Vintage Fisheye Lenses

Michael Maguire December 30, 2019

My vintage Asahi Takumar 17mm f/4 fisheye lens is one of my favorite staples. I often use it for concert photography:

The great Mock Identity playing Rhizome in DC.

November, 2018. This was the first ever public performance of the band that would be later named Coriky. This wasn’t the first time that Fugazi members Ian MacKaye and Joe Lally were photographed with a Takumar fisheye lens. Back in the day, that wa… — November, 2018. This was the first ever public performance of the band that would be later named Coriky. This wasn’t the first time that Fugazi members Ian MacKaye and Joe Lally were photographed with a Takumar fisheye lens. Back in the day, that was one of the lenses of choice of punk/rop/rap photographer Glenn Friedman, who got his start shooting with Pentax film cameras.

Most of the best concert shots are taken within feet of the band. Here Lyris from T-Rextasy is leaning into me and I love the scale of the bit of her sneaker that is visible.

You may be wondering why I’d want to use an f/4 lens for concert photography when concerts tend to be so darned dark. With other focal lengths, there’s no way I would want an f/4. With a fisheye, I feel like I can get away with a noisier high-ISO photo. I’m trying to capture the overall energy of the moment and I’m not looking for the same type of optical quality that I would want from a 50mm. Fisheyes, or at the very least a very wide lens, are a must for me for concert shooting because I always try to get a shot or two of the band as a whole where all members are in frame.

But there are other quite useful applications for fisheyes! In September, I covered the opening of a new section of the Kennedy Center. I knew I would be shooting a lot of interiors and I knew some might be tight, so I brought the Takumar. While I was interested in using the fisheye’s wide angle to capture smaller interiors, I wasn’t interested in distracting readers with the fisheye look. There’s an easy fix for that when editing photos in Lightroom. You’ve probably used “Enable Profile Corrections” when Lightroom or Photoshop knows and recognizes the lens. In Lightroom, you can also manually select a lens profile and apply it to any photo. The Takumar 17mm isn’t in the Lightroom library, but that doesn’t matter. I simply sampled other lens profiles until I found one that was a good fit. An example of the results:

I pulled out the fisheye to fit the stairs and space into the frame, but a photo like this would seem quite out of place in a news story. So, run the the photo through some Lightroom correction profiles and…

Voila! People will know just what they’re looking at without being weirded out.

It’s not exactly technically complex architectural photography, but it’s an easy way to add flexibility for what types of shot a vintage lens produces. The point is that an old fisheye can give you the perfect aesthetic for things like a band shot, but they can also easily be used to produce more standard looking shots. That’s why I so often keep one in my bag!

An Inexpensive Workaround for a Broken Sony a9 Diopter

Michael Maguire December 23, 2019

I have been shooting on the same Sony a9 for nearly 2 years now. For most of that time, it’s been an indestructible workhorse performing through many bumps and rainfalls over tens of thousands of photos. Then, however, a few weeks ago I dropped it on a kitchen floor. The result was a blurry viewfinder. The diopter adjuster, also known as that little knob on the viewfinder that focuses the viewfinder to the specific needs of your eyeball, was of no use.

I unscrewed and removed the diopter dial off to make sure it was actually turning the inner mechanism. It was. I considered taking the viewfinder apart, but getting into the viewfinder on a9s and later models of the a7 requires an involved teardown of the camera body. I have enough experience with my own mechanical limitations to know there was a chance that me trying the teardown could lead to a repaired viewfinder… and a much greater chance that it would lead to me crying into a giant pile of loose screws and disconnected circuit boards, cables, and capacitors.

I considered sending the camera off somewhere for repair. The drawback with that is that most any competent a9 mechanical repair will run at least $400. There was also the strong possibility that the camera would need a new viewfinder unit, which pops up prices fast given how advanced the Sony electronic viewfinder is. It didn’t make sense to drop all that money on a 2-year-old camera when $500+ could go so far picking up a new a9 or the new a7r4 with its ginormous sensor.

So for a while I started relying more on the camera’s rear monitor. I used more native E-Mount lenses that allowed for autofocus. I turned on focus peaking for when I was using vintage manual lenses. I was still more or less just as adept and proficient a photographer this way, but photography became far less pleasurable for me. I felt disconnected from my camera and my subjects. I realized how much of the rush of shooting depended on being completely lost in the viewfinder, seeing only what was in frame.

