Knuckledragger

I've gone (back) down the rabbit hole of Soviet era M42 lenses. I did this once before, in the mid 00s. Back then everything was much cheaper and the world was less on fire. Now we have Putin making a mess for everyone including himself. Also DSLRs shoot video and a legion of would be cinematographers have driven up the price of old manual focus glass to a prices that butt up against modern AF lenses. In the late 90s, I worked for an elite and famous ivy league school in the media center. I was the only person on staff who had a clue about sound. I had to work with a professional sound company to do the commencement every year. The main guy at that company told me that "vidiots" were the worst part of being a sound engineer. He had a laundry list of sins that video production people committed in the field and was able to point out half a dozen of them from our perch in sound booth. I'm not saying it's entirely justified, but I've had a 25 year prejudice against video production people ever since. What they've done to the price of old manual lenses has not improved my disposition toward them at all. First, I'm glad I got the lenses that I have when I did. The Meyer/Pentacon Orestors and Orestegors have gone up hugely in price. The Tair and Sonnars even moreso. I never bought the gargantuan Jupiter 85mm F/1.5 and ...I'm totally okay with that. It was an overpriced and underperforming boat anchor of a lens at $250. At $600 it's a joke. (As an aside, other than the legendary Canon 85L, I don't think too much of most superfast lenses. Giant apertures aren't that interesting to me.) I the post above I talked about the nutball Janpol enlargement lens. There are a bunch for sale on the 'Bay. I will be picking one up ...eventually. Currently I've been reading up on the Soviet made Helios 44 series of 58mm lenses. At least I think they're all 58mms. It's a large series of lenses made over decades, at 3 different manufacturing plants. Most are M42 mount. A few early versions are M39. In spite of the clickbaity title, this short video is a good primer: I'm sure I don't want a 44M-4. The 44-2 (depending on which version) is a fine lens with a lot of character. Supposedly the 44M-2 has superior bokeh. Finding a reputable seller offering a clean copy of either at this point and time is a nontrivial task. This page covers the relative strengths and weaknesses of the 44-2. The bokeh it produces really is nuts: Supposedly, the 44M's bokeh is superior. To paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks, being a resident of the "complete realm of sanity and reason" that I am, I want both the 44M-2 and the 44-2. Don't be surprised if I have another half dozen manual lenses by fall.

^ That reminds me of this incident from 5 years ago.

This might be too subtle for some.

The Vineyard postal system operates in its own spacetime continuum in the summer. The population here goes up roughly tenfold, yet the number of staff remains the same.

I finished the first roll of film I put through the Leica C3. The C3 displayed remarkable film economy. I got 26 or 27 frames out of it. I still need to transcribe the last 10 or so shots from my voice recorder. Also, today I learned of the Polish made Janpol enlarging lenses. They come in a few different focal lengths, most commonly an 85mm and a 55mm, both F/5.6 (which is not odd for an enlarging lens.) They have an internal color wheel meant for use with B&w prints. They also have M42 mounts and can be fitted on most modern cameras with swappable glass. This one is saying Slava Ukraini. These things are amazing. I won't rest until I get one.

Look what arrived: Works like a charm. Big thanks to DOTU and Dr. Wood!

RIP Paul Reubens AKA Pee Wee Herman.

I'm jealous of this room.

Via Reddit (as are most of these), a DIY Altec Voice of the Theater project:

There's an annual gathering of Land Rover owners here on MV. There's a bunch on island, but people come from all-over. There are two photos (taken by someone else) from last year's meetup: I made it a point to be there this year. I took my Leica C3 and well, my iPhone. There's always "that guy" at these meetings. Not an Land Rover, but a neat conversion. I have no idea what this thing is, but it's fascinating.

Now this just mean.

I find the massive perspective distortion brought on by the tiny focal length of the wide angle lenses on phone cameras to be incredibly disorienting.

Focal Aria 936s.

Nice vintage Quad 303s with a side of ...a Bose soundbar. O_o Are 303 amps stereo? I thought they were monoblocks.

In the parlance of our times, new subwoofer placement meta just dropped.

I'm really glad that these speakers aren't yet more e-waste. The planet sure doesn't need it. Also, speaker porn: Via reddit. This fella has really good taste in hip hop. Also boomer folk.

