Recycled Glass - Bonus Points

These photos aren't great but I am posting them to show Tanis the difference in focal length between a 50mm lens (almost her max reach currently) and my little Olympus 200mm f4 (it is the longer one shown in the first post).

Here's the 50, and yes it's not a very sharp photo. When the subject is further away it's harder to see whether it's in focus or not (of course, if the subject is really far away like a mountain or something, then it is easy because you can just set it to infinity and everything will be in focus).



and the 200mm taken from the same spot:



This has me excited to try out the 500mm mirror lens that we got from dad. As long as the image quality is good, it should get us nice and close to the wildlife. I hand held those shots but I found it a lot harder to do with the longer lens.

Jewel asked if she could use these old lenses with her Canon Rebel and the answer is "yes". For $13 she could get this adapter and use her camera with all the lenses that I have used in these posts:



She can't use old Canon lenses that have the "breech lock" style of mount (unfortunately this is the mount used on all of dad's nice looking Canon lenses) because back then, those lenses were located closer to the film negative than the distance to the digital sensors in our cameras. As a result, you lose the ability to focus to infinity unless you get an adapter with a corrective glass element in it, but that is not ideal either because it will have an effect on image quality and the light gathering ability of the lens. My understanding is that while you can also mount Nikon lenses on a Canon body, you can not mount old Canon lenses on a Nikon body.

But there is one advantage that Olympus has in using legacy glass and that is its in-body image stabilization. Olympus is definitely the underdog and can't even compete with the "Canikon" juggernauts when it comes to sales. But there's no denying that this is a company that knows photography. Olympus was the first company to feature a dust reduction system which cleans the sensor of dust particles that would otherwise show up as spots in your photographs. Olympus released this Supersonic Wave Filter (SSWF) back in 2003 and other companies have followed suit by releasing their own versions: Sony (2006), Canon (2006), Pentax (2006), and Nikon in (2007). I got those dates from wikipedia along with this quote:

"There have been several attempts by camera magazines to test the various dust reduction systems to see how effective they are. Pixinfo,[2] Chasseur d’Images,[3][4] and Camera Labs[5] have all published their opinions, which can be summarized as saying that none of the systems are completely effective, but that the Olympus SSWF system is significantly better than most of the others, with the Nikon system perhaps a close second."

Also, Olympus was the first company to introduce live view for digital cameras that allowed you to use the lcd screen as though you were looking through the viewfinder - I find this very helpful for legacy lenses because it allows me to zoom in on the image to 10x magnification in order to get the focus right (of course you almost have to be on a tripod for that fine tuning).

But the thing that I find most useful is Olympus' in-body image stabilization. It just makes sooooo much more sense to pay for that technology once and to have in your camera so that it benefits any lens you attach, rather than having to pay for it each time you buy a lens and having to decide which lenses you will get with stabilization and which ones you wont. It is such a good idea, that Canikon will have no choice but to eventually copy it - you can bank on that.

To give an example of the difference this makes, I just snapped two hand-held pictures of our telephone with my 100mm f2.8. Because it was indoors with available light through the window, the shutter speed had to be slower - which led to "camera shake" blurring.



Then I turned on my camera's IS and told it that the particular lens to be stabilized was a 100mm. This is the difference it made:



Now despite the promoting I have been doing, I don't believe that my Olympus fourthirds camera is the best camera for using legacy lenses. No, the best camera for legacy lenses has to be an Olympus micro fourthirds (mft) like their new "digital pen" series.



Even though this E-P1 is the first-generation of its class, and is only half the size of my E-510 digital SLR, it has a more powerful and better performing image sensor than mine. Also, because the sensor is closer to the lens mount, it is possible to get adapters for any type of lens - because it's easy to make thicker adapters for lenses that need to be further away, but for my camera you can't make adapter rings thin enough for some lenses that need to be closer (like dad's Canon lenses).

But the main reason why I think MFT is the ultimate legacy platform? Because the compact, beautiful camera body is the perfect match for these compact beautiful lenses. Here it is with an old Olympus 38mm pancake lens:



This is a powerful interchangeable lens digital camera that you could put in your coat pocket. It is a back-to-basics, deliberate style of photography that is really starting to appeal to be. And did I mention how good it looks? Here it is next to one of its ancestors, wearing an optional "leatherette skin":



Another glamour shot:



I don't have one of these yet but when the next generation models come out with a viewfinder that you can look through instead of just the lcd screen on the back - I will definitely be tempted. Until that time, I will just keep collecting nice glass and continue trying to convince Heather that she needs a small camera of her own. I suppose that I could sell my dslr to finance it...


But then how would I take pictures of the PEN?



- C