Minolta Maxxum 50mm f/1.7 lens on Sony A700

Christmas day was a balmy 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the the DC area…with lots of sunshine. A far cry from the bitter cold of the mid-west, I must say. We miss the snow on the ground, but a body (especially me) could get used to this milder winter weather. I believe we’re in Zone 6B-7A here, which makes for milder winters than the Great Plains states.

Sunayana and I headed out to Germantown park so she could work off the excess energy, and I took the Alpha 700 along with my Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 prime lens. On the Sony Alpha 700, the 50mm is equivalent to a mild telephoto 75mm (the 1.5x crop factor), and makes an excellent portrait lens. Even better, it is an excellent lens for natural light photography, even at very low light levels.

The light was failing by the time we got to Germantown park, and over the course of the time we were there, it got quite dark. The Minolta 50mm lens handled the failing light very well. I left the Alpha in ISO auto select (ISO 800) and opened up the lens to f/2. The almost dark condition was no sweat at all at those settings, and if I wasn’t there, I would swear that the pictures were taken much earlier in the evening.

By the way, if some of the pictures seem slightly blurry, it’s because she moves at lightning speed. NO camera’s AF can possibly keep up with a 5 year old with pent up energy!

Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700	Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700
Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700	Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700
Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700	Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700

---

Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700

Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700

Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700

Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700

Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700

Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 on A700

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700 and Minolta AF 50mm f/1.7 Lens. Camera was set to AUTO mode and ISO 800.

---

text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all product names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. Thank you for visiting Olympuszuiko. Have a great day!


This work by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

 

First Shots – Sony Alpha 700

These were the first batch of pictures taken with the Alpha 700 – my wife took the camera to my daughter’s school for the obligatory Santa visit. She just used it on the full Auto setting, letting the camera do it’s thing. This is pretty much right out of the box, and she did not even have the chance to even go through the “quick” version of the manual. We’re both familiar with the operation of our Minolta Dynax 800si, and that was enough.

The lighting in the building was Fluorescent, but she did not compensate for that in the White Balance – this is just the Alpha 700 doing its thing. The lens was the Sony 18-200mm. The Auto setting used ISO 800. As can be seen, it’ll take a while to get to learn and use all the menus and features, but the camera can be used pretty much right out of the box (allowing for a little time to at least partially charge the battery, of course!)

Santa’s Visit

Santa’s Visit

Santa’s Visit

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700 and Sony 18-200 f/3.5-6.3 Lens. Camera was set to AUTO mode (ISO 800) with Image Stabilization ON, Auto White Balance.

---

text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all product names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. thank you for visiting olympuszuiko, have a great day!

 

Olympus Pen EE – a vintage Point and Shoot beauty

I found this little camera on eBay a few months ago, and just got around to running a roll through it. It was in generally good condition, even had a tiny 22.5mm UV filter on the Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 lens. The reason I took so long to clean up this camera was the light seals – the Pen EE has a slide-off back cover, not hinged like a traditional camera – so there is a very substantial seal required on the inside of the bottom cover. My curiosity about the camera finally made me give in and get the seals done.

Yoshihisa Maitani designed the Pen EE. Maitani gained fame as the designer of the exquisite Pen F interchangeable lens cameras and the legendary Olympus OM series cameras. The Pen camera dates back to 1959, but the Pen EE is from 1961. Olympus went on to make many more versions of the ‘automatic’ Pen EE cameras all the way into the 1980’s.

There were 2 versions of the first Pen EE, I have the older version with “Olympus” across the front, instead of “Olympus PEN”. The original version also has the leatherette cover instead of the ‘basket weave’ covering of the later model. One more difference – the older Pen EE has a 1/60 second shutter speed while the later basket view Pen EE has 2 shutter speeds – 1/250 for the Auto mode and 1/30 for the Flash setting.

The Pen EE is a Half Frame camera – that means 2 images for each frame of 35mm film. The 35mm format is 24x36mm, so half frame is 24x18mm in vertical format. It’s a small image, but the 28mm Zuiko lens is sharp enough to enable nice quality prints up to 8 x10 inches if used with a tripod, and 5×7 inch prints easily when hand-held. The film ISO range only extends to 200 ASA. The 28mm f/3.5 lens provides great depth of field, so it’s a point and shoot camera.

A fixed 1/60th second shutter speed on my Pen EE. That’s it. It’s the same if you set it on Auto or Flash on the original Pen EE. In the Auto mode, the selenium cell light meter sets the aperture automatically, while if you use the Flash mode, you can set the aperture from f/3.5 to f/22, but still at 1/60 second. That’s tricky.

I wanted to use the Sunny 16 rule with the camera, but the slowest print film available to me is ISO 100. Now the Sunny 16 rules says that for film speed for 100 ISO, the shutter speed will be 1/125 second at f/16 in bright sunny conditions. With the fixed shutter speed of 1/60, I would end up with pictures on the overexposed side by one stop. To compensate I would have to close down the shutter by another stop to f/22 to get an equivalent exposure.

The alternative is to set to f/16 and deal with the overexposure later with digital correction (by increasing shadow). In most cases, this will be fine, since the film has enough latitude to handle some overexposure and still produce a decent image. However, since the best color reproduction usually requires a slight under-exposure, it may still be a little too much.

This also means that to use the Pen EE in manual mode with Sunny f/16, we are limited to 100 speed film or lower. 200 ASA film would overexpose by 2 stops, and while film has a great deal of latitude, that much over-exposure would be difficult to correct. Of course, in shade or in cloudy conditions, the aperture range is more than adequate.

