alf_beharie

<p>The Spiratone Auto 135mm f1.8 was actually made by Yoshida industries, not Sigma. The exact same lens was also sold with the following brandnames (that I currently know of): Polaris, Raynox Polaris, Carena, Beroflex, Samigon, Rokunar, Javelin, Raynox, Admiral and Automatik Weitwinkel...The Raynox brandname belongs to Yoshida industries. The lens was in production from 1973 up to 1978.</p>

 

<p>Update: It appears Canon completely failed to predict the specs of the Nikon D800/D800E so they only gave the 5D mk3 a very modest increase in resolution over the 5D Mk2...They also brought it out at a very uncompetetive price...I would not buy a D800 because it has a Nikon mount but I wouldn't buy the 5D mk3 either because its simply too little, too late and for too much money. Maybe I will have to wait for the 5D mk4 or mk5 before they have a camera that is actually worth the money again.</p>

<p>Instead of using cumbersome bellows another solution to increasing magnification is to use screw on "close up lenses", which screw onto the filter thread on front of your macro lens. <br>

Don't be tempted to buy cheap, single element CU lenses, as they will degrade image quality.<br>

I have two 52mm Canon 500D 2x multi element CU lenses. They are optically excellent bits of glass with very little to no noticable drop in image quality or macro sharpness at all. They come in various sizes to fit the filter thread size of your macro lens.<br>

The Micro Nikkor 200mm f4 has a macro magnification of 1:2 at around 10 inches working distance. Screw on one 500D and you get 1:1 magnification with only a slight loss of working distance...Screw on a second 500D and you get 2:1 magnification, again with only a slight further loss in working distance. Using Nikon extension rings like the PK-13 as well results in even higher magnification (typically 4:1-5:1) but the lens setup gets quite long and of course as the magnification increases you will start to need a tripod for sharp results, whereas at 1:1 sharp hand held macros are relatively easy.</p>

<p>The older manual focus version never has this problem so its almost certainly an AF issue...IE: the AF gearing is interfearing with the operation of the manual focus dial...Is there a switch on the lens to switch it between AF and manual focus? And if so, have you made sure its switched to MF?</p>

<p>It depends what your trying to photograph...Dead bugs don't move so if thats what you want to capture then virtually any macro lens will do. (As long as they have enough working distance to allow adequate illumination of the bugs) <br>

Live bugs don't like camera lenses shoved into their face though. They are very shy and very flightly (especially flying insects!) so they tend to instantly dissapear just as you manage to focus on them! The solution is to use a macro lens with a long focal length and therefore with a large working distance, so that the end of your lens doesn't need to be so physically close to them to see them close up.<br>

I use a Nikon Micro Nikkor 200mm f4 ED IF AiS because it is very sharp and it has a relatively large working distance. </p>

<p><a name="00b1FC"></a>Hi <a href="/photodb/user?user_id=7318761">Annabelle</a>. Camera lenses are designed to focus light reflected from the subject your aiming your lens at and that you wish to capture onto a flat section of film roll (a frame) or onto a flat digital sensor.<br /> They do this by either REFRACTION (as is the case with all lenses that use glass elements) or by REFLECTION (as is the case with all lenses that use curved mirrors). Sometimes the refraction and reflection are combined to produce a lens with unusual properties but this is very rare.<br /> Glass has a higher refractive index than air, so when light passes through it it bends slightly. Water has an even higher refractive index than glass and you will already be familiar with how that distorts the light you see through a bottle of water say. <br /> By curving the glass elements in the lens in certain ways (making then concave, convex, biconvex, biconcave, Aspherical etc) the light can be made to bend even more and to exactly where it is required.<br /> The problem is, as you bend light it tends to split into its constituent colours (just like it does through a glass prism) and this results in something called chromatic abberation or more often simply just called "CA".<br /> CA is not really a problem in black and white (monochrome) photography but it is extremely undesirable in colour photography. It can completely ruin the resulting colour photographs so lens designers try to cancel out the CA by using several more elements, curved in certain ways, and in series. <br /> Generally speaking, the more glass elements a refractive lens has, the greater its CA correction and the better it is optically, but of course this comes at a price as optical elements are not easy to make.<br /> So to keep the price of their lenses down to a realistic level for most consumers, lens manufacturers often compromise on the amount of elements they use...They typically try to use just enough elements to cancel out most of the CA so that it becomes almost unnoticable expect when viewing the resulting photographs at high magnifications.<br /> Reflective lenses (often called "mirror lenses" or "reflex lenses") use several curved glass mirrors to focus the light. They offer some advantages over refractive lenses...No CA, lower weight and shorter physcal size for their focal length plus they are cheaper to produce too, but they also have some major disadvantages too, such as lower contrast, less sharpness, they have a larger diameter than refactive versions and they produce ugly "doughnut ring" out of focus highlights.<br /> Mirror lenses are therefore seen as even more of a compromise and serious photographers shun then like plague and get more expensive but opticaly better refractive versions instead.</p>