After a little research, I found a very roundabout (some might say ridiculous) workaround to have a viewfinder again. I attached a $55 Movo monitor magnifier:

My Sony a9 equipped with Movo monitor magnifier. The lens is my trusty ole Helios 44-2.

This universal adapter turns your camera’s back LCD monitor into bigass viewfinder. It’s not the sturdiest piece of equipment, and the optics are simply cheap plastic, but it’s got a diopter, the plastic keeps it lightweight, and it serves its purpose. I can now look into a viewfinder and get lost in the image.

The biggest drawback is obvious: My once wonderfully compact a9 is now waaay longer. I guess it could be good for impressing people who will assume that bigger is better, but I don’t like having a more conspicuous and unwieldy camera. It also makes the Sony’s main menu and c3 buttons tougher, though not impossible, to operate. But for me these are small prices to pay for having a real viewfinder again. I feel like I have my camera back!

Switzerland, Italy, and Morocco with the Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2.0

Michael Maguire January 20, 2018

Often with wide-angle lenses you have to live with either a slow aperture speed or excessive bulkiness. Example: the Zeiss Distagon 35mm f/1.4 is fast and produces beautiful results, but it's brick-heavy and as long as many 100+mm lenses. Smaller wide-angle lenses usually range from f/2.8 to f/4 if you aren't paying the big bucks for something like a Leica Summicron lens.

The Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2.0 attempts to find a middleground. It's reasonably fast, and while it's far from small for a 25mm, it's fairly lightweight and the length isn't too out of control. It is a fat lens, and would probably be a bit much for the smaller Sony E-Mount cameras.

As for results, it combines excellent optical performance with minimal distortion to produce high-quality, straightforward results. This makes it a good travel photography lens for me. I don't look for personality traits such as bokeh quality as much in wide-angle lenses as I do in 50+mm lenses. With something like the following shot, taken at Lake Lugano in Switzerland, the priority is catching a big field of view with maximum clarity.

The Batis 25mm at f/10, 1/160th shutter, and ISO 200.

Cramped spaces can also call for wider angle shooting. I turned to the Batis when walking the narrow streets and alleys of the old Medina of Rabat, Morocco.

f/6.3, 1/400th shutter, and ISO 400. Lots of contrast added in the edit, with some added vignetting as well.

When in manual focus mode, this lens has a readout on top of it that displays focus distance, as well as depth-of-field (circle of confusion) range:

At f/2.8. The readout is also available in feet, but years of vintage Soviet lenses have taught this American to think in meters.

It can also be set to always on or off. I've seen reviews call this feature a gimmick, with photographers saying they don't see the point. I couldn't disagree more - this readout is wonderful feature, and I hope to see it on more lenses in the future. I often rely on zone focusing for things like street photography and concert photography. When I'm walking through a city trying to quickly capture slice-of-life moments, I prefer older lenses that have markings showing focus distance and aperture so I can know at a glance if the focus will be right. This readout brings that feature back with a new level of accuracy.

If you're someone who uses autofocus a lot, this feature won't be of much use to you. But I would also suggest you turn your autofocus off - I consider autofocus much more a pointless gimmick than this readout!

Getting back to lens performance, I'm also happy with how it does in low light, as seen here crossing the Arno River in Florence, Italy:

f/2.5, shutter 1/50th, and ISO 2000. Florence is often drizzly in January, but as film noir cinematographers discovered long ago, that's great for shooting streets and sidewalks at night.

I don't chase after sharpness performance as much as many photographers, but I was happy to have the Batis's sharpness when I came across this tree on the shore of Lake Como in northern Italy:

Do you see the silhouetted witch? f/5.0, 1/200th shutter, ISO 100.

Moroccan flag street art in Casablanca. f./4.0, shutter 1/640th, ISO 100.

One of the many picturesque streets near Lake Como, Italy. f/4.0, shutter 1/60th, ISO 100.

127 Film Format and Detrola Cameras

Michael Maguire July 22, 2017

Earlier this year, I came across a gallery of cameras produced between 1939 and 1941 by the International Detrola Corporation, a short-lived electronics company started in Detroit by an ex-Ford Motor Company toolmaker. I was not looking to get into medium format photography, let alone a somewhat obscure format, but I was so enamored with their style that I had to buy the first one I found on eBay...

