Getting A Fuji Lens Hood On A Meike Lens

Buy yours here.

Lens Hoods: In keeping with the whole pancake theme, I needed an equally flat lens hood to go with the lens. I wanted to have a hood like the one I just installed on my Fuji 27mm F 2.8, but knew it wasn't going to be a slam dunk. Ah, the journey to acquisition is a long and twisted path, one that I shall share with you, since the solution was a convergence of factoids gathered during my 50 years of photography.

Male Or Female? Before we start, let's talk about filter threads. Lenses that can accept threaded accessories usually have the proper size printed on the lens bezel. In the case of the Meike 2.8 / 28mm (2.8  is the maximum aperture, 28mm is the focal length), we see the number 49 which means it will accept standard 49mm accessories. Now if you look closely, you can see that the threads are located on the inside of the bezel, which means an outside-threaded (male) accessory will be needed. I looked for a lens hood that is both male threaded AND dome shaped, and my choices were:

• Nikon's HN-35 for the 45mm 2.8 P (circa 2001)
• Nikon's HN-4 for the 45mm 2.8 GN (circa 1969)

I found several hoods from which to choose, but they would have been "free" had I purchased the lens to which it was attached, the prices varying from $300 to $500. That's one expensive hood. To top it off, I would have needed an adapter to convert the Meike's 49mm lens thread to the customary 52mm Nikon thread.

Now Fuji makes the exact lens hood I'm looking for, but it's designed for mounting on the X70, the other fixed-lens Fuji camera. Unfortunately, the hoods have female threads, designed to engage the Fuji cameras' 49mm male threaded bezel. So near, yet so far.

Ancient Wisdom: When I first started dabbling in cameras, photographers often adapted lenses and accessories to maximize their usefulness. One trick was to mount a 50mm lens backwards to the front of a short telephoto lens, producing a super-marcro lens combination for extreme closeup photography. Manufacturers began to make threaded adapters to facilitate this nose-to-nose lens setup for almost any reasonable combination of thread sizes. 

On the off chance that some eBay seller might have one, I searched for a "male male 49mm adapter" and chose this one from several stocking sources.  Then all I had to do was thread the adapter onto the Meike lens and have male threads available to accept the Fuji-style hood. And if I needed to add a filter, I could simply remove the adapter-hood unit, screw in any 49mm filter directly to the lens bezel, and re-attach the hood. Brilliant!  

Now the OEM lens hood for the X-70 was quite expensive, so I purchased a JJC knockoff on eBay.  

With the thread adapter and hood installed, the package was not that compact. However, if the hood was removed, the depth of the camera would be significantly reduced, almost as shallow as the 27mm Fuji lens. The lens hood provided a lot of protection from fingerprints, so much so that I might not need to install a protective UV filter, thus allowing the lens to function "au naturel". 

How Do They Compare In Size? Size-wise, the lenses themselves are comparable. The hooded Fuji lens is on the left, the hooded Meike on the right. The hoods, when installed, do matter, as the Meike hood (49mm) is much larger than Fuji's dedicated hood (39mm). You can also see that, without an aperture ring, the Fuji lens looks a little toy-like.

Now let's go make some photographs.*

I was ready to take the Meike out and see if it performed as well as I hoped. Mounted on an X-Pro 1 body, the lens proved to be an inspirational combination. I would say the lens exceeded my expectations in the sharpness department, although the colors seemed "different" from what I'm used to. Can't put my finger on it, and it could be my imagination. 

I am undeniably pleased with my purchase. 

*The photos were actually made on April 18, 2022, long before this post was published.

Altered Reality - April 19, 2022

 This photograph was taken on April 19, 2022. Several people have seen it, and the consensus is one of puzzlement: What am I looking at, and where did those colors* come from?

These are droplets of water on a Tesla whose roof appears to be made of glass. The blue color is a reflection of the morning sky, and the green droplets are reflections from the trees just across the street. The yellow and orange droplets? I suspect it has something to do with light that is both reflected and refracted through the droplets, since orange and yellow are "next door neighbors" in the color spectrum. Paging Roy G. Biv! Paging Roy G. Biv!

The post title "Altered Reality" is actually a misnomer, because it isn't. The droplets of water were indeed rendered in vivid orange and yellow, although the green droplets were originally emerald green but didn't render well. I'm guessing the former colors were the result of direct sunlight being refracted within the drop, while the latter was a reflection of the background trees.

I set out on these morning walks to learn something about light. I guess I still have a long way to go.

Addendum May 8, 2022: For a lark, I inverted the image just to see what it looked like.