<p>Rick, the Sigmatel is completely different optically than the Spiratone, , Raynox Polaris, Soligor, Samigon and Accura etc.<br>

Its optical design was so good that Pentax borrowed most of its design when they produced their SMC-A version:<br>

<img src="http://imageshack.us/a/img715/1344/135mmf18optics.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Ann, I suggest you look at the pics in their original size...There is plenty of noise and even worse, blown highlights everywhere. If you think these look good I hate to think of the poor quality of images you must be used to getting from your current camera!</p>

<p>Just pointing out that the Sigma XQ 135mm f1.8 and the optically identical Sigmatel Multi Scalematic 135mm f1.8 are not the same optically as the two Spiratone 135mm f1.8 versions and that the Spiratone versions were made by two different makers, neither of them Sigma.</p>

<p>Thought I would rejuvinate this thread by posting an image containing the sum of my research into 135mm 1.8 lenses and who made them as of Feb 2013:<br>

<img src="http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/1344/135mmf18optics.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Actually Spiratone made 2 versions of 135mm f1.8, and neither of them is optically identical to each other or to Sigma XQ version.<br>

<img src="http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/1344/135mmf18optics.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>The Sigmatel has a unique optical design which is quite different to the two Spiratone versions. The more common of the two Spiratone versions has an 82mm filter thread, like the Porst, Sun, and Soligor but the Sigmatel only has a 77mm filter thread:</p>

<p><img src="http://imageshack.us/a/img254/9122/135mmf18opticsdiagram.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="968" /></p>

<p>Unfortunately Dirks wide open FD 85mm f1.2 L sample does'nt really show the lens in its best light:<br>

<a href="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00Z/00ZdH5-417331584.jpg">http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00Z/00ZdH5-417331584.jpg</a><br>

These are all wide open shots from the FD-L too:<br>

<a href="http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/7627/bronzestatueinlondon.jpg">http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/7627/bronzestatueinlondon.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/5669/chaplininlondon2.jpg">http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/5669/chaplininlondon2.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/751/elvisinlondon.jpg">http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/751/elvisinlondon.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://img852.imageshack.us/img852/7444/reptilecostume.jpg">http://img852.imageshack.us/img852/7444/reptilecostume.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/2396/alexportrait1ps.jpg">http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/2396/alexportrait1ps.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/750/sdim5641c2.jpg">http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/750/sdim5641c2.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/5420/sdim6391c.jpg">http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/5420/sdim6391c.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/3363/sdim5613c.jpg">http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/3363/sdim5613c.jpg</a></p>

<p>Really? I'll need more proof...How about you try that and show me the results so I can compare them with mine?</p>

<p>Fair enough Dave, but as they say, seeing is believing, and I've seen enough to convince me there is a strange phenomenon going on that cant currently be explained by science so I'll leave it at that.<br>

Sarah, I'd hot foot it out out of that town ASAP!...Sounds like one of those towns inhabited by inbred rednecks that you find in most low budget horror movies! :)</p>

<p>Sarah, are you saying that most of your students were/are creationists? If so, I am utterly amazed! <br>

Here in the UK, Creationism is seen as a belief almost unique to ignorant, brainwashed, religious zealots and therefore that it has no place in a modern civilised society, and especially not in a classroom environment.<br>

The only people who share such delusions this side of the pond are fundimentalist Muslims, who happily are only a tiny minority of the total Muslim population of the UK. Not supprisingly, given Darwins heritage, Evolution is almost universally accepted as the norm here.<br>

Dave, your comments on flash use coinciding with Orbs in pics are understandable, but not unexpected...Believe it or not, I did notice the coincedence too! However, instead of claiming, like you, that it is simply nonsense and dismissing it out of hand, I did attempt to find a logical explanation at the time. I theorized that the Orbs were possibly fluoresent and were therefore emitting visible light in response to the UV light emitted from the flash. This would explain why they are virtually never seen in pics taken without flash.<br>

Besides, if they are all simply dust in front of the lens then perhaps you could try and explain the very obvious human facial characterics exibited by the Orbs that I blew up and enhanced?:<br>

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/orbs/faces.html" target="_blank">http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/orbs/faces.html</a></p>

