Cloverdale: Nothing remarkable this weekend. There was a competitive event in Cloverdale, and I was asked to make some quick photos of the winners for the club's blog page. I found this an easy thing to do if you do some basic planning before the winners start lining up.
I have one basic rule about lighting, and that is the position of the light is more important than quality. These photos were made with a single speedlight mounted on a light stand and triggered by a small radio controller. The height of the flash was about seven feet off of the ground, and the head was angled slightly downward. I verified this by placing a small toolbox where I wanted my subjects to stand, positioning myself beside it, and then staring directly at the speedlight. If I wasn't perfectly aligned with the flash head, I would adjust the head angle until it was. The flash-to-subject distance was a bit under ten feet.
This alignment technique ensures a constant subject-to-flash distance, and that the flash output will be centered on the face while fading slightly on the scorecard and the hands. The normal inclination is to aim the flash at the middle of the subject, which could have resulted in overexposure of the scorecard and underexposure of the face. A subtle difference to be sure, but one that would be noticed by a careful observer.
Expose For The Background:To prevent squinting and uneven exposure, I positioned my subjects so that they faced away from the sun. Exposure was set to 1/125 second, F 9.0, ISO 200. I started at 1/250 of a second, but dropped it a full stop when the background was too dark. The sky was a bit overexposed, but the hint of clouds was good enough. I could then adjust the flash output to get the proper exposure on the face.
Tipping Your Hat: I should have noticed that the shadow cast by the wide brim of this hat was a bit intrusive, but since both of the eyes were lit, I let it go.
Speaking Of Backgrounds...:I was using an APS sensor FujiT2 with a zoom lens set to 55mm. This provided a slight telephoto effect, giving me a nicely out-of-focus background. Granted, the cars in the background were a bit large (foreshortening effect), but sufficiently out of focus as to not draw attention away from the subject's face.
Where's The Sky? It had not occurred to me at the time, when photographing the Juniors, I was able to completely eliminate the sky while retaining the rim lighting provided by the sun. I just realized that because my subjects were now shorter, my camera was aimed slightly downward, thus removing the sky from the frame. I could have achieved the same effect by rotating the LCD viewfinder downward and raising my camera over my head in the classic "Hail Mary" position.
In the end, this fifteen-minute exercise taught me something important about the subject height and how it affects the background. I guess I learned a lot more than I realized.
Say Hello To My Little Friend: The drone bee was an escapee from the hive "starter kits" that were being prepared for pickup at the Peninsula Feed Store in Redwood City. These kits were made available by the Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo Bee County, a group that helps bee keepers construct and care for hives of their own. These hives provide the environment with a natural pollination service, and their owner's friends and families with delicious honey.
Members of the Beekeepers Guild were on hand to help with the distribution. The "kits" (the wood framed mesh enclosure containing one queen and a swarm of drones) were being unloaded in the back lot of the store. Each kit's exterior was then vacuumed to catch any drone bees that might have escaped. This fugitive drone was handed to me for inspection, along with assurances that drones had no stingers. I gently nudged him from my palm to the back of my hand, and he stayed there for several minutes while I photographed the tasks in progress.
Here you can see the kits being unloaded from the truck and stacked in a sheltered area in the back of the store. They are delivered in clusters of five kits, and must be separated into individual units with a power saw.
The kits are vacuumed to remove any drones who managed to escape the enclosures. While stingerless, drone bees would surely be a distraction if they started buzzing about once they were heading for home in an enclosed car. Most came prepared with mesh bags to keep the bees contained if they managed a bee breakout on the drive to their new home.
The distribution was scheduled for 11:00 am and would end in one hour. The new beekeepers came with paperwork in hand, ready to be verified by a Guild member and to receive their kits. As soon as all was deemed in order, they were free to take their bees.