Whoa! Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

*Only one viewer correctly identified this as a reflection from the top of an automobile. I suspect it is because he is a tall man, and used to looking down on car roofs. Perhaps he also owns a Tesla.

More On The Pancake Lens

First iteration: Fujifilm 27mm F 2.8 lens

For the most part, I've been happy with my old Fuji 27mm pancake lens, in spite of its lack of an aperture ring. To the good, it's been a very sharp lens. To the bad, it close focusing ability have been less than stellar. But it stands out as the "King Of Compact Lenses", sitting so close to the camera that it looks like a body cap. For that reason it, it makes any Fuji X body very easy to carry and equally easy to hide in the folds of a loose fitting shirt, if required. 

In my case, this lens' raison d'être was to provide a normal lens option when I carry my minimal Fuji kit. Here, I have an X-100T with a wide angle adapter for most work, and an X-E1 body with an 50mm f/2 lens for tight head shots. But if the wide angle X-100T conks out, I would be difficult to make a picket fence shot with that modest telephoto lens on the X-E1. I wanted a compact "normal" lens to carry as a backup, and at the time, the Fuji pancake was the only viable option. I found it comforting to know that the lens was there if I ever needed it.

Lens Hood Fixation: I'm a big fan of lens hoods, not so much for their ability to prevent glare (few work really well) but for their roll-bar ability to keep wayward fingertips off the glass. One of my gripes about the original 27mm lens was its lack of a dedicated lens hood. That shortcoming had been remedied in the 27mm lens' reboot, introduced in 2021, which sported a hood similar to the one found on the Fuji X-70, only smaller.

     Chameleon's fused-lid eye                                     Nikon 45mm pancake lens                          Fuji 27mm 2.8 lens, Second Iteration  

The evolution of a compact, somewhat functional lens hood for the pancake lens started a while back. The first evidence of the bowl-shaped hood came from a chameleon, an unusual lizard native to Madagascar island and best known for its ability to change color. Assuming this was the first domed lens hood, a timeline might appear as follows:

• 60 million B.C.: Chameleons appeared on earth. In time, the eyelids would fuse together leaving a small round opening through which the lizard sees.
• 2001 A.D.: Nikkor 45mm 2.8 Lens introduced with the HN-35 hood, which measures 52mm across the threads.
• 2021 A.D.: Fujinon 27mm 2.8 lens reboot includes the FLH-XF27P lens hood, which measures 39mm across the threads.

It suffices to say that the new Fuji lens hood follows a parallel development from the chameleon to the Nikkor pancake. For the moment, I've postponed my purchase of the Fuji 27mm reboot, but I did buy the hood for the my current lens.

Get yours here.

Proliferation: It seems that Meike has offered its own pancake lens, a 28mm 2.8 since 2017. It was the compact, manual focusing lens I wanted with the aperture ring I needed for a price ($60.00) that screamed "buy me", which I did. The lens hasn't arrived, but I'll present an update when I've had a chance to play with it a bit.

This whole experiment may be for naught if the lens turns out to be a dud. But it has an important attribute: It's as compact as my precious Fuji 27mm, which considering how much I paid for it, it truly is. So if it doesn't do the job, I'm not out a ton of money.

More will follow.

Rotary Cleanup - The Ethics Of Post Production

Rotary International held a cleanup in the Coyote Point shoreline, and I was contacted by the  Editor In Chief to provide a photograph for publication. Since it was an outdoor affair, I was sure flash would be necessary, but went with my X-T1 and X-T2 bodies with my 16-55 and a 50-200 lens instead of my more flash-friendly X-100T. My main flash was a Adorama Zoom Li-on (a.k.a. Godox) with a Nikon SB-80 speedlight in my camera bag as a backup. I carried 3 sets of spare batteries for the cameras, just to be safe.

The speaker has been raised to improve the range.

In spite of my best efforts, shots made during the opening ceremonies were destined to failure. The odd photo is the result of every possible correction I was able to make, but in the end I would be defeated by the shooting angle, the position of a microphone, and sun glasses.

I made the image my kneeling on the ground and placing the camera in the shadow of my main subject's head. This would insure that no stray light would be bouncing around inside the lens. However, atmospheric moister scattered the sunlight, making a supernova about my speaker's head. But the image is free of those lines of brightly colored polygons that usually appear whenever some sunlight sneaks into the internals of the camera lens.

The presence of an on-camera flash is not so obvious, in part due to the fact that the beam spread was not as wide as the viewing angle of the lens. The result is light fall-off at the top and bottom edge of the photo. Had the lighting been even, my subject's legs would be seriously overexposed. Luckily, the concrete helps silhouette the lower legs which helps the viewer "fill in the details" of the underexposed lower legs.