That's really neat, but I am suspect of any device that requires an app to make full use of its features. We're already seeing things from "smart" bulbs to door locks to ...musical Christmas lights that no longer work because the app that controlled them is no longer on the Android/iOS store. I'd not want to be the owner of two chunks of $4000 e-waste.

So for the last 24 hours I've been toying with the idea of buying a refurb'd D3S. They're not that expensive, and a fraction of the price of a new Canon mirrorless. Insane high ISO performance. 12MP is fine for me. As I mentioned I have Dinny's old Nikon 50mm, which I have not used in the 15 years I've owned it. I also have a super neat Nikon 75-150mm F/3.5 E zoom (it has lousy CA, but the best bokeh I have ever seen.) Well that idea is officially dead. I did some reading and (re)learned that it's not a good idea to mount M42 lenses to Nikon bodies. Nikon's flange depth is the issue. M42 lenses cannot reach infinity focus without an optical adapter that acts as weak tele-extender and reduces image quality. Canon does not have this problem. I have an army of M42 glass. From amusing crap (Yashika 50mm F1.9, a very beat up Ashai Super Takumar 50mm F/1.4) to stunning and historic optical achievements (Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 135mm F/3.5, Tair 11A 135mm, Meyer Orestor 135mm F/2.8, Orestegor 200mm F/4, Orestegor 300mm F/4). Yes, I have more manual 135mm primes than a used camera shop and it's not like 135mm is a particularly useful focal length. Stop looking at me like that. The point here is there is no way in H E double hockey sticks that I am giving up all my manual lenses. I'd sooner buy a refurb'd 5D Mk II and I kind of hate that body (it was a sign of Canon going in the completely wrong direction: high MP count, lousy high ISO performance.) My Meyer-Optik Orestor 135mm F/2.8 attached to a friend's Rebel digital body in '09. One zebra ring is focus, the other is aperture preset. The Orestor has a 15 blade aperture. This shot was taken with my 30D and my Tair 11A, which has a 22 blade aperture. The Meyer-Optik Orestegor 300mm F/4 tank shell of a lens mounted to my Rebel K2 film body in '08, not far from where I'm sitting now. It has a 19 blade aperture. All of these lenses with insane number of aperture blades allow for absolutely sublime "bokeh shaping." It's so heavy it more or less mandates a tripod and still subject. I've mentioned this before but the 300mm Orestegor is a medium format lens with its own 35mm adapter. I've always wanted to buy an old Pentacon Six or whatever body and try out the 300mm with double the FoV and same DoF. I have told myself I'm not allowed to buy any more film cameras until I've built a darkroom. [I'm nearly 50 years old. I probably will not live to build a darkroom, but it's not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.] Photo of the Tair 11A's aperture by Simon's utak on Flickr. The 300mm Orestegor's aperture as captured by SteveFE on Flickr. I don't have any photos OF the Jena Sonnar, but I have a few taken with it (what an odd idea): Study of a bar ...thingy. ISO3200 on my 30D, which in general sucked at that ISO. Note how sharp the metal detail is and how pleasing the OOF areas are. The truth is, I have definitely not used the Sonnar enough. It's probably the best of the bunch from an optical perspective. Bonus, SteveFE holding his Orestegor in 2006, propped up against his car so he doesn't fall over: Me with the same lens, doing an imitation of Steve in 2009: If the lens looks smaller when I hold it, that's because I have freakishly oversized mitts. TL;DR: All digital camera bodies are ultimately disposable. Glass is forever. I have a thing for lenses with a silly number of aperture blades. I'm sticking with Canon.

When the Nikon D3 came out in 2007, I looked at those ISO speeds and considered selling all my Canon gear to jump ship. 12MP was enough for me at the time and it still is. Back then I was shooting in a lot of low light situations. I never did make the jump to Nikon (though I did buy a 50mm F/1.8 from Dinny). The most important lesson my father ever taught me was when he wasn't even talking to me. He was explaining something to another antique dealer and he wanted to convey that what one would, could or should have done really had no bearing on the current situation. Or, in the man's own words "Woulda coulda should don't mean shit!" I still kind of wish I'd bought a D3.