Trying Something New: In an attempt to make the bees more recognizable, I operated my camera with my left hand and holding my flash in my right hand, aiming it directly at the bees in the lower right corner of the frame. You can see that the effect on the bees is minimal, but I managed to overexpose the tops of the frames. If called upon to make a similar shot in the future I will grid or snoot the flash to get more light on the bees and less on the lids. I did not submit this image because I felt the skeptical man in the background might be a bit distracting.
This image was rejected because the beekeeper in the background was too small to help promote the bee pickup aspect of the event. It does highlight the preparation, but I wanted both aspects to be presented.
These caged queen bees were kept safe and warm in a belt pouch under the jacket of one of the Guild members. Up until now, I didn't think of my Fuji 10-24mm F 4.0 lens as capable of focusing this close, but this kind of foreground/background shot has lots of potential for establishing relevance in future photos.
The Guild Unmasked: I am grateful to the Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo County for working with me on this assignment. They were a lot of fun to work with. And if one of you reads this post, please turn a blind eye to any slight inaccuracies I may have unintentionally presented.
The assignment was to submit a pre-event photograph to publicize a gardening workshop presented by the UC Master Gardeners of San Mateo and San Francisco Counties. The free event would emphasize "crops" that could be easily grown in a home garden. Strawberry seedlings were being prepared for sale during the upcoming workshop and sale which the Journal wanted to publicize.
The shot itself was pretty simple. I found a location where my seedlings and my subject would be lit from behind to prevent squinting. Next, I needed to include a tray full of seedlings to emphasize the quantity available for sale. The tables used to arrange the seedlings were somewhat narrow, so I had the gardeners position a bench alongside the table and fill it with more seedlings. Unfortunately, the bench was a few inches lower than the original table, so there is a visible gap which is visible if you know to look for it.
Lighting: When working outdoors, I usually employ a shoot-through umbrella instead of a softbox. I find that the umbrella, when used with a 200 watt-second Godox AD200 gave me both the power and the portability to make the shot. It is a very portable setup, as the collapsed umbrella and the necessary umbrella hold take up very little space in my supplementary lighting bag.
Timber!Unfortunately, there is one major drawback that pops up when shooting outdoors. It seems that the open umbrella is an effective sail, and on this day, a gust of wind sent my umbrella and flash crashing to the ground shortly after the initial portrait was made. This is not the first time this has happened, and consistent with past episodes, there were two outcomes. First, the umbrella acted as a parachute and softened the landing, sparing the flash a fate worse than death. Second, the umbrella's fragile framework would be damaged and subsequently unusable. Unfortunately for me, said victim was a Manfrotto tri-fold collapsible that when collapsed, was more compact than my favorite Zumbrella. Sad to say, I knew better, and had, In fact, a simple solution which I wrote about in this older post. This oversight cost me a rather cool umbrella, one which has been discontinued by the manufacturer.
Next came the group shot, which was achieved with a sly bit redirection on my part. One of the participants, perhaps one of the members felt s/he should be included in the photo. In a rare bit of diplomacy on my part, I said I would photograph my original subject and then make a shot of the entire group, which I would have done anyway. S/he was thus placated, so I set about getting the shot ready. Since the umbrella had already been damaged, the group shot was made with direct, unmodified flash. The flash was moved farther from the group, so I would have removed the umbrella anyway, since it reduces the light output considerably.
When photographing outdoors, it is important to remind one's subjects that the visors on the ballcaps might cast unwelcomed shadows. I always tell them that if they can see the flash on the top of the light stand, their eyes will be in shadow. Other than that, shots like this can be a piece of cake, or more fittingly, a bowl of strawberries.
First The Good News: This photo of Bay Area artist Mirang Wonne was made at the opening of a showing of her work at a Burlingame studio. The photo required a fair bit of lighting on my part, but I am extremely pleased with the final product.
Key Light: The photo employed a 33" softbox as the key light. The flash was a Godox AD200 unit with the bare bulb fixture installed, which is my go-to light whenever time and space are available to accommodate its bulk and length setup time. The soft box was held aloft by a 8' light stand, and approximately 6' from the painting. I managed to reduce the glare spot in the upper left hand corner with some gentle burning followed by some "sponging" to increase the saturation slightly.
