TTArtisans 50mm F 2.0 Lens - Full Frame Disappointment

Bad Morning, Bad Lens: It was cold, windy, and a little moist. It was also the first and last time I'll use this lens. Touted as a "wunderlens" for its price, its performance was less than satisfactory. First, the vignetting was beyond what I would accept as artistic. Next, the degree of  smearing (a.k.a. coma)  of specular highlights (streetlights) was so unexpected, and so disappointing. 

I will admit it was a nice attempt at producing a full-frame, manually focused lens at this price point. I got the performance that I paid for, which wasn't much by any measure. Pity though, as I thought it was a nice lens.

Until I used. it.

Shooting My New Snapshot Skopar

 

A Series Of Fortunate Incidents: My Skopar arrived yesterday afternoon, and this morning, I would return to the Houseboat Communities of Sausalito to try it out.

The sun was already up, and there were some scattered clouds that drifted in and out of the sunlight's path. This affected how the shadows would be rendered.

Poof! Purchasing the Skopar had the desired effect. The design of the lens discouraged precise focusing and forced me to depend on the preset clicks at 1, 1.5, and 3 meter distances. For the most part, I left the lens set to 3 meters, and left the aperture to F 8.0. This gave me a theoretical "sharp focus zone" from 4 feet to infinity.

It Worked! For whatever reason, this technique, often called Zone Focusing, worked perfectly with the Skopar. To add jimmies* to the cupcake, using the Focus Peaking function displays the zones of highest contrast (sharpest focus) in red.  By just glancing in the EVF, you knew that if the zones of interest were so highlighted, you had some assurances that those areas would be in focus.

Walking quietly in the floating community, I met a kitty and a doggy, and enjoyed some momentary relief from my tinnitus. Nearly a dozen photos made it to the final cut, but I culled several for brevity. I don't often make that many images on a single outing, but the time of day, the varied qualities of the morning light, and the surprising performance of the lens contributed to a wonderful outing on the bay. 

Needless to say, the  Skopar succeeded in getting me out of the city "rut"  and helping me produce some fun images in a relatively short period of time. Happy camper, I am!

*"Jimmies" is a term used widely in Pittsburgh, Boston, and in parts of the Midwest. They are called "sprinkles" everywhere else.

The Color Skopar - The Lens I Was Reluctant To Try

 

Shot with Voigtlander Snapshot Skopar on a Sony A7 body.

I have a habit of saying, "Never handle anything that you are not prepared to own". Once in a while, a piece of equipment will fall into your hands and you'll experience an instant rapport. You will find your perfect muse, the medium through which you convert a momentary visual experience into something tangible and permanent, be it printed or published. 

Snapshot Color Skopar. Image Source: Click here.
Note the rangefinder cam.

Shawn, my friend and Leica uber-enthusiast, is a careful photographer, His collection of lenses (all mint, I might add) includes some Voigtlander primes for his M-Series bodies. I became more interested in the compact Leica lenses since converting to Fuji mirrorless cameras. The  Fuji X-Pro1 was a digital homage to the Leica M3, as the former went to great lengths to simulate the style and feel of the latter. In addition, the mirrorless designed allowed a wide variety of lenses to be attached, breathing new life into those film era lenses sequestered in boxes and drawers, anxiously waiting for their chance to be used once again.  Alas, the APS sensor cropping of the Fuji bodies denied my vintage wide angle lenses their true aspirations of recording sweeping vistas and unusual compositions.

The full-framed Sony A7 changed all that. Introduced in 2013, they are now reasonably priced on the used market, so I purchased a near-mint specimen and some lens adapters (Nikon, Pentax Thread, Minolta)  to go with it. The body was also shallow enough to accept vintage rangefinder lens, should I encounter one. I looked down upon my newly acquired kit and I saw that it was good.

Troublemaker: Shawn, on hearing about my Sony, loaned me three Voigtlander M mount lenses to try, including the Snapshot Skopar I had shown an interest in. Since the proper adapters were relatively inexpensive, it was a chance to experience these elegant older lenses using digital capture technologies. I wound up purchasing both the earlier threaded adapter (L39) and and bayonet M adapter. I had some difficulty mounting the lenses, as the fit was very tight. For fear of damaging the mount, I seated the lens only finger tight and cradled the lens in my hand while I used it. I stepped outside and made a few exposures, and returned to my laptop to see what the little lens hath wrought.

Original File: Color Preset Vivid , Exposure Compensation +0.3.

This sample file was something of an eye-opener. The image was exposed using Aperture Priority, and the histogram shows that the Sony's metering was spot-on. The EXIF data indicated that I had an Exposure Compensation setting of + 1/3 stop, an anomaly, since I normally set it to - 1/3 to get a more pleasing (to me) rendition of the sky. I was not prepared for what I saw when I enlarged the file. There was a much wider variety of shades of green in the foliage, and an "snap" to the image that I hadn't seen before. The lens was incredibly compact, as one would expect from a rangefinder-dedicated lens design. And the undeniable quality of the construction whispered volumes. I was entranced.

Leica Or Leica? According to Shawn, the lens came in two variants. The first was designed for the pre-M series Leica bodies that used the screw thread mount, while later improved versions, identified as the "Color" Skopars, had bayonet mounts for the M-Series Leicas, and rangefinder coupling for precise focusing. In addition, an accessory viewfinder was available for use on the original Leica III and M series cameras.

