My first attempt at a competition entry .........

Taken on the last day of our recent holiday, on the beach at Clachtoll, Sutherland.





Pentax K200D + 18-55mm kit lens. f/8, 1/500, ISO 200 at around 2.20pm on 23 Aug 2009


Cheers
Andrew

I didn't buy my first DSLR until Christmas 2008 after using a Ricoh KR10 for many years. I still have several rolls of Fuji Reala in the fridge.

After using the K200D for six months, I'm totally hooked. It's an amazing camera. As I'm a bit of a luddite, comparisons between cameras don't mean too much to me. They all have too many knobs, buttons and menus. I can tell you, though, that the K200D is a way better camera than I am a photographer - so, it'll do me.

Cheers
Andrew
(I still play vinyl LPs - but I think the Reala is likely to stay in the fridge).

The wind dropped this evening, so I took a few more shots of the bush. I *think* this one is pretty much in focus. It is a crop at 100% from a much larger frame.




If you can put up with the faff involved with manually focussing wide open and then stopping down manually before taking a shot (and making sure that it doesn't affect the focus), then the eccentric vintage Tamron 400mm f7.5 t-mount seems like a fair buy to me.

Before I registered on the forum a few months back, I'd never heard of the term bokeh, but now understand what it means after reading quite a bit of discussion about it on the forum. Am I right that the bokeh of this lens looks pretty good?


Cheers
Andrew

You understand correctly, I did mount the camera on the tripod with the lens hanging off the front and, before receiving the lens, I did worry about whether I'd be imposing a lot of stain on the K-mount.

Whilst the Tamron has a 400mm focal length, it is f7.5, so the objective lens is only about 55mm across. It looks more like a small telescope than a camera lens. It is amazingly light - only 560g (yes, I weighed it on our kitchen scales), which is lighter than many 80-200mm zooms and not much more than half the weight of a K200D with a battery grip fitted. In the end, my rationalisation was that it would probably cause less strain to the K-mount to hang a 560g lens off the camera than by using a tripod mount on the lens and hanging nearly a kilogram of camera off the lens.

The lens doesn't have a built-in tripod mount. It's also quite a weird design. It doesn't have a focus ring as such. The focus scale is only a centimeter or so from the K-mount and the whole of the rest of the lens body rotates for focussing. Even if I could get a tripod mounting ring and fix it on the body, I'd have to rotate the camera to focus.

I don't think Tamron ever envisaged that the lens itself would be mounted on a tripod. Having mounted it on the tripod with the camera's battery grip removed, I'm not especially concerned. If you are daft enough, as I was, to mount the camera onto a tripod by its battery grip then there is just noticeable flexure between the camera and the grip - which translates into quite a bit of movement at the business end of the lens. With the grip removed, it's pretty much as solid as a rock.

Cheers
Andrew

I closed my eyes, took a breath and then a big leap in the dark the other day and put a bid on a vintage (as in 1960's) Tamron 400mm f7.5 t-mount lens on Ebay. To my surprise I won it for only for only a little over £20.

It arrived this morning. I must admit, I wasn't expecting too much, but the lens is very clean and has it's own very nice hard leather case too. It is also VERY light - only about 600g. I already had a Pentax-K t-mount adapter, so out came the tripod and I took a couple of test shots in the garden. From memory, I think the photo of the bush was at f11 1/15sec and the gate at f16 1/8sec - both at ISO 200.

This is a crop at 100% from a frame that also included a large and very nice white bloom which was sadly out of focus, mainly because the wind kept moving it around and I don't have the patience to keep retaking the shot.



A photo (full frame, resized) of part of the garden gate .... at least the wind doesn't move that around, so maybe I can get it in focus ...



and a crop at 100% of the hinge ....




I must admit, these test shots are quite a bit sharper than I was expecting from such an old lens. Zooming in on the original frame suggests that the Tamron has a higher resolution than the K200D sensor - pixelisation is clear at 400% (or was it 500%) but there is no obvious blurring of edges. I think I'm going to enjoy using this Tamron.

I've learned a couple of things ...........

1) You can get some amazing glass for peanuts.

2) 400mm manual lenses are HARD to focus on foliage that is being blown about by the wind.

3) It's a great idea to remove the battery grip from the K200D before putting the camera on a tripod. There is noticable flex between the camera and the grip.

Well, the sun has come out and I have a great new (to me) lens. Maybe there is such a thing as a free lunch after all. Talking of lunches ......


Andrew

I came across these test results which look interesting. I'm not sure I fully understand them, but they suggest to me that the Rikenon f2 50mm is at least competitive with the Pentax-M f2 50mm.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1322/1319755906_4a7c3b351b_o.jpg

Regards
Andrew

I agree that it isn't a fair test - but I wasn't really interested in being fair to it. I just wanted to know whether the Rikenon 50mm f2 is sufficiently better than the kit lens at 50mm for it to be worth me carrying it around. I think the answer is a resounding "yes".

I also wanted to know whether it was worth carrying the Sigma 28mm around too. The kit lens seems much better at the wider end, so the answer is "probably not".

Cheers
Andrew

I took this shot hand-held (anti-shake switched off), in the fog, about half an hour ago. It was taken, about 4m from the tree, as a JPEG at f5.6 1/200sec ISO400, using a K200D with Rikenon f2 50mm. As the lighting in the fog was very flat, I used levels in Photoshop 7 to improve it some, but added no extra sharpening. It's a crop at 100%. It looks pretty sharp to me.




The shot with your Rikenon f1.7 is obviously out of kilter somehow. Was the focussing ring set at about 4m? Did the camera think it was in focus (i.e. did you see the hexagon in the viewfinder)? I'd be tempted to try again on a tripod and take several shots before writing the lens off.

Cheers
Andrew

This is the frame, taken by the kit lens, from which the crop was taken. The car is maybe 150m away.



I'm not convinced that it's a sample issue. My take is simply that all we are seeing is the limit of resolution of a perfectly normal kit lens - though I could be wrong. It is wide open at f5.6 after all.

Cheers
Andrew

This morning, I checked the kit lens and it's squeaky clean. I took some more test shots with it at 50mm and also with the Rikenon 50mm f2. The differences were just as apparent as those in the photos posted above.

As I was in the mood, I took a few "over the fence" with the kit lens at 28mm and then the same shots with a Sigma 28mm f2.8 mini-wide, both at f5.6 1/1000sec ISO 100. JPEGs straight out of the camera are close. The kit lens is slightly sharper - but if I add a touch more sharpening in Photoshop to the Sigma shot, it's too close to call.

As far as I know, the Sigma is an OK but not great lens, so if the 18-55mm MK2 kit lens can equal it at 28mm then the kit lens is probably a perfectly good sample. Maybe the bottom line is simply that the Rikenon 50mm f2 is exceptional. I'm certainly going to keep it and use it!


Cheers
Andrew