55-200mm f3.5-4.8 – My photography notebook

Today I gave myself an assignment. As a hobby photographer you sometimes need some inspiration. I live in a nice place and there are probably places I haven’t been but the 35 kilometer scenery besides and in front of the road to my work is definitely been milked out, photography wise. I now every bent in the road and valley and only during a few weeks in the year the light is good in the morning or afternoon when I ride back home. I sometimes bring a telephoto lens with me for the occasional wildlife but there are not many places where you can safely stop the car on the side of the road so this is limited to and I have had little luck.

So whenever I am in a situation where I think I have seen it all I start giving myself assignments. Taking pictures of something with yellow in it, or garbage on the street or whatever I can come up with. Normally I also limit myself to one (focal length) lens to give it even more of a challenge. Today I cheated in this regard by taking the Fujinon 55-200mm with me. I wanted to take pictures of electricity poles that you see everywhere here. I did it while I drove to work so I didn’t have the time to walk to far to the best places but I still wanted to try to make interesting pictures.

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ISO 400, exposure time 1/180s, aperture f5.6, 55mm

Today i used my Fujinon 55-220mm lens in combination with two autofocus extension tubes. I have normal extension tubes for macro photography but they cannot pass through signals and power to the lens for autofocus, the electronic aperture ring and image stabilization. Some of the new lenses for the Fujifilm X-mount have no manual aperture ring, you can only use it electronically and as far as I know all the lenses have a motor build in to adjust the focus, the focus ring is not connected to any lens elements that works great ass long as you use the right macro extension tubes. This means that I need a “smart” extension tube, Fuji makes them and here in Norway they cost around 90 US Dollars for one ring so a 180 for both. That is not a bad price but I tried E-bay and there you can buy cheaper version for between 15 and 40 US Dollars for both. I don’t think there is much difference between the cheapest and the more expensive ones on E-bay, I bought them for 23 US Dollars. The reviews where mixed but it’s not the first time that I buy something from E-bay so took the gamble. They arrived today and I tried them with my Fujinon lenses and it all seems to work. They feel a little bit light so they are probably the same as the originals only made with cheaper and thinner materials. I will see how long they last, I will treat them with more care than I normally do .

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I have to try them out more but with the 55-200mm I got much closer when I combined the two rings (10mm and 16mm). At 55mm I came closer that with 200mm, without the rings that is the other way around. As with most Fujinon lenses the image quality is very good. I shot all the pictures handheld with the image stabilizer on, I did not pay much attention the ISO and aperture setting the camera chose for me so that will be a surprise for me to. The weather was nice, no direct sun an lightly overcast. All the pictures are sharpened in Lightroom together with some basic editing, nothing fancy besides the two black and white pictures.

Continue reading “Fujifilm X-t1, Fujinon 55-200mm f3.5-4.8, 26mm extension tube.” →