Fill Light: You probably would have missed the presence of a fill light in this photo. I mounted a speedlight using a Justin Clamp on the key light stand, and pointed it straight down towards the floor. This bounced some honey-colored light up into the subject, which would have gone unnoticed unless you looked for the second catchlights in my subject's eyes.
Rim Light: I mounted a third flash on a light stand and pointed it at the out-of-frame white wall at the right of the frame. This provided a very subtle edge light that helped to separate my subject's jacket from the dark background. I could have boosted the output further, but I didn't want to make this additional separation light too obvious. I am sure that nobody would have noticed it had I not brought it up.
Now The Bad News: I sometimes get excited when I see that a photo is beginning to take shape. Unfortunately for me, there is one thing that I sometimes overlook - Overexposure. You can see the highlights on my subject's right cheek and forehead. These areas, when analyzed in Elements, show that the value for the red component of the highlight is off the chart, and therefore unrecoverable using the Levels Adjustment tool.
Gamma Blowout: One important feature that I miss from my Nikon DSLR days is the View Mode that allows one to see where the highlights lose one of the three color channels (red, green, blue). On the LCD, these blown highlights appear as blinking red regions in the photo. This is a quick indication that the exposure needs to be reduced a bit, which is easier to do than attempting to recover some color from those overexposed regions.
Team Photo: Whenever I make the effort of setting up a flash shot, I always offer to make a "team photo", especially when the facility has given some extra effort to the cause. People appreciate this gesture more than you might think, and keeps me in the "good guy" column in their contacts lists. Let me offer a few suggestions about posing. First, you can see that I try to get everybody positioned so that nobody is facing the camera directly. Notice that the women in the back row overlap slightly, which I describe as "shingling". Also, try to keep all of the people wearing glasses on the same side, and position them on the same side as the light; You can see by the shadows that the light is coming from camera left, and that my one bespectacled subject is completely reflection free. Lastly, when you have kneeling subjects, be sure that the leg closest to the camera is "up". This "hides the fly", a subtle gesture that neatly removes a potential distraction.
Gung Hay Fat Choy! The Lunar New Year celebrations span several weeks here in the Bay Area. In San Mateo County, it started with a performance at the Hillsdale Shopping Center on Saturday, February 10, and will culminate with the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco on Saturday, February 24. The Millbrae event normally follows on the Saturday after the Hillsdale event, but was re-scheduled to Sunday due to inclement weather conditions.
Millbrae Parade, 2020
Year Of The Dragon: I made this photograph during the 2020 celebration, and was hoping to capture a similar photograph of the magnificent dragon. I could not verify its length, but can assure you that it is at least 50 feet long and is tended to by a crew of about 20 Millbrae High School Students. I was disappointed to hear that the school coordinator of the dragon team had retired, and that nobody has come forward to sponsor the club. Alas, the photo was not to be. Instead, Lion Dance Me provided a mini-dragon of sorts, along with five lion dancing teams, their drummers, and supernumeraries. They initially did their performance on a prepared stage, and you can see the finale a the top of this post.
At the far right you can see one dancer carrying an orb mounted on a staff. This is the Pearl, and it represents wisdom and knowledge. Traditionally, the Dragon is drawn to the Pearl, a metaphor representing the eternal quest for enlightenment.
