Today I did a similar thing as yesterday only now I used my 18mm Fujinon lens together with my new and cheap E-bay extension tube of 10mm. Using extension tubes on this kind of wide angel lenses is not something you normally do. Even the slightest raising of the distance between the lens and the sensor will shorten the focus distance dramatically. There was a bright sun so I had to wiggle around with the camera as to not cast a shade over my subject with the lens onto the tiny flowers. I had to remove the lens hood because I kept on bumping into them.
The focusing distance between closest and furthest is around 2 to 3 cm, really short so you have no choice to get close. The downside of this that if you bring this small and lightweight extension tube with you for the occasional macro shot you better make sure it’s only small flowers or other objects.
I still like the result of the pictures, the lens combination gives an other feel to the pictures than my other lenses do in macro mode and that’s worth something to. This time I choose the aperture and let the camera do the rest. The two out of focus pictures are also taken with this lens setup but might as well be taken without the extension tube. The pictures are sharpened and lightly edited in lightroom.
Continue reading “Fujifilm X-t1, Fujinon 18mm f2.0, 10mm extension tube”
I bought a cheap reflector for my large flash on 
expected. The quality looks OK the only thing I noticed is that the numbers looked to be engraved by hand, not important, gives it kind of a charm.
Today I used an other vintage lens, the Mir-1b 37mm f2.8. These old lenses are great to play with and are relatively cheap to buy. For the money you can buy a new Fujifilm 35mm lens you can buy several old lenses. This one is not so easy to use, the ring to adjust the aperture has clicks but you can also adjust it freely with an other ring just underneath it. This is not so bad, specially if you use it to film but the focus ring is close to the it and I kept changing the aperture. This is something I will probably get used to but I noticed it.
the best I ever felt. Today I used it meanly at an aperture of 1.4 to see the results. You cannot focus really close, around 45 cm from the sensor but at that distance there is not much depth of field. Tomorrow I will try it at other f-stops and from longer distances from the subject.
Today I used my 300mm Nikon lens on my X-t1 to try out manual focus with this kind of lens. The X-t1 has this focus aid that shows you a small zoomed in part of the screen besides the main screen and this works great. All the pictures are taken hand held with a shutter time of 500. The pictures of the flower give a nice mood and because of the aperture of f4 only a small sliver is sharp. The picture of Darth, our cat, shows a good sharpness in the eyes and the bridge is sharp to, at least part of it because the aperture was also f4. The butterfly was more difficult to get sharp but that was because of the wind, I shot a burst of pictures and prayed for the best, something a normally never do. Overall manual focusing works fine with this kind of lens.When I use this lens, made between 1987 and 2000, on my Nikon D7100 you can use the autofocus but it is slow, there is no motor in the lens like you have with modern lenses, it’s all mechanical and you notice, and hear it. As long as the subject is not moving to mush and you are not in a hurry it works great. .
My photography notebook 