<p> </p>

<p>That is true Frank, but thats not the end of the story...I was living with my ex wife at the time and she became totally freaked out by me capturing the said Spirit Orbs in my pics, and pointing out the faces to her in the blown up versions on my PC monitor. Did'nt really bother me but she insisted I call someone in to get rid of them. Ghostbusters.Inc does'nt actually exist of course but I found that there were plenty of amateur psychic investigators to be found via a websearch. I eventually contacted a group calling themselves "The Children Of The City", or C.O.T.C for short. The City in question being their home town, Bristol. I live near Heathrow so I was'nt expecting them to travel to my house without some sort of payment changing hands. But they emailed me back to say they wanted to come and investigate the Orb problem in my house, and they would do it for free! Eventually, three of them turned up, two men and a slightly portly woman. They brought in a camcorder, which they mounted on a tripod in one corner of the living room and set it to record straight away. I took out my digital camera and the woman investigator got hers out too, we simultaneously shot a pic towards the other side of the room. The exact same Orb was visible in both shots! One man stayed with the camcorder whilst the other went around the house with a hand-held digital IR thermometer and a sensitive hand-held magnetometer. The results were pretty inconclusive until he went into my Attic, where I had an office and where I had experienced unaturally cold chills and a strange figure on my webcam which looked like someone wearing medieval garb. He exitedly announced that he had discovered an electro magnetic hotspot! I rushed up into the Attic to see what he had found...The hotspot was about 6 foot up from the floor of the Attic near one of the wooden roof beams and his meter could detect it from several feet away...And as there was no obvious metal nearby except perhaps a few deeply embedded iron nails this was never satisfactorily explained. The woman asked to left alone in the Attic so she could try and capture possible EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) with her sensitive hand-held digital sound recorder. Now this is where the most amazing part of their visit occured...The camcorder was constantly recording throughout in the living room. At one point my daugher walked in front and faced it from the other side of the room and whilst we watched her in the camercorders flip out LCD screen we all saw a clear rainbow aura appear over her head! This would have been captured by the camcorder but despite my requests they have never sent me a copy of footage of the event they promissed me.<br>

The upshot was that after they left, things did get better...I still captured the occasional Orb but never as many as before, the cold draughts ceased and the missus was a lot happier, so whatever they did, they did help. So perhaps now you can understand why I have formed such beliefs, which are based on evidence I cannot refute, that I witnessed with my own eyes and that was also witnessed simultaneously by other witnesses.</p>

<p>OK, first let me prefix my response by stating that I am a confirmed Atheist, so I dont believe in Gods, Angels, Demons, the Devil etc and put I my faith in Science instead.<br>

BUT...several years ago when such Orbs showed in my photos on a regular basis it was a time I was researching my family tree and openly reciting the names of my dead ancestors. I noticed that the Orbs in question looked nothing like dust or water droplets illuminated by the flash. They were not opaque, like dust, snow or water drops, they were translucent. Some had trails behind them showing that they were moving rapidly when the pics were taken, even though the room they were taken in had closed double glazed windows and no desernable openings that could cause draughts. The most obvious difference between the said Orbs and dust/snow/water droplets is that most of the Orbs showed human facial features, even down to the white of their eyes and nostrils! I kid you not! And this is not simple Anthropomorphism as the Orbs with the most obvious facial features were cropped, blown up, and various software based contrast enhancing methods were employed to clearly bring out the "faces" in each Orb. What I saw convinced me that perhaps life did actually go on after death.<br>

Science actually has an answer that neatly explains the phenomenon...Its called The Law Of Conservation Of Energy, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another. We all know the human body is a complex bio-electrical apparatus...When someone dies all that latent electrical energy has to go somewhere, as it cannot be destroyed, and so its possible that it gets converted into the most compact form it can take...A spherical Orb. Now, if you believe in the existance of a soul or spirit, that leaves the body on Death, and I'm not going to just dismiss the possibility out of hand, then the Orbs in question must be the nearest thing to it. Millions of photographers have captured these orbs, all around the world, so its not exactly a rare occurance and the concensus of the majority has been to call them "Spirit Orbs". <br>

To finally kill the dust/water/snow drops hypothesis, many Spirits Orbs actually exhibit intelligence!...They often respond to your verbal requests to move here or there within a room and will show up in the subsequent photo exactly where you asked them to be! And I believe we are all able to respond to them too, but on a subconsious level. For instance, you've lost your keys and a sort of internal voice suggest where you should look for them...Thats one of your dead ancestors helping you out!<br>

