Alright, so I posted a lengthy entry about my excessive camera geeking out. Thanks y’all for all the comments!

Guess what? I’ve still got a buffer of camera geeking posts to clear! So here’s a shitload of text that most of you won’t understand. But heck.

I recently acquired a Minolta 35-105mm F3.5-4.5 lens for my Sony A100. It has a tiny neglible amount of fungus. However, I’ve tried a heavily fungused Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan lens and a Minolta 50mm F1.7 lens and the glass itself was already so contrasty. I set contrast to -2 by default, shot with my beercan, and found that +1 contrast gave an equivalent result on the fungused beercan. I prefer less contrast, which is easier to work with in Photoshop.

My Minoltas!

From left: Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan lens, Minolta 35-105mm F3.5-4.5 (N) lens, Minolta 50mm F1.4 (pre-RS) lens.

The 35-105mm is a newer version; the older version looked like a short beercan (whose looks I so love). The 50mm F1.4 is the older version with built-in retractable lens hood, without circular aperture blades (which I like, really.)

The 35-105mm focus is very zippy. It is great fun. It actually thumps at you when focusing! Zip zap zip zap. About 60 degrees to turn from close focus to infinity. The Sony 18-70mm kit lens has about 30 degrees but doesn’t feel quite as nice. wkcheang reckons that this is because the 35-105mm’s closest focus range is 85cm and thus it doesn’t have to bother with macro.

I like how the beercan looks like a slender cannon. Internal zoom is awesome.

I also like how the 50mm F1.4 has a stumpy look.

I went down to Sony Wings, KLCC to try some lenses. They’re real friendly and will let you try everything!

Super Steady Shot (SSS)

I used a different method of testing stabilization; how many shots does it take to get a crisp, sharp, motion-blur-less one?

I first shoot at 1/10th of the inverse of the focal length (200mm would be 1/20s). Add in the crop factor of 1.5x and this is 15x slower than the rule of thumb, or about 4 stops. I hold the camera with both hands and shoot casually. If it is blur, I shoot again, watching to see the SSS meter go down to 1-2 bars.

If it is blur again, then I know I probably cannot shoot at that speed with that lens and focal length consistently.

Most lenses at longer focal lengths are safe and easy up to 4 stops. I don’t have to think of holding still. Wider focal lengths are a bit harder, as I rarely get super crisp 1 second exposures.

Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 135mm F1.8 ZA
I could shoot at 1/8 seconds, for 4.66 stops of SSS.

Carl Zeiss 135mm F1.8 at F1.8.

Carl Zeiss lenses, as we’ve all heard, are excellent. Crispy wide open? Most definitely. No fuzzing up of hair or lack of detail. No softness, no dreamy spherical aberration.

Another crop.

Even at decent distances, you can get nifty bokeh. (Of course, the Sony 135mm F2.8 (T4.5) Smooth Transition Focus has even better adjustable bokeh levels but that’s manual focus only.)

Sony 70-200mm F2.8G
Easy and safe to get crisp 1/13s shots at 200mm (4.66 stops of SSS). Soft at 1/10s but still apparently clear especially when downsized. At 1/10s you need to hold still and keep the SSS meter down.

I can also brace this lens with the tripod mount on my left hand comfortably.

Pardon the lousy quick snap of this. I was in awe. Okay, my hands were just tired after shooting with it.

The lens hood is cool! It has a sliding door which lets you rotate polarizer filters without removing the hood.

Sony 70-200mm F2.8G, at 200mm F2.8 1/60s.

The Sony price of RM10

First, I must thank Wai Fon for pimping me!

She spoke of my Spidey senses. I’ll relate the same story.

I was shooting a starry sky with my Olympus OM-2000 and Vivitar 24mm F2.0 and a second-hand shutter release cable. The button on the cable unscrewed itself and rolled outside my house gate!

I wanted to get my house keys, but the camera and tripod got in the way.