It was a fair walk to the shore from the staging area. I had an idea that I wanted a cute kid in the photo, but hadn't thought about the background.  When I grabbed this shot and saw the overhead powerlines in the background, I knew I had the include them, as they would immediately identify the Coyote Point shoreline.

As my subjects moved about, I made some sketch photos, thinking about what I would like to have them do for the photo. I knew I'd have to face the power lines so they could be in the background, but wasn't sure what I should put in the foreground.

It's interesting to see the shell bits fall from Hailey's fingers. The girls were picking out the small bits of glass that got mixed in with the shells.

A few minutes later, I saw Hailey deposit some trash in the garbage bag held by  her father. As soon as I chimped the image, I knew that this was what I was after.

I called Hailey over and showed her the image so she would understand exactly what I had in mind. Just then, her mother brought over a large, wet garbage bag held by one of those mechanical grabbers, so I told her to give it to Hailey while I changed position so the shoreline and the power poles would appear in the background. After a single shot, I adjusted the flash output and made the final shot. When I chimped the shot, I knew it had everything I wanted.

An Ethical Dilemma: Wide angle lenses introduce their own unique set of problems. While most people consider these visual anomalies "distortions", they are actually the results of an exaggerated perspective created not by the lens but by the distance to the optical center of the lens. In this case, the subject's left foot is physically closer to the optical center than the right. The short working distance exaggerates the perspective, resulting in the mismatched feet. But this is the price one pays for wide lenses and short working distances. 

Displaced Hip: You will see that in the left image, my subject's right hip appears more angular that it really is. In the right image, I used the Liquify Tool and flattened the contour in less than a minute. I wish that I could have sent the image with the recontoured hip, but as a photographer, I am bound to present an image that is unaltered, and therefore accurate, representation of what I actually saw. What adjustments I can morally make are confined to cropping (framing) and some exposure adjustments (brightness), but beyond that, nothing. So I sent the image, displaced hip and all, and hope the photo's viewers see only Hailey lifting that blob of gunk into the trash bag.

I promised to send the family a copy of the published image, and when I do, I think I'll be forgiven for sending them the recontoured version. The hip adjustment I made is very natural looking, but from a journalistic point of view, it's an unacceptable modification. 

I Need A New Lens

This Fujifilm 27mm F 2.8 lens serves a very important function. In my minimalist 2-camera photo kit it is the backup lens that I can use if my X100T conks out and I need a more normal lens to replace the 60mm short telephoto that normally rides on my X-E1 body. It's protected to a small plastic box and sits quietly at the bottom of my camera bag, ready to save the day when catastrophe comes to join the party.

I bought the lens long before my fanboy membership came up for renewal. The reports on the lens were mixed to the good. While it is a very sharp lens, it has a relatively slow maximum aperture of F 2.8. It uses an odd, 39mm filter. Its near-focus ability isn't that great. There is no dedicated lens hood. But there is one thing this Fuji pancake lens lacks. It should be quite obvious when viewed from above.

It has no aperture ring.

Since I started my manual only vision quest in 2020, those little numbers have become very important to me. I've gotten used to seeing them whenever I glance down on the camera. But after using the lens on several morning outings, I miss those familiar numbers, and feel hampered when I can't make those exposure-altering adjustments from above. I am confident that the legion of Leica photographers, notorious for eschewing "fly by wire" cameras, would agree with me.

Last week, in a moment of indecision, I decided to mount the 27mm on an X-E1 body because I couldn't decide which manually focused lens I should carry with me. I didn't bother to switch to manual focus because in a lens this compact, the focusing ring was inconveniently narrow. After one morning of shooting,  I was very pleased with the results, and easily surrendered to its sharpness and ease of operation. Maybe this will become a Goldilocks lens, not too long, and not to short, but just fast enough.  But still, it had no aperture ring, Adjustments are made with the thumb wheel on the back of the camera.

Buy yours here.

In early 2021, Fuji re-issued the little pancake with some notable upgrades. First it is a WR (weather resistant) lens. Second, it now has a dedicated lens hood. But it was the third upgrade that really caught my attention: It now has an aperture ring. And after two years of looking down at those little numbers, it would be a comfort to know I could enjoy that same level of control in a compact auto-focus lens.

Since there in short supply, I think I'll visit Fireside Camera and place a special order for one. Support your local camera store, I say, and allow myself a few weeks to cool off in case I change my mind, which I never do.