So, think granny is dead and gone?...Think again!<br>

Here is a link to some of my blown up and enhanced Spirit Orb faces:<br>

<a href="http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/orbs/faces.html">http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/orbs/faces.html</a></p>

 

<p>Hi ED, thanks for posting the great video! I dont yet have a Canon EF mount camera but i'm planning on getting the 5D mk3, if and when its ever released, depending on its price, so I will bear this in mind.</p>

<p>The FL 55mm f1.2 may be slightly soft wide open but its also one of the sharpest lenses in my colllection when stopped down from f2 onwards...Like most lenses its sharpest between f4 and f5.6, where its razor sharp.<br>

In fact, its easily as sharp as my uber sharp Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.7 Planar T* (MTF 4.6) in side by side tests, the only difference is the Canon has less contrast at wider apertures...Although you can claw back some of that contrast by always using it with a suitable lenshood and/or by adding some in post processing.<br>

Bokeh wise, the Canon is the King of the 50's, not necessarily wide open, but certainly from f2 onwards. Its bokeh is often sublimely smooth and Leica-esq...Its my 50mm (ish) lens of choice for this reason. Thats not to say its useless wide open though...You just have to be more carefull with your exposure times as its so fast it easy to blow out highlights with it if your not carefull.<br>

I must stress the need to use a deep lenshood with this lens at all times though if you want best results. It has a large front element for its focal length and thus coma can be a problem wide open unless the front element is well shielded from stray light. With a suitable hood you will will find it much more usable both wide open and when stopped down.<br>

Its not an Aspherical lens so out of focus highlight quality is much better...No ugly onion-ring OOF highlights with this lens.<br>

In side by side tests with a Minolta Rokkor 58mm f1.2, the Canon came out as sharper wide open, with the Minolta having slightly smoother bokeh (Just as expected given the focal length/f-stop ratio). The main difference is that on average the Minolta costs three times as much!...So the Canon can often still be found at bargain prices.</p>

 

<p>Sigma SD14 and the Canon FD 85mm f1.2 L, all @ f1.2:<br>

<img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5070/5654376795_20b5e03c6c_z.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="427" /><br>

<img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5141/5654376135_24b2a5c1e6_z.jpg" alt="" width="427" height="640" /><br>

<img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5269/5654375567_5daac0b769_z.jpg" alt="" width="605" height="640" /><br>

<img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5068/5654946640_be802b3c0c_z.jpg" alt="" width="427" height="640" /><br>

<img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5227/5654945868_7b721dbed5_z.jpg" alt="" width="427" height="640" /><br>

<img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5308/5654945280_55c1e4c4cd_z.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="427" /></p>

<p><a name="00VRQi"></a>

So much to clarify...<br />Spiratone and Sigma had a very close relationship, so close that the son of the founder (Mr Yamaki) spent a year at Spiratone in a kind of internship (at least, that's what we would call it now).</p>

<p>Re: YS, the Y stands for Yamaki (head of Sigma) - the S stands for Spira.

<br /> <br /> <strong>As far as I am aware the Y stands for Yamaki and the S stands for System.</strong><br /> <br />

Anyone care to guess who came up with the idea for YS jointly?

</p>

<p><br /> <strong>What makes you think they did?...Sigma designed the Y/S mount for their early lenses. Every early lens made by Sigma, including the Sigma XQ range, has a Greek Sigma character stamped somewhere on them...If Spiratone lenses also have the same character then they were definitely made by Sigma.</strong></p>

<p>

So Sigma's reply is simply wrong.

<br /> <br /> <strong>Correct.</strong></p>

<p> </p>

York house, Twickenham, England, dates back to the 1630's.<div></div>

<p>For Scott. I like the tree frog pic. I use lenshoods on all my lenses, including the FL 55mm f1.2 and I never notice halowing...I would recommend you use a lenshood if your not already using one. I'm current using a flared out metal Pentax Super Takumar 135mm lenshood on the FL and it stays on the lens all the time.<br>

For Hank. You could have trouble. The FL has a registration distance of 42mm, 3mm less than your Sony. In other words to attain infinity focus you will have to move the rear element of the FL 3mm closer to your sensor. The only way to achieve that without using an image quality reducing optical adapter is to machine 3mm off the mounting boss (the bit the FL mounting plate screws onto) and then screw a Sony mounting plate on instead. Problem is, I'm not sure 3mm is possible. I had to machine 2mm off the mounting boss of my one and I dont think I could have taken much more off. <br>

For ED. Sounds like your saying your conversion kit allows a quickly reversable conversion? <br>

How is this possible...An additional optical element or two? </p>

 

<div></div>