Tuesday, January 21, 2014

In The Zone

Its taken me a long time to adjust to the manual focussing on my Samyang 8mm fisheye lens and I haven't by any means perfected it.  Having recently researched 50mm lenses Ive discovered that a number of the lenses which attract my attention are manual focus so I decided it was high time I educated myself . The one I was originally considering was the Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4 ZE because it represented an option to have a lens with great quality glass without having to take out a second mortgage.  Additonally it had a distance scale which is not a default characteristic on some manual focussing lenses. I'm seriously weighing the pros and cons of hiring this lens from camerahire for an outlay of $50 +$30 courier mail ( it would cost me this much in petrol and mental anguish to negotiate the traffic to and from North Sydney to pick it up). A great revue on this lens at the phoglographer then diverted me by a reference to zone focussing which seems like a great skill to acquire, particularly for street photography.  A pre requisite is a manual focusing meter. An added tool  which was recommended was a focussing screen which initially sounded like the answer however after watching the video on changing one ( see below) I've definitely decided to put it in the too hard basket. There's no way I'm confident or motivated enough to even consider playing around inside my camera. 

Everbody is always going on about fast lenses The reviews make constant references to shooting wide open and I then read another great post at Photographers' Connection about why it can be less than helpful which has got me thinking about which 50mm lens is really best for me. Do I really want to be seduced by the reputation of Zeiss and spend ages perfecting my manual focussing skills at different apertures or should I go for the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM which has some great revues by users. Seems like the rental option may be the way to go. Now I have to try and motivate myself . Ho hum.

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