you’d find little golden nuggets, like how a camera’s auto-focus works, and how to tape over the contacts on your lens.

Canon EF-S 18-55mm to EF mount
This guy changed his Canon EF-S 18-55mm to a Canon EF mount! I someday inspire to do Dr. Frankenstein with other lenses!

Third Party Lenses with Cult Followings
Old-timer stories of third-party lens makers including Tokina, formed by former Nikon engineers!

Oh, in case you’re wondering; I didn’t buy the 500mm F8. I just asked to try it. I love the Sony KLCC staff! (And yes, you don’t even have to waltz in with a Sony A100 to get to try it.)

I love Fujifilm Superia film. Before you reach the end, try to guess the ASA of each shot!

Olympus OM-2000 with Soligor 70-220 F3.5 lens at 220m with its macro ring turned all the way. 6pm meant the sun was going down. 1/60th of a second (I never had such supernatural powers of stabilization before I swear!)

I think this was at 70mm. For some reason, exporting the scanned JPG directly from the file (without first copying and pasting into a new document) causes a color profile shift to occur. However, I like this color more.

I find that my OM-2000 exposes grays rather brightly.

Olympus 50mm F1.8, at F1.8. 1/60th of a second!

I can’t remember how long this exposure was. Looks like the Vivitar 24mm F2.0. Photoshopped.

Originally, long sky exposures looked like this. 4 minutes.

With film, you can expose for as long as you want! This is 45 minutes, with the Olympus 35-70mm F3.5-4.8 lens with Pro Tama 0.45x wide angle converter lens. Man, I gotta clean the wide angle. I was disappointed that the trails were straight lines. 🙁

Soligor 70-220mm F3.5 again! 220mm goodness.

Vivitar 24mm F2.0, at F5.6.

Soligor 70-220mm F3.5 at 1/30! (The image was originally slightly soft, but shrinking it made it look sharp.)

Baaa run away from the dangers of opening the film back too soon!

Sometimes it looks pretty. I swear I heard the click and felt the tension release while winding!

The Olympus OM-2000 with the Auto-Chinon 135mm F2.8 lens. Yes, the lens is for the Pentax K-mount! I held it in front of the camera, while focused at infinity, moving it closer and further from the camera until it was in focus.

The Soligor 70-220mm F3.5 monster has its own tripod mount. I added a Vivitar 2x teleconverter, and it gave me this after a 10 second-delayed shot!

(Yes, I made sure the moon was in the center of the frame before shooting.)

And now, for shots from the Sony A100.

Cowbell spotted at the last Crossborders gig!

If you don’t have a shutter release cable, you can always wrap your camera strap around your shutter and weigh it down with a camera bag.

Here’s the other interesting thing; all the shots before the bench in the park are shot with Fujifilm Superia ASA1600! It can be gotten at under RM20 at KL Sentral. All the shots after (except the last two) are shot with Fujifilm Superia ASA100.

Frankly, I felt that at ASA1600 the color saturation pulled through just as much as it did at ASA100. Which means, buying ASA100 film just for the color wasn’t worth the speed hit for me. Also, ASA100 wasn’t that grainless, either. ASA1600 was noticeably more speckly, but in the age of Photoshop, the Despeckle filter alone kills a whole load of it. All pictures from ASA1600 had a dark strip on the bottom (it might be because I got an expired roll from YS Camera, SS2?)

ASA1600 let me freeze gigs at 1/30s, but I’ll just go with underexposing slower film. So for now, I think I’ll stick to the easily found and cheap ASA400 film.

But first, my first ever Youtube video! Watch it to understand this entry.

This is the mysterious red box, next to a film canister for size comparison.

Okay, so there’s no more mystery. A, B and C are the pins on the Sony Alpha A100‘s remote shutter release. Shorting A and B activates auto-focus, and shorting A, B and C together activates the shutter.

There are two switches; the left-side one activates auto-focus while the right-side one, a single-pole-double-throw switch, closes B and C as well as the PC Sync connection to the Nikon Speedlight SB-28, thus causing the flash to fire!

Thus, I have made a remote shutter cable release and a wired flash trigger!

But first, a visit to the first-generation version. From left, a single-pole-double-throw toggle switch taken from a Turbo switch of a 486-class computer, cellotaped wires (I didn’t have a soldering iron then) and a rudimentary way to connect to the PC Sync Connector of the Nikon SB-28 using the back of a female RCA socket and a bent pin. But this is really too much effort, if you can find a PC Sync Connector cable!

Generation 1 remote shutter cable release/wired flash trigger. It did not have an auto-focus switch, so I had to half-press the camera before pressing the shutter/flash switch.

One major problem faced was that in normal flash operation, pressing the auto-focus switch, then pressing the shutter/flash switch would trigger the flash and camera at the same time. Problem was, the flash would fire before the shutter would open, thus causing dark shots like the one on the left (exposure F18 1.3 seconds ISO100 at 20mm.)

The one on the right has a difference; the flash is set to strobe mode, with 2 strobes at 7 Hertz, 1/8th power. I found that 7 Hertz was the fastest that the flash could strobe to be captured by the camera. Picking a faster strobe speed like 8, 9 or 10 Hertz meant dark shots as well.

The only downside to strobe flash is that it would be at lower power and requires longer exposures.

Trial and error, really. No math for you folks. Heck the circuit is simple without resistors and capacitors and transistors and all that. (Adding capacitors and resistors could introduce a delay to the flash, which means I could flash at full power with one single flash!)

Generation 2, with a connector. No more cellotape! Also, featuring an auto-focus switch!

Left: A PC Sync Connector cable to mini audio jack (which was cannibalized in Generation 2.) Right: Generation 3, sealed up thanks to my friend in the engineering department of the office. Unfortunately he swapped one connection, so it doesn’t work as it should, and was too busy to redo it.

VGA Ultra gives me a stern warning.

You can get your own 3-pin motherboard connector from a electronics parts shop. This reads 2561H Series Crimp Terminal Housing (pitch: 2.54mm). Get the 3-pin one for the Sony A100, and a standard mini audio jack for a Canon dSLR.

Generation 4; I finally got a project box and two new switches. The previous ones malfunctioned after a while.

I had to tape it up because the project box was too small and would not seal completely. I could not fit the big switch in fully!

The same shot in the video.

This is dedicated to all the people who say things are impossible. More hacks to come!

Also, read the good reasons why Minolta changed their flash mount.

To avoid this! This is a living dead example.

Woe is the poor beheaded Canon Speedlite 580EX flash. Often with big flashes, your flash may tilt forwards and crash into things while you walk sideways in cramped spaces. (Or worse, your flash makes your camera do an obscene nosedive; the Nikon SB-28 did that a lot to my Olympus OM-2000.) Taking it off is hard with the old hotshoe mount, having to twirl the ring to release. Minolta/Sony made it damn easy; just press a button to release!