This year the mini-dragon could easily move among the onlookers, giving everyone an up-close-and-personal encounter with the enchanted beast. I did my best to stay just ahead of the scrum, grabbing photos whenever I could, behaving like a true "run and gun" paparazzi. These six photos were the best of the "near misses" that I made during the Dragon's stroll down Broadway Street. My exposure was manually set to 1/250 of a second, F 16, flash set to full power with a beam spread of about 24mm. This gave me a restricted beam of light with a sharp edge fall off. There was some blown-out details at the edges of the fame, but reasonable exposure in the center. Was the exposure ideal? From a formulaic perspective they weren't, but it sometimes resulted in some rather dramatic images as you can see in the last row. The composition? Some unfortunate framing and the position of the dragon worked against me in some images, but the effect deserves an encore appearance in some future assignment. Remember that none of these images made the final cut, but I am intrigued by the results of my unorthodox lighting.
And The Winner Is: This is the shot I submitted for publication. It is better aligned with the expectations of the editor from a local newspaper. It gives a feeling for what happened at the event, has a distinct center of interest, thanks to the one yellow dragon standing tall, and includes lots of local residents who might actually identify themselves when the photo is published. The nice fluffy clouds add to a more festive feel to the photo, which is true to the intent of the celebration.
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* May you live in interesting times. Courtesy Google Translation
I had a free Thursday and decided to take an old camera out for a field trip. I decided to go "old school" and use my X-Pro 1 along with an 18mm F 2.0 Fujinon lens, one of the company's Holy Trinity of lenses that premiered with the camera. My choice resulted from my discovering that the camera had been in storage for a long time and that the battery had completely died. After installing a fresh battery and resetting all of the defaults, I decided to get reacquainted with the beast and take it for an outing. It turned out to be a lesson in appreciating how far the technology has come since the X-Pro1's introduction in 2012. For instance the lack of eyepiece diopter adjustment made it difficult to compose with anything more than a suggestion of how much detail I could achieve when focusing. I found myself making the exposure (I was shooting aperture priority) and viewing it on the LCD. I believe this is due to transitioning of my progressive bifocals blurring the viewfinder. Also, the camera is very slow when compared to more recent iterations of the X-Pro family.
To compensate for the inability to adjust the diopter of the eyepiece, I began checking the LCD display after each shot. This gave me an opportunity to examine the entire image by looking at the image, rather than viewing it through the camera itself. I was forced to evaluate the composition in its entirety, rather than centering my attention on the center of the image. I found myself re-composing and retaking my images in the way I did before going to the mirrorless format. I found that this system of shoot-and-peek made me evaluate the composition more critically, and it helped me catch several missteps in framing that I immediately corrected.
Intersection of the Shoreline Highway and Almonte Blvd.
This collection of businesses, two crow-flight miles southeast of Mill Valley's main drag, are both eclectic and colorful. Again, Marin county shows off the creativity of its residents in a variety of ways, from strategically placed organic sculptures to bold paint schemes sprinkled throughout the city.
Fence Festooned, Native Plant Nursery, Mill Valley
The surfer's booties, along with an errant cowboy hat, were found on the spires of this wrought iron fence. One can always speculate on who decided this would make for an interesting contrast of ideas, something of a surf-and-turf of clothing.
This excursion at the fringe of Mill Valley provided some new subjects to photograph, and in this particular locale, an opportunity to mourn the loss of the Dipsea Cafe, the only local restaurant I knew that served rainbow trout on the weekend brunch menu. Such a loss.
I had some time to kill before I was to meet a friend in Richmond, so I thought I'd take a 30-minute detour into Sausalito and spend the time looking for something to photograph with my 15mm F 4.0 Opteka wide angle macro lens, a lens I have barely touched in over three years. As I mentioned in the Morning Photo posting, it's a lens looking for a reason to exist. Yes, it can photograph at a 1:1 reproduction ratio and render images with world-width backgrounds. But the novelty wore off quickly when the images were a little soft with color-fringed edges. It turned out that I could not find a subject that would showcase the close-focusing capabilities and the wide angle of acceptance of the lens. Everything that caught my eye was pretty much two dimensional or too large to take advantage of the macro focusing capabilities. The canisters in this photo were about 12" in diameter, and were oddly rendered due to the short shooting distance. I attempted to correct the barrel distortion that curved the foreground, and was partially successful. The Opteka never received high marks in this regard. This was Sausalito, so of course I had to stop to admire the many yachts resting in their slips. The crisp whites and the cyan skies always catch my attention. I made tis shot intending to examine it for color fringing and other difficult to correct optical defects so common in inexpensive lenses. There was definitely some color flinging and a lack of sharpness along the edges, totally expected for a lens at this price point.
