[JJ_SO]

First shots, first flight, first pride

 

Yesterday I collected the parcel from èŒƒæ—­æ˜Ž (whatever that means)

 

Unpacked it and had the first round of playing around. All metal, except the plastic caps and the hood - all of them copies of Nikon caps and hoods and for the hood they didn't take the effort to find another name. HB-23: Nikon uses this ID-# for their hoods for the 10-24 and 12-24. The cheap copy struggeld when I tried to attach it to the Venus 15/4 wide macro.

 

Later, on a quick cycle trip I found out it's not a big problem: Direct backlight can lead to sort of psychedelic flare or to just normal flare marks. I wasn't expecting miracles from that glass. In none of those situations the lenshood would be of any assistance.

 



 

The shift function is, like other features of the lens, quite interesting (in the weird meaning of "interest"). It's sort of digital shift, either on or off. There's a very flimsy lever to unlock a 6 mm slide up or down. Shift is only possible in the vertical way when the camera itself is in landscape orientation. So no skyscrapers, at least no high ones. But usable. Aperture ring goes from f/4 down to f/32 with no single click in between - I never knew which aperture I used unless I check afterwards and pen it down.

 



 

Manual focus is quite a show: Between infinity and 0,26 m only the rear element moves. The rest down to 0,12 m the front element is extending. The Nikkor's 14-24/2,8 closest distance is 0,28 m - so, 16 cm closer doesn't sound exciting? Maybe, but since the front element of the Nikkor is such a bulbous lens I always hesitate to go close or closer. A scratch could become expensive.  :blink:

 

Not as much with this Venus lens: The front element is curved, but far behind the M 77 filter thread - great. Performancewise it fullfilled my expectations, too, which were not super high. Its doing okayish, but the out of focus parts of the picture do remain pretty calm, that was kind of a surprise. Of course, manual focus, own body movement and enough light to the subject can be challenging. But sitting in a lounge chair and release a camera on a big tripod is not always leading to dynamics...  <_<

 



 



 

What was really nice to see for me was: i can do with it what I want: Very very close up and still lots of background.

 



 

little detail of the apple:

 



 

It it comes to wasps, I'm a coward. This was the last picture with the new lens. In my next post - cliffhanger :unsure:  - I tell you why.

 

Here's the link to the full-size versions: Venus 15/4 macro