Welcome to the other side of the pond - not so much sun but just the same Pentax.

Wow. A click a second there and spoiled for where to point it next! I love what you did for the Triumph !

Thanks Gary - some of those you have given us over the years are pretty good too! Thankfully, all those that end up in the bin stay in the bin!

I wasn't expecting those sorts of comments. Thank you John, Kevin, Gareth. I've got to keep it up now!

We all take rubbish shots. For every one of mine about 20 end up in the bin and then they get culled again.

That place really lends itself to a 'prison camp' security perspective and I commented to myself, when the scene came up, "Ah, those chimneys have got potential." And the very next image ...? The monochrome treatment is superb. You have got me seriously considering a similar course simply due to what it has done for your work.

Me neither although, as John says, it will depend on the lens. Some of my old ones are only f6.3 for example and these can indeed be harder on the viewfinder.

Aldis conjures up thoughts of wartime naval signalling lamps, epidiascopes and robust slide projectors. This little lens was their first venture and was a bit ahead of its time when it was introduced (look it up on the internet). It was intended to produce tack sharp, medium format negatives that would originally have been contact printed and certainly not enlarged to the degree now permitted by our technology. Images tend to pixelate quite readily if you push it too far but if you keep within sensible limits the results on a DSLR can be remarkable. They followed it up with the Aldis Duo that doubled the focal length by merely unscrewing the front element and replacing it with another. I'm still on the lookout for one of these!

1. Here is the lens porn ....



And some idea of its capabilities.
2. Remarkably free of CA and fairly flare resistant for plain glass optics, this image will happily print to A4 size.



3. Going to the other extreme, you can't complain about the contrast. The detail in the white part is very good.

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4. Colour rendition and bokeh are both superb.


5.



6. You can get some nice bokeh effects with it too.



7. It is equally happy with distant views ....



8. .... as it is with close-ups.



The most important thing with these old lenses is attention to the original composition. While you can crop and recompose to a degree you have to bear in mind the original intent of using the entire negative (or most of it). The more you crop the more you will degrade the result. On the other hand, using the entire image gives a phenomenal latitude for post processing when sliders can sometimes be pushed to amazing distances without detriment to the result.

100 years old and now fit for another century of use!

Definitely time to cease lurking and keep posting images like these!

One or two of those artists are really good. Pity you can't save the bits of wall concerned so having a photo record is the next best thing.