Detrola model HW, with its lens retracted. A lot of Art Deco style in a small package.

The $35 or so I paid turned out to be an incredibly good buy. If you read what few descriptions you'll find about Detrola Cameras online, there's talk of the cheap build quality. Disagree! As far as I know, this 78-year-old camera has never been serviced, but everything still works beautifully. This model is the Detrola HW - the W there stands for Wollensak - Detrola used the nicer Wollensak lenses rather than their own lenses for their higher-end models. As was common in those days, the shutter was built into the lens. The shutter here was a simple spring based mechanism, the kind that have aged much better than other types. For example, the German company Exakta made some beautiful mid-20th century 127 and 35mm SLRs that had cloth curtain shutters that, while being an elegant predecessor of modern curtain shutters, are not known for reliability and are tricky to service.

The big drawback to shooting on 127 format these days is finding film to shoot on. Despite 127 being the format of the once-ubiquitous Kodak Brownie camera line (the childhood camera of both Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson!), there's almost no new rolls of it being made. The one exception is ReraPan, a black & white 100 ISO 127 film made by Kawauso in Japan. Going for around $12 a roll in America, it's very pricey for a film that yields so few shots, but it's nice...

The Kennedy Center and Potomac River on 127 roll film, with a circa 1940 Detrola camera.

The wonderful steps at the National Gallery of Art's East Building, Washington, DC.

While the above shot works nicely in portrait orientation, I had actually intended it to be in my usual landscape orientation. This shot was from my first roll with the Detrola, and I learned upon development that it takes rectangular photos which are portrait-oriented when you're holding the camera horizontally, and landscape-oriented when you're holding it vertically. Quite confusing when you're used to shooting with most any modern film or digital camera where it's the opposite! Of course I would have been aware of this off the bat if I had read the Detrola instruction manual that I got with the camera, but who ever reads the manual?

Those familiar with 127 film might be surprised to see a 127 shot that isn't square. Most 127 cameras were designed to produce 8 square photos per roll, but Detrolas were one of the cameras that squeezed 16 exposures from every roll. Rolls of 127 film are marked from 1 to 8 for on their backing paper. Whereas a classic Brownie typically has one little window in the center of the rear panel to see what exposure you're on, the Detrola has 2...

The disk can be turned, both to use the light metering chart, and to cover the two film windows to protect from light leaks.

This is a 50-year-old roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan film, set to shot one. When the "1" is advanced to the left window, that will be shot two. Then when the "2" is advanced to the right window, it will be on shot three. The plastic of these windows w… — This is a 50-year-old roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan film, set to shot one. When the "1" is advanced to the left window, that will be shot two. Then when the "2" is advanced to the right window, it will be on shot three. The plastic of these windows were always red like the red of darkroom safe lights, but with modern panchromatic film (what the "Pan" in Verichrome Pan is short for), the tint doesn't really matter since modern film picks up red light frequencies as much as any other color. Some black duct tape can be seen over the bottom of the pop-off aluminum backing - I was getting minor light leaks.

That long-expired Kodak 127 film was picked up off eBay for a few dollars less than rolls of ReraPan would go for. It produced some fun results with nice contrast...

M Street in DC's tony Georgetown neighborhood. It was called safety film because it was made of cellulose acetate, as opposed to the nitrate films from earlier in the century which would start a house fire the second you looked at it wrong.

18th Street in DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood.

I can't complain about the performance given that it's 50-year-old film. It had only lost about a stop or two of light sensitivity. It's really a hassle to develop though, because the film is so extremely curled it's tough to get on the film spool, and then it refuses to stay in any of my scanner's film holders. The only way to get flat scans of it was to lay a piece of glass over top of it. So going forward I'll usually stick with the ReraPan.

I recently picked up a Yashica-44 (so named because 127 film is 4 cm by 4 cm in square format), which is considered one of the best 127 cameras ever made....

My first twin-lens reflex camera. Pretty, no?

It seems highly capable, with nice sharp f/3.5 lens(es), a wide range of shutter speeds, and a self-timer. From the one roll I've shot so far...