One of the most
memorable articles from Modern Photography was one where a Scandinavian
photographer who, armed with a Hasselblad 500, a 40mm Zeiss Distagon lens, and
some film, created several black and white images using a single egg
as a prop. He created one image where he photographed the soles of his model’s feet,
one wearing a black sock and the other bare, with the egg carefully nestled
between them. If the egg was a metaphor for the origins of life, the human
presence in the image made one ponder the evolution of our species from an
unusual perspective. The photographs gave me something to think about, since
those images have stayed in my intellectual photo album for nearly fifty years.
The objective of creating a decent image using this lens proved to be a "bridge too far". A huge expanse of unencumbered background is difficult to find so close to civilization, so I think I will swap the lens to something that is not quite so wide. And this exercise saved me the expense of buying this Pergear 14mm lens. it is tempting.
There is one thing that may me succumb to temptation and buy the lens: My Opteka is designed to work on a Nikon DSLR, and my employ an adapter to work on my mirrorless cameras. If if turns out that the Pergear is more compact than the Opteka PLUS the necessary adapter, it may be back in the running.
It has been 48 hours since this photo was made. It serves not as an example of a photographer's innate vision, but as a testament to quitting the game before realizing that a much better image was just a few steps away. To be clear, I could have gone back to this location and re-shot the photo under identical circumstances. Instead the sound of rain on the skylight only makes me think about what to cook for breakfast.
My problem was that I quit too soon. I noticed the contrast in the illumination levels between the cold-hued walls of the apartment building and the oasis of warmth in the carport. Because I was using a 50mm lens at the time, it had to back away from the subject to affect the desired composition. After previewing my first exposure, I was immediately attracted to how the camera rendered the contrasting blue and gold colors, but couldn't get the composition right. I really needed a slightly higher vantage point to show the tires of the car and the floor of the carport, but couldn't achieve this without breaking my "only from the sidewalk" perspective on where I am ethically permitted to make my street photographs. Had I broken this rule and actually walked up the ramp, I could have gained the necessary height, thereby giving my car something to sit on. A far less intrusive alternative would have been to take the "Hail Mary" approach and held the camera overhead, since I could accurately frame the image using the rotating LCD display. But I didn't think of that, so here I am, stuck by my computer as the rain forms a liquid barrier I am unwilling to breach.
Just for fun, I made some slight exposure adjustments in post production that brought out the contrasts in color. Seeing this made me want to return the exact spot and have a do-over. but as I said, the rain made that decision for me.
So I'm left with a near-miss of a photograph, one with potential for becoming part of the vast archive of notable digital images made on my morning walks. It becomes a reminder that the pursuit of any goal, even one as simple as a contribution to the Morning Walk collection, is worthy of one's all. I should have tried to solve the problem, rather than move on to the next photo opportunity. I regret that so much potential had been left on the sidewalk where I stood, failing to take the time to explore some other approaches.
The Freedom Train: Since the Pandemic, participation in the annual Martin Luther King Freedom Train appears to have dwindled. In years past, the event included presentations to civic leaders and teachers who furthered the promotion of Dr. King's ideals. While other residents chose to use the holiday as a Day Of Service, many continue to ride the CalTrans Freedom Train to a commemorative parade in San Francisco. While not a dedicated train, it provides free transportation for those who were ready to pick up their tickets at the San Mateo Train Station and board when it arrived at 10:10 am.