In my case, I tend to overexpose an additional stop in cloudy over cast conditions – instead of closing down the aperture, I was actually opening it up from sheer force of habit because of conditioning with my Ricoh 500G and Olympus OM cameras. Now that I’ve a chance to examine the results, I would say f22 for Sunny conditions, f/16 for slight overcast, and f/11 for shade (f/8 and f/5.6 only if you are really unsure.)

As far as the film development goes, any photo processing lab can handle it since it’s just regular 35mm film processing. My advice is to have them develop and put it on a CD, and make a special note to NOT cut the film into strips. Don’t ask them for prints. Later, you can split the half frame images apart using cropping software. Make one copy of each digital image, and then crop the left side from one copy and the right side from the other copy. You can then save to a CD/Card/flash drive and get it printed like any other digital image. I use Walmart’s one hour service and they do a great job, costs $4.23 and beats sending it a specialty processor out of state.

---

Pen EE	Pen EE
Pen EE	Pen EE
Pen EE	Pen EE
Pen EE	Pen EE
Pen EE	Pen EE
Pen EE	Pen EE
Pen EE	Pen EE

---

Pen EE

Pen EE

Pen EE

Pen EE

Pen EE

Photographed with an Olympus Pen EE (28mm f/3.5) on Fuji Super 100 film

---

Pen EE Camera #168426

Pen EE Camera #168426

Pen EE pictures photographed with a Panasonic Lumix DMC LC-20 2 megapixel digital camera

---

text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.

 

Got Milk?

That’s my nephew Vasu – a real milk lover. I was cleaning my Olympus OM 2n, wiping it down after a hike when spotted him sitting at the dining table with a glass and gallon of milk. He didn’t notice I was photographing him until the last shot, when he caught me out of the corner of his eye. Natural light imparts a certain undefinable quality to pictures thats almost impossible to duplicate. These were in color, but I desaturated them since I liked the black and white effect much better with the milk theme.

---

Got Milk?

Got Milk?

Got Milk?

---

Photographed with an OM 2n and Panagor 90mm f/2.8 1/250 sec at f/5.6 on Fuji Superia 200 film

---

text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.

 

Yashica TL-Super – general photography with the Yashinon 50mm f/1.4

I finally got this great old camera cleaned up and replaced the seals. I loaded it up with 100 speed film and went shooting. I even did some low light photography with the superfast 50mm f/1.4 lens opened up to f/2. The TL-Super is one of the under-appreciated classics, in my opinion. (Matt Denton thinks very highly of it too, so I am in good company).

This was a pre-Contax collaboration era genuine Yashica design with a M42 screw mount, and like all Yashicas, had lenses designed by Tomioka. At this point in time, (1966) Tominon was not yet a part of Yashica, and although they made all the Yashica lenses, Tomioka was still designing and manufacturing lenses on contract for others.

Tomioka was absorbed into Yashica in 1968, right before the Yashica-Zeiss partnering on the Contax. They changed everything, except the quality. They dropped the M42 mount and designed the C/Y mount. But this post is about the TL-Super, not Contax, so…

My TL-Super has a dead meter – I think there’s a bit of gunk stuck in there somewhere gumming up the works and until I work up enough courage to take the top off, I’ll have to manage using the Sunny 16 rule. The battery isn’t a problem, though – easily available SR44 1.5V alkaline – one the first cameras to use this now common battery. Considering that this camera is from April 1966, that’s surprising since everyone used mercury batteries back then.

Here’s a mix of shots under different lighting conditions around Montogomery County MD. I desaturated the pictures from the park (sunny at the Xylophone) because they were taken in very low light conditions, and I liked the black and white effect better than the dull grays in color.

I as particularly pleased with the pictures I took at Great falls, with the Kayaker battling the current – I watched him try several times, get close, and then lose to the river. The Potomoc is practically running dry by late summer, all rocks and hardly any water falls – but still beautiful.

---

Great Falls	Great Falls
Sunny	Sunny

---

River

River

River

Great Falls

Great Falls

Canal Boat – Charles Mercer

Canal Boat – Charles Mercer

Canal Boat – Charles Mercer

Canal Boat – Charles Mercer

Canal Boat – Charles Mercer

Sunny by the Canal

Sunny – very close, aperture wide open. Bokeh

---

Neighborhood Pond

Neighborhood Pond

Sunny – Germantown Park

Sunny – Germantown Park

Sunny – Germantown Park

Photographed with an Yashica TL-Super, 50mm f/1.4 lens, Fujicolor 100, Polarizer in sunlight. Sunny f/16 rule, f/11 at 1/125, f/5.6 at 1/125sec. Last 3 photographs were at f/2 at 1/125

---

text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.

 

More photos from the Fujicarex II – Architecture

Here are some additional pictures from the Fujicarex II camera. The office building and apartment block are in Alexandria, VA. The Orthodox church is the St. Peter and Paul Antiochan Church on River Road, Potomac MD. I used the 50mm f/1.9 interchangeable front element lens.

---

Fujicarex II- 50mm f/1.9	Fujicarex II- 50mm f/1.9
Fujicarex II- 50mm f/1.9	Fujicarex II- 50mm f/1.9

---

Fujicarex II- 50mm f/1.9

Fujicarex II- 50mm f/1.9

Fujicarex II- 50mm f/1.9, 1/125 at f/16

Fujicarex II- 50mm f/1.9, 1/125 at f/11 – slight over exposure

Photographed with a Fujicarex II camera, 50mm f/1.9 front element interchangeable lens, Fuji 100 film

---

text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.