Back to the ReraPan film. I liked how the clouds seemed to be extensions of the tree. Taken on the summertime 127 Day - July 12, or 12/7 if you write your dates like that. Of course the more American wintertime 127 Day will come January 12. Shooters… — Back to the ReraPan film. I liked how the clouds seemed to be extensions of the tree. Taken on the summertime 127 Day - July 12, or 12/7 if you write your dates like that. Of course the more American wintertime 127 Day will come January 12. Shooters of 120 format film sadly only get their day just once a year January 20.

The Yashica is a beautiful machine, but being used to the Detrola I have one major complaint about it - only getting the standard eight shots per roll seems like such a waste, even if the square shots are slightly bigger....

Look at all that unused film real estate between the shots drying in my shower. Sad!

For my next roll with the Yashica, I will ignore the exposure number indicators on the film, and try to keep the shots closer together on the reel so I get 10 or maybe even 12 out of a roll. This can be tricky though, and can lead to shots overlapping, or unintentional double-exposures if you forget to advance and can't check what number shot you're on. I do like having one square format camera, though. [Edit: Readers have informed that the Yashica-44 is indeed made to shoot 12 exposures, and that I just need to learn what I'm doing with it.] I find it funny that shots form cameras so old are the most ready for Instagram's format. Which leads me to conclude this post with a cheap plug - follow me if you're on Instagram! And if you've made it this far, then you'll love the 127 Film Blog - they founded 127 Day, and they feature great work and really know their stuff.

Trump Protests

Michael Maguire February 11, 2017

For all that's happened over the last few weeks that I've disliked, I can at least say it's been interesting living in Washington, DC. I slept in for the actual inauguration, but as someone who was packed in tight over a mile and a half away as I watched President Obama's first inauguration from near the Washington Monument, I can assure you that the crowds this time were indeed quite small. But I did make it out that night to the anti-inaugural ball at one of DC's best music venues, Black Cat. This was a fundraiser for the wonderful groups Casa Ruby and One DC. Over a dozen acts played, including hometown heroes Priests...

This was taken with my latest lens - a vintage JC Penny (!) 28mm f/2.8 lens Minolta mount (which I adapted onto a Sony a7sii), bought for $11 on eBay. These "brand" lenses were typically really made by legit lens or optics companies, and I'm quite happy with the glass in this one. Note the slender snake-like lens flares.

But on to the protests, which started the next day with the wonderful Women's March on Washington...

Taken with my trusty Helios 44-2 58mm f/2, which is a lens I will always keep coming back to. It's easy to find one for less than $50 - I don't know of any better bargain in lenses out there. Shutter: 125, ISO: 250, Aperture: Probably around f/8.

The beautiful architecture of the new African American Museum made for a nice frame here. Helios 44-2. Shutter: 200, ISO: 100, Aperture: Somewhere around 5 - with the Helios click-stop aperture ring, I'll often float between the set stops.

Note the great arm tattoo - "I love you." I didn't know this person and wouldn't have felt comfortable taking such a close shot at this angle, but my friend had asked if photographs were ok and they they said yes. I still cropped the bottom a bit so… — Note the great arm tattoo - "I love you." I didn't know this person and wouldn't have felt comfortable taking such a close shot at this angle, but my friend had asked if photographs were ok and they they said yes. I still cropped the bottom a bit so I could comply with Instagram's absurd no-nipples rule. Helios 44-2. Shutter: 1/200, ISO: 400, Aperture around f/4.

That was a special and powerful day, but what you may not have seen on the news is that smaller but still sizable protests have been almost daily since then. This one was taken 4 days after the Women's March, on January 25, when rumors of the travel ban were swirling. The travel ban was issued two days later.

Just outside the White House. The Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8. Shutter: 1/100, ISO 3200, Aperture: f/1.8. This is the only native lens for my a7sii I own, and the only one I'm interested in owning at the moment. I'm usually not one to chase sharpness, but… — Just outside the White House. The Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8. Shutter: 1/100, ISO 3200, Aperture: f/1.8. This is the only native lens for my a7sii I own, and the only one I'm interested in owning at the moment. I'm usually not one to chase sharpness, but I do love how sharp it is at faster apertures.

On January 29, the day after the travel ban took effect, there was a large protest that moved between the White House and a few blocks away at the newly opened Trump Hotel. These shots I took with the Asahi Takumar 85mm f/1.9.