landscape – My photography notebook

Huawei P20 pro

Day 1104-1.jpg In the beginning of the year I bought a new phone, the Huawei P20 pro. I chose this one because it has a good camera and was half the price of the Google pixel. You can make some nice pictures with it but don’t expect to mush. If you see the RAW files you understand that the phone does a lot of tricks to make the sensor date presentable. The RAW files have some strange (green) colors and distortions. I have some lens profiles for Lightroom but the results are hit and miss. But lightroom and Photoshop (or other programs) are necessary to have some control over the final output.

The normal pictures are fine, I don’t like the fake shallow depth of field but you can turn it of. The two time zoom is good and the night shot works good to. It is fun to work around the shortcomings of these phone cameras but for the next time I just buy a phone and take the camera for granted. The pictures are great for social media, don’t look to close, it is all fake and shallow.

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Fujifilm X-T1, Auto Weltblick 24mm f2.5

Testing

Today I tested an other wide angel lens from the 70/80s the Auto Weltblick. Its a strange name, its German for worldview and it is one of those lenses made by a lens manufacturer for an other that will give it its own name. In this case I think its made for Neckerman in Germany, their is not mush on the internet about this brand and lens.

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On the X-T1 this lens is almost a 35mm so a nice focal length. It is well build and easy to use. My first impression is that it is sharper overall than the other wide angel I tested, the 28mm Orion but it has more barrel distortion. For now it is definitely a lens I will bring with me, I like it for architecture inside and outside and it might be good enough for landscape photography. All the pictures here are edited in Lightroom

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Fujifilm X-T1, Super Orion 28mm f2.8

Testing

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Today I tested a 28mm lens made by Super Orion. I can not find much about this brand, its probably a copy of some other branded 28mm lens. I bought it for around 15,- USD with the hope I could bring it with me together with my 50 mm lenses. On my Fuji crop sensor it is around 42mm, almost wide angle for me. But the lens is not so good, specially not for landscapes. It is soft overall and sharpness is important in landscape photography. I took a lot of pictures today on different apertures but they are all soft and at 2.8 it is really bad, you can see some examples down below.

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I also took some pictures in the museum where I work and for these kind of pictures I don’t mind that the lens is not sharp at f2.8, the aperture I used to shoot the pictures inside. In lightroom you can still make something nice out of the RAW files. There is not so much vignetting to see and the distortion is hardly noticeable. The lens also misses some “vintage picture” quality. The pictures look quit neutral with no muted colors or other charms that some of my other vintage lenses have.

The lens id nicely build, for the most part out of metal I think, it has an ensuring weight to it. I don’t think it is a lens I would bring with me, specially if I have a choice.

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Fujifilm X-T1, Revuenon 35-105mm f3.8

Testing

Today I used a lens I also bought in Holland at he store I talked about before. I was really exited by this lens because it feels really good in the hand. It is nice and heavy and it zooms from 35 to a 105mm which I like for walking around in a city for instance. It also has a dedicated zoom setting that lets you get close with a 1:3 magnification, also nice for a city walk because now you can take some nice closeups of random details. I tried to find out some more details about this lens and Revuenon but besides some reviews of other lenses from the same manufacturer I found little about the brand itself. I wanted to know more about Revuenon because the lens feels good and seems to be of some good quality mechanically but optically it is terrible, at least my lens is. There is a small crack in the front lens, something you can see on some of the photos. Maybe this lens fell down once and shifted some lens elements internally. The problem is that you can not get a sharp focus on 35mm, you have to go to 40-45mm to get something in focus. If you are at 35mm you can “turn on” the macro setting and get focus that way but it is strange. This might be caused by a lens that is shifted internally but there are other problems, the amounts of chromatic aberration, specially at 3.8 is something you don’t see anymore at even the cheapest lenses made today. The glare is also noticeable and the lens is soft overall but specially in the corners and it has low contrast. There is also a lot of barrel distortion even at a 105 mm.

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Fujifilm X-T1, MC Industar 61 LZ 50mm f2.8 part 5

Testing

Today I stopped besides a field of grass waiting to be mowed for maybe the last time this year. I wanted to catch some of the “grass feeling” but because the Industar is a decent macro lens I got caught up by the small details.

This is one of the Russian lenses and though it is not as sturdy as the Rikenon it still feels good. I’m not a big fan of the clickless aperture ring but it is stiff enough to prevent it being moved to easy.

I love the out of focus parts of the picture, both with details close by and far away. I also get used to focusing with this lens and it might not be super sharp it is still impressive for a 50,- US Dollar lens.

I have a third 50(ish)mm lens I am trying out now that I really like. Maybe I have three 50mm lenses in my bag on my next vacation.

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Fujifilm X-t1, Fujinon 55-200mm f3.5-4.8

Assignment

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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