I collapsed the tripod slightly, and leaned it against the wall that separates me and my neighbor. I walked past it.

Usually, in the world of Albert, many things can be precariously balanced and defy gravity.

This night however, everything came crashing down.

My OM-2000 took a nosedive!

Usually, if I saw something fall, I’d be able to catch it. I have such Spidey sense.

This time however, I didn’t even look. I took for granted my warped gravitational fields (the same ones that attract chicks for no logical reason, I reckon.)

It was… beheaded. 🙁

The impact was so powerful, the tripod head left a mark on my camera’s base!

It also caused a crack near the film winder, and the film winder can pop off. Fortunately, there was no light leakage as the film transport area is sealed.

Fortunately, too, that it wasn’t my Sony A100 and any of my beloved Minolta lenses.

However, it misaligned something in the Vivitar 24mm F2.0, causing it to be unable to focus to infinity, somewhat permanently macro; fortunately, it was the same lens I had opened many times before so I was somewhat familiar with it.

It also would not stop down to F8 or darker. A major debilitation for a wide-angle lens whose primary objective could be landscapes.

Aperture ring and ball-bearing used to give you that nice clicking feeling when you turn the aperture ring.

There was a disc that wasn’t flat; I used pliers to violently bang it to flatness.

Alas, I had to open it a few times, each time getting closer to infinity.

Finally, I opened an area I had not opened before! Hidden screws on the focusing ring, painted over in black.

The focusing ring. Note the focus limiter screw on the right, and a hole in front. Yes, I removed the focus limiter screw there! With that removed, I could focus beyond infinity! (About a 60 degree turn.)

Of course, once reassembled, the lens wouldn’t let me go that far beyond infinity. Just a little bit. But still enough to optically get beyond infinity!

I also misaligned the aperture ring, so the aperture is 1 stop darker than reported. 🙁

Another side effect I recently discovered? Mirror Lock Up! When there was no lens, I could shoot, and the mirror would stay up. It was held up by the aperture lever (near the red dot). Moving the aperture lever clockwise tells the camera that the lens has a brighter aperture, so it can adjust the meter accordingly.

To return the mirror, I just needed to move the aperture lever a tiny bit.

You can tell that the mirror was locked up because if I was doing a bulb exposure, the shutter curtain would be up (and you’d see the film back of the camera.)

The aperture lever only ever holds the mirror up when it’s all the way down, so if a lens is mounted at even F22 it would not cause mirror lock up.

I could, however, exploit this; the Olympus Zuiko 50mm F1.8 here is mounted but not yet clicked into place. (Note the red dot should be upwards.) Fully stopped down at F16 it will not nudge the aperture lever and thus release the mirror.

Because the lens wasn’t correctly mounted, I’d have to stop down while shooting by pressing on the DOF preview button on the lens.

A major benefit of mirror lock up is that you wouldn’t have mirror slap, and in theory could shoot at slower shutter speeds without handshake. You won’t hear the mirror slap either. I have not tested this with a roll of film.

The downside is that with the mirror locked up, you would not be able to see anything through the viewfinder, so it would be wise to focus beforehand and use your other eye to shoot. Or shoot like a rangefinder!

It also does not meter because the mirror is up. So, the shot must be set up beforehand with lens on normally, before dismounting the lens and locking up the mirror.

Before I got my Pentax P30t, I tried to swap the mount from the 2x teleconverter from my Vivitar 75-205mm F3.5-4.5 Pentax K-mount lens with the mount from my Vivitar OM-mount 2x teleconverter. The OM one had 3 screws, not 4 so only one screw would go in. 🙁

Auto Chinon 135mm F2.8 Pentax K-mount on Vivitar 2x teleconverter (OM-mount front, K-mount back) on Olympus OM-2000.

Yes, I am promoting the interracial, intermountal marriage of different mounts.

Of course, because the lens wasn’t aligned, it had a slight tilt/shift tilt effect, and it would not focus on infinity.