When I arrived at the station, I was surprised to find that there had been no presentation ceremony, and that staples of events past were gone, specifically the customary singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” I found a relatively small crowd milling about, bereft of the sweatshirts, caps, posters, and other items commemorating Dr. King.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw several children mugging for their mothers, each carrying a graphic of Dr. King at the Washington Monument. As I approached, I attempted to make several "if nothing better comes along" shots in case nothing better could be had. When they saw that I had taken an interest in them, they became very eager to cooperate with me. For the record, the camera was a Fuji X-T2, the lens was a 10-24 F 4.0 lens and a Godox V1 Round Head speedlight with a grid installed. I had set my exposure (1/250 of a second, F 11, ISO 400) as a starting point. The sky and clouds in the sky were not particularly attractive, so I changed to F 16 in the hopes of improving the background. When the background exposure was satisfactory, I adjusted the flash output to achieve a reasonable exposure on my subjects' faces. Since the flash was mounted on the camera and there wasn't time to experiment, I ran with what I had and hoped for the best.
Since I wanted the flash to produce a relatively narrow light spread, so I had already mounted a grid. This combination produces a relatively even disk of light with a soft by distinct edge. In this pair of photos you can see the grid produced a round, centered illumination pattern on the left sample. On the right you can see that when the head is tipped up slightly, the light falls off at the lower half of the frame.
If we re-examine the published image, you can see that the subjects received almost no light from the waist down. This offers two advantages, The legs, being closer to the flash because of the low camera angle, are not subject to the usual overexposure. Secondly, nearly all of the light is concentrated above my subjects' waists. This emphasizes the faces and the papers they are holding. I may continue to fret about the many "what ifs" I have concerning light quality, flash placement, the quality of the clouds ad nauseum, but in the end, it was a reasonable shot considering that from the time I first saw my subjects to when the last exposure was made was a mere three minutes.
I used a similar technique when I photographed the official dedication of a monument to the displaced Japanese citizens during World War II. Instead of a grid, I adjusted the beam angle using the speedlight's internal adjustments along with the tipping of the flash head itself. It kept me from burning the foreground subjects beyond recognition while concentrating the light on the center of the dark bronze statue. I don't know if anybody was disappointed to find the statue was more "gold" in color, but that bit of bottled sunlight helped me capture the rapt expressions of the many admirers.
The edge softness of the Godox V1 makes it a personal favorite so long as I resign myself to shooting manually. The TTL controls is just to fussy, and by applying the proper adjustments, brings a lot more control than most conventional speedlights.
No More New Lenses: I keep reminding myself that my Sony A7 only exists as a platform for my existing legacy lenses. Through the years, I have acquired samples sporting Pentax Screw (M42), Pentax K Bayonet, Minolta SR, Nikon AI and non-AI, and most recently, four Zeiss lenses with Contax/Yashica mounts. I thought I would be content with these manually focused SLR lenses, and swore I wouldn't buy any dedicated Sony full-framed E mount lenses. I broke my own promise when I purchased a Tamron 24mm F 2.8 auto focus lens, which I would use on those rare occasions when I wanted to free myself from the manual-focusing rituals. But that would be it. I thought I could stop this addiction to buying additional lenses cold turkey.
My friend Shawn, in his infinite wisdom, loaned me three Voigtlander lenses, prompting me to get adapters for both the Leica screw mount (M39) and Leica bayonet. After playing with those lenses, I decided that I absolutely had to own a 25mm Snapshot Skopar of my own. I got a used one with the Leica screw mount as it was designed to be zone focused and therefore wasn't manufactured with a focusing cam. I passed on the optical viewfinder because I could accurately compose using the Sony's electronic viewfinder. For the record, I love this lens, but it did make me think about buying/using some of the new and inexpensive Chinese made Leica mount lenses. I found a 7Artisans 35mm Pancake Lens at Seawood Photo in San Rafael, and I bought it for a bit of dumb fun. While it wasn't expensive, the 35mm focal length was a bit too long for my taste. I proved too difficult to actually use, and can only conclude that it was purchased as a gag gift for a rich uber-enthusiast.
