MC Industar 61 LZ 50mm f2.8 – My photography notebook

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

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, MC Industar 61 LZ 50mm, Pentax m42 bellow part 4

Testing

Day 1235.jpg

Today it was rainy and windy outside so I decided to take some pictures inside with my new bellow. I took pictures of all kinds of objects and small plants and flowers so I could try out different setups. I noticed that it is much easier to move the subject around than the whole camera when you magnify it at almost 3 times. Moving it forwards or backwards to get it into focus goes great and moving it from side to side to compose the picture is easy to, now I have to find a way to adjust the height smoothly because that is not so easy.

I also wanted to do some photo stacking in Photoshop and for that I used a 2 way focus rails that I bought on E-bay. I bought it a couple of years ago to try it out, it costs around 10 US Dollars and with my macro lenses it worked OK. But now I see why this is cheap, when you magnify so much as I do now every little movement is enormous when you look through the view finder. When I use the little nob to adjust the rails it twist the glider a little bit, this happens because the tolerances are not that great. It’s not a big problem but when you want to stack the photo’s later it helps if they stayed lined up. If I want to get serious with this I have to invest in a better one and try to find a good one that goes 6 way’s to solve the problem of the height adjustment.

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Fujifilm X-T1, MC Industar 61 LZ 50mm, Pentax m42 bellow, handheld flash. Part 3

Testing

Today I got a new package with something in it that I wanted since I started taking pictures in the 80s, a bellow used for macro photography. It’s something about the mechanical nature of it, the wheels that move the lens and the idea that you can get really close. So as every child does I ripped it out of the package, mounted my new Industar 50mm lens on it and went outside to try it out. But I first had to slow myself down and find a solution to get enough light so far from the flash mount on the camera and close to the front of the lens. I choose to use the little flash (EF-X8) that came with the X-T1 and use it as a commander together with the Yongnuo flash in slave mode. For now I have nothing to mount it so I used it handheld and pointed the flash in the right direction when needed. There was almost no wind so I decided to use my tripod, I wanted to take pictures of little bugs and plans and not from some fixed objects. But as most of the time when hunting for little bugs the tripod is a nuisance and there was almost no wind but there was still some movement and when you get so close the bugs move from one side of the viewfinder to the other, a tripod is useless in these circumstances. So I shot handheld and with my left hand I also held the flash in such a way that it illuminated the subject. It is not an ideal situation but parts of the pictures are sharp so it’s more a matter of finding the right angels so that the (really shallow) depth of field is used as best as possible. I had the aperture set at f5.6 with the shutter at the flash sync speed of 180/s, the ISO was set at 400 and the flash strength between 1/4 and 1/16 but holding the flash at the right distance was more important than the flash strength.

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Fujifilm X-t1, MC Industar 61 LZ 50mm f2.8 part 2

Uncategorized

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Today I took my new Industar 50mm with me to work. There was a big 3 master from Holland docked in the harbor, being raised there and working as a wooden boat builder I naturally wanted to meet the people on board. I was not a wooden boat, what I expected, but the wooden mast and rigging looked nice so I had something to admire. I had a nice talk with one of the guest and just before it left I took a few snapshots of the some details.

The lens works great, I really like it. It is sharp and easy to focus. I noticed today that there was a lot of glare in the viewfinder, the sun was bright and high in the sky. The glare prevented me from focusing so I have to buy a better eye cup and see if that helps. There came one with this camera when I bought it but I am used to have the camera hanging on my right shoulder and the larger eye cup was rubbing against my leg and got ripped of, I guess I have to find a solution for that. The sun had not so much affect on the lens itself. The front element is almost 5 cm recessed so it has more or less a build in hood.

I did some more editing in Lightroom so you wont see a clean picture to judge the lens by but in the color photo’s you can see the sharpness. All the pictures where shot at an aperture of f5.6 and an ISO of 200.

I used Lightroom again though I want to use the other programs, but with Lightroom I don’t have to think and when I use Dark table, Capture one or After shot 3 I have to constantly look

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Fujifilm X-t1, MC Industar 61 LZ 50mm f2.8

Testing


ISO 400, exposure time 1/90s, aperture f5.6

Today I took pictures with an other lens from Russia the MC Industar 61 LZ 50mm f2.8. I bought this lens on E-bay for 65 US dollars from a Russian seller. It’s a nice little lens, I bought it because you can focus relatively close, around 25 cm. According to Camerapedia this lens ” is possibly the most highly regarded lens for Ukrainian Leica copies apart from the 35mm Jupiter-12. In an L/D or L/Z version of this lens, the L indicates that the lens has Lanthanum – which is not radioactive – in it, and D indicates M39 mount while Z indicates M42 mount. Most examples are multi-coated and are marked as such with MC. Some Industar 61 L/Z bear the logo of LZOS, probably having been made by that company.” . You can read more on Camerapedia and Pentax forum

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I took it out today for a walk through my garden and greenhouse and so far I like the results. There was a lot of sun but it was also windy so most of the pictures are shot with ISO 400, the aperture ring has no “clicks”, so the aperture values are estimates. In the greenhouse there was no wind but it was a little darker and I forgot to adjust the ISO accordingly so the shutter times are a little low for handheld shots. Most of the pictures are shot at the minimum focusing distance. The pictures are edited in Lightroom, I used the auto setting for all the pictures and did some sharpening.

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