I found this ad for a threaded non-color Snapshot Skopar at KEH Camera. Since I would be using it with a mirrorless camera body (either Sony A7 or Fuji X), the absence of a viewfinder wasn't a problem. The threaded mount wouldn't be an issue with either system, since the necessary adapter would always stay mounted on the lens. The price was close enough to the newly-manufactured Chinese lenses that are being offered in rangefinder-coupled Leica M bayonet mounts. So after several days of pre-purchase anguish, I bought it.

I can only hope that the little lens will perform as well as Shawn's Color Skopar, but it if just comes close I'll be very happy. After all, I've been using bargain-basement manually focused Chinese lenses, and I've been pleased with their performance so far. I will keep you posted.

Pink Ribbon Party - Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Not A Triumph Of Artistic Effort: It's simple shot when one has the bare minimum of equipment and enough time to execute the shot. If you hadn't guessed, it has been augmented by flash. Need proof?

Here is essentially the same shot without flash. I can tell from your collective gasp that you were surprised by how much the image depended on a speedlight or two. Here's what went down.

Placing The Key Light: I arrived on the "set" with a notion that i wanted to include the breast exam van, and when I found that it had a large graphic on the side, I decided that I would include as much as possible. As luck would have it, the morning sun arrived at an angle, putting the side of the van in shadow, while the open door was partially front lit.  There would be something of a balancing act to prevent the sunlit highlights from being overexposed beyond recognition while applying enough light to bring detail to the shadows. I went back to my car and retrieved a Flashpoint Nano light stand and used it to raise my key speedlight to a height of about six feet off the ground and positioned just out of the frame. Since I was in an area with limited foot traffic, I felt the stand's placement would not present a safety hazard. The speedlight defaults to an A-Channel, Group 1 setting, the same setting to my radio flash trigger. And while the flash to subject distance wasn't recorded, it was less than to the camera-to-subject distance of the final shot. I made the shot from a low crouch position.

Now I was getting close, but the cigar wasn't within sight. I intentionally aimed the flash head at the door, as I planned to position my subjects around the short stairway. I could see that the flash was definitely adding some shape to my subjects faces, but the shadow area wasn't bright enough to match the sunlit portions at the right of the frame. 

Second Flash: This was almost a Hail Mary move, but I fished out my second flash, a Flashpoint/Godox like my key light. It too was set to Channel A   Group 1, so I now had a second full-power flash at my disposal. I knew that if the output of this fill light was too much, I could decrease its output by covering a portion of the flash head with my hand. As it turned out, I needed all the light the fill flash could give me.

Light Is Additive: In this cropped portion of the final image, you can see that the second light filled in the shadows nicely while helping the Key Light brighten things up a bit. And as frosting on the cake, that fill light brought the graphic on the side of the van to life. By holding the fill light close to the lens axis, there is no indication of a secondary shadow.

Speaking Of Equipment...In past posts I have mentioned that occasionally Murphy's Law will hijack the situation and leave you unable to complete the assignment. To address this,  I always carry at least two of everything in case of a mechanical failure. In the case of my speedlights, they were pre-set to respond to the dedicated shoe-mounted radio controller. Either flash will function on-camera or as an off-camera remote right out of the bag. This allowed the nearly instant application of a second flash when it appeared the photo was about to go south.

Peninsula Outdoor Painters

1/250 second, F 6.5, ISO 100, Lens Focal Length 35mm APS

Nestled in an unincorporated area of Redwood City, the Emerald Hills Country Club turned a small lake into a "swimmin' hole", complete with a mini-water slide and changing houses. It was here that the Peninsula Outdoor Painters chose to paint landscapes inspired by lake's natural surroundings. The entrance was a little hard to find, but when I did, I was greeted by Sue Mendelsohn, a member of the POP and the subject of an upcoming Journal article. She had just started on a fresh water color when I arrived, so as she worked, I went about adjusting my composition and exposure.

First The Good News: Sue was painting by the water's edge, so a composition that included the painting and her hand was easy. Had she been a left-handed painter the situation would have been different because her arm would have obscured the canvas. The Bad News was the fence that surrounded the little lake had gaps through which the morning sun came shining through.

In these two test shots, you can clearly see the zebra-stripes that crossed her face in the left shot. The stripes were still obvious when I added a single speedlight  and a shoot-through umbrella. It still wasn't exactly what I wanted, so I made some adjustments to the lighting and the exposure. First, I lowered the ISO to 100. This would allow me to reduce the ambient exposure somewhat because I was locked into a shutter speed of 1/250 of a second, the camera' highest flash sync speed. Next I moved the flash to a butterfly position (aligned with the nose) and moved it as close to my subject as possible. 

As you can see, the flash exposure was boosted slightly, and the ambient (sunlight) exposure reduced a bit. The final photo still had highlights created by the sunlight, but they are hard to detect, as you can see in the left sample. Because of its position close to the subject, the flash had no effect on the lower edge of the photo, as you can see by the light-stripes on the bench and easel. 

Next Time: I am not totally without resources if a similar lighting dilemma occurs. I could have used a second umbrella as a "scrim", or light shield, to prevent any direct sunlight from hitting my subject. The "shadow" created by the scrim could then be lit with a flash, which bring the  exposure back to where it belongs, This presumes that I thought to bring a second light stand and a second umbrella, something that I don't normally do. But when I am next called upon to make an outdoor portrait, I will give it some careful thought.