The TTArtisan Esthetic: Shawn suggested that I should consider purchasing one of the new Chinese lenses that attempted to duplicate the look and feel of those elegant Leitz lenses for a fraction of the cost. One of the lenses , the TTArtisans, copied the look and feel of the expensive Leitz Sumarron-M 28mm F 5.6. It was designed with the film shooting Leica enthusiast in mind, as it comes with a rangefinder cam to aid in critical focusing. I must admit that the lens is attractive, and those who have reviewed it have commented on how well the manufacturer has simulated the true rangefinder experience. Improper calibration of this focusing cam is one problem that my digital workflow has deftly sidestepped, since I use the focus peaking feature when viewing through the electronic viewfinder.
The 7Artisans Functionality: The other serious contender was one made by 7Artisans, one with the same 28mm F 5.6 performance specifications but a different optical formula, was my ultimate choice. The overall design was more reminiscent of the most current lens esthetic, while the TTArtisan lens looked more at home mounted on an older, pre-M series body, which I believe are called Barnack bodies after the original designer. Several bloggers gave this lens the performance edge over the TTArtisan interpretation. So I was primed and ready.
The spur to action came from an email from B&H Photo announcing a major discount on the 7Artisans lens if I was willing to wait on delivery. I placed my order on November 28, and didn't receive the lens until January 4, about 5 weeks later. I had paid a total of $145.50 (tax and shipping included) at a time when the suggested retail was closer to $300.00. It was nicely packaged in a flip-top box containing both front and rear lens caps, instructions, and a slip-on lens hood. Also included was the small screwdriver necessary for adjusting the focusing cam. Missing were the instructions on how that was to be done and the special calibration target, an omission I discovered after viewing some YouTube videos. I wasn't concerned about the calibration of the focusing cam because I was using the lens on a mirrorless camera with an electronic viewfinder, but heard that Leica users weren't happy with the having to do the calibration themselves.
On January 24, 2024, the lens still costs less than the TTArtisan at B&H Photo if you are willing to wait.
The Frame Line Issue: Another irritant for Leica users was the apparent mismatch of the bright frame finder with the actual focal length of the lens. According to a YouTube video (below), the 7Artisans lens, when mounted, signaled the body to display the 35mm frame lines, while the TTArtisans lens brought up the proper 28mm lines, as one should expect. Perhaps this flaw may have initiated a sell-off of existing lenses so that a corrected, "Mark II" version could be introduced. I am sure this would be good news to the Leica contingency, but as I mentioned, not something I was concerned about.
Filter Size: The 35.5mm filter thread must be part of a Leica compatibility issue. Filters in this size are expensive and difficult to source. In lieu of a protective filter, I'm going to look for an inexpensive screw-on lens hood, just to keep my fingers off of the front element of the lens.
The Pudding: I have played with the lens a bit, good weather being a little scarce right now.
Lucky Drive in Kentfield, Marin County
Lucky Drive in Kentfield, Marin County
Lucky Drive in Kentfield, Marin County
17th Street, San Francisco
Cole Valley, San Francisco
So far, I've found the lens very satisfactory, although its specifications are very close to my Snapshot Skopar, which is a full stop faster. Still, the 7Artisans is a fun lens, and one that I will use from time to time. Neither the Snapshot Skopar nor this 7Artisans lens would be my first choice for an early morning walk where slow maximum aperture might be an issue. But for daytime walks, either will work just fine.
Comparison Video: Matt Osborne's video gives a good comparison between the TTArtisan and the 7Artisans lenses. During the summary, I heard the blogger speaking glowingly of the TTArtisan, but cites mostly the physical attributes and the appearance of the lens, while deigning to acknowledge the slightly better contrast of the 7Artisans. I cannot confirm the bright frame issue, and am sure the calibration concerns are valid. However, it certainly is $140.00 worth of fun, especially since it can cover a full frame.