Unless, of course, you get negative diopter lenses to restore infinity focus; thanks Shaz for your contribution to science!

It’s a -200 power (or -20 lens) so that should give me plenty of space to muck around with making a proper adapter.

Professor Albert Frankenstein. (Thanks to the interesting specimen for shooting this!)

I found this in an old-timer camera shop on the ground floor of Ampang Park; a Ricoh AF 50mm F2.0 lens! This was one of the first implementations of auto-focus; focus detection was done on the box stuck to it instead of the camera!

It required batteries and looked uncool. I think you can figure out why it never caught on. Ricoh lenses use the K-mount too.

Speaking of which, I must plug Albert Cheah of Cheah Camera Repair, Mutiara Complex, Jalan Ipoh. He does excellent defungusing and lens fixing. I just wished his shop didn’t close before I could get there after working hours. Saturday afternoons, between 12-3pm are a safe time to visit; he has loads of rangefinders and other camera pr0n.

I sent my Vivitar 75-205mm F3.5-4.5 and matched 2x teleconverter for defungusing. Xian Jin (formerly known as The Pink Frog) helped me collect it. I was amazed how shiny and black it was! It was almost spotless minus one bit he couldn’t clean. However, I’ve seen a Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan that he cleaned, and it has better contrast than mine! Another Minolta 50mm F1.7 he cleaned had higher contrast than my Minolta 50mm F1.4 even!

I excitedly put my Auto Chinon 135mm F2.8 K-mount lens on the Vivitar K-mount matched 2x teleconverter meant for the 75-205mm F3.5-4.5… and it got stuck!

I tried to open it there and then, at McDonalds.

I got this far; removing the front element!

Which looks cool, but alas, I could not get any deeper. (Credit to Xian Jin for the last 4 pictures.)

I got home, and jammed a key on the aperture lever of the teleconverter, while forcefully dislodging the lens. It worked at last!

Sadly, the teleconverter had something inside misalign, and it does not stop down all the way sometimes. This would not be a problem given that I’d use it on the 75-205mm F3.5-4.5 and I wouldn’t want to stop down on a long zoom lens anyway, as I’d need all the shutter speed I can get (The Pentax P30t film SLR comes from a time before image stabilization.)

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!

Okay, so these are delayed season’s greetings. Midvalley on my Minolta 50mm F1.4 at F1.4 with Pro Tama 0.45x wide angle converter for extra softness (oddly, softer around the center.)

50mm F2.0.

The Curve. 50mm F5.6. I prefer subtle out-of-focus where you can sort of see the background. (This is a note to those stuck on a 50mm F1.8 at Aperture Priority, F1.8 all the time. 😛 )

The Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan lens returns! I don’t bring this lens out often. This troupe was rather unacrobatic, so I’ll omit their performance at Berjaya Times Square.

Rewind to my office. The lion swallowed a man trying to grab an angpau as his only escape!

Lions watching National Geographic on Astro MAX in the office.

Fully electronic with noise and lights!

God of something. Uh, the knowledgeable and wise shall comment.

Now that’s what I call a good lion dance! Proper jumping acrobatics and stuff.

Amazing. They both jump and land on the poles, while keeping correct distance.

There is a risk of wardrobe malfunction should the front guy jump before the rear guy does.

Hooray confetti!

And then, come midnight 26th February 2007, fireworks were blasting all over my neighborhood. I ran all over with just my Sony A100 and 50mm F1.4 in bulb mode, holding down until the sound of fireworks stopped. I held it too long and ambitiously, so I’ll omit them fireworks shots. 🙁

Fire, flare and ghosts.

My neighborhood gave THX a run for their money. By the time I ran close to where I suspect fireworks were being launched, it had already ended. Fireworks were then heard on the other end! I must’ve went each corner twice. This is one of the few rare ones where I get to catch firecrackers.

The Chinese celebrate their famous invention – gunpowder.

Finally, I found a launch spot. Alas, it was too late.