This was with the Tokina 90mm macro lens.
A great older DSLR that can be bought very cheaply nowadays.
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One of the last shots I took with my old D200 Nikon.
This was with the Tokina 90mm macro lens. A great older DSLR that can be bought very cheaply nowadays. Taken with a 40 year old manual focus Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens on my super cheap GH1 Panasonic micro four thirds camera body via a $20 adapter. At f2.8, plenty of detail and a stunningly smooth rendering.
You can get adapters for nearly all the old Slr and interchangeable lens rangefinder film lenses on m4/3 (strictly manual focus and they multiply the focal length 2x). The prime lenses from the better brands (and some surprisingly cheap makers) can be lovely and full of character. They are currently chasing one another in acrobatic flights as part of their bonding/pairing and territory behaviour, but then will pause to feed. Our old flowering bird plum is in near full blossom now so we'll get up to 4 or 5 in it at a time.
Always intensely social; constantly displaying, playing, grooming and singing.
Budgies were the first birds I ever kept as a child and regardless of how commonplace they may be they still are magically diverting. I've just done something I never thought I'd do; sell my lovely old D200 Nikon.
Don't get me wrong; I think it's still a superb camera and probably one of the best options for a serious but seriously financially challenged photographer, but I have a D300 and I love it just as much and I was thinking 'well do I need 2 Dslrs and should I get instead another better compact camera (than our S95 Canon) that I'll take with me more?' This little Panasonic was listed with it's famous 20mm 'pancake' lens for a bargain price, that I knew I'd more than recoup on the lens alone, so I snapped it up. I took a few test shots while pretty much set on selling it as I needed the money but...WOW! See above. The wee Gf1 is a pleasure to use; just like a classic film rangefinder and the 20mm f1.7 lens is solid gold. I don't think it optically gives up anything to my Tokina 90mm macro; fabulous! What a combination, I'm keeping it. Genus Acanthoxyla.
Sometimes our roses seem to have something eating them aside from possums...not to worry; they're perfectly happy when transfered on to our Pohutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa) trees where they nibble distinctive and harmless half-moon chunks out of the leaves. I've tried to emphasise their cryptic character here by neither adding flash nor spot-boosting contrast or acuity. They can be remarkably large, easily spanning a hand's length, so are comfortable insect subjects for shorter focal length (~50mm) macro lenses (particularly on crop sensor Dslr's like my old D200 Nikon). A lot of the reference photos you'll see of this lovely violaceous single rose tend to be blown-out magenta in tone.
I suppose it's because so many photographers (myself included) love late-in-the-day angled light with its associated warm colour shift. This is I think a much better representation of this rose (captured here under bright hazy light); it really is near-blue. Nice scent too. It was a hot morning in the tea house and I couldn't resist the sheer overblown quality of this cactus's flowers
Now you have to deal with it too :-). Light through a gap in the clouds after the rain; it's all about the light.
Such a common plant but so amazingly beautiful. So beautiful and alien these structures and also surprisingly difficult to photograph well.
Getting the tone accurate in post-processing and dealing with the depth of the elements during the taking are the issues; but I'm happy with this result. Using my 10 year old D200 Nikon and my 25 year old 50mm Sigma macro. At lower ISO settings this combo performs to my complete satisfaction. I've been a bit distracted from posting recently but will be fixing that soon :-) We have a number of these small magnolias growing under larger trees.
Nice early Spring colour and interest and they're happy in part-shade. This is the famous 'Plastic Fantastic' made by Cosina but variously branded; my example here is a 'Vivitar' version. Most commonly seen in the auto focus form it was also produced in a manual focus version, this one is a Nikon F (Ai) mount. It is a relatively simple design of 5 elements in 4 groups that natively goes to half life-size (full life-size with a screw-in adapter lens). I used this excellent lens before scoring a, usually very expensive, Tokina 90mm ATX f2.5. The first thing you notice when handling it is the incredibly light weight due to nearly every component (though not the mount) being made of moulded toy-grade plastic (you can see the seam line clearly on the barrel for instance on the picture below). No fancy engraving here just quality paint all the way (!) and look at that rattly dinky aperture ring. Not really calculated to inspire confidence or pride of ownership; but it works fine and the focusing is nice and firm. And here's a front-on view; it comes as I said in a slew of brands but if you see these specifications and it looks like this then it's the same lens. A real metal mount. It was nice and positive on our D300. Below are some samples; pretty much straight from the Nikon as .jpg files. Nice and sharp at the middle apertures; say f5.6-f11 but it's quite ok wide open. Lenses with relatively few elements often have very nice colour out of the camera and this lens to my eye definitely demonstrates that characteristic. So if you run across one of these super-dinky lenses in a mount compatible to your camera system and you're looking for a cheap macro/bug/flower/detail option I would definitely recommend it. After all it's unlikely to cost more than a set of extension tubes and is far more versatile. As I said previously, had I not snagged a Tokina 90mm I would still be very happily using this lens (and indeed it cost me so little that I delayed reselling it). Cheers!
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Roger
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