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Showing posts with the label Fowlmere

Playing at photography with an old Helios lens

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Forever one wanting to muck about with cameras, I bought an old Russian Helios 58mm f2 44M lens from eBay for £39.00, having seen some pictures taken with it on the internet which I quite liked.  On a visit to Fowlmere yesterday I had a bit of an experiment with this lens coupled to the Sony A7R2, via a Neewer M42 to Sony E adaptor. The f stop is managed on the lens and it is manual focus. I was intrigued by the little metal screw on lens cap the lens has, but my mind likes these quaint details. Here are a few picture of Fowlmere done at various apertures (nothing more than f/11) and a picture of Alan taken while he wasn't looking at f/2. I am quite pleased with it. There are different versions of this lens which I was unaware of when I bought it. The 44 M2 version is supposed to give interesting swirly bokeh, which I didn't detect on mine,  but I need to take pictures under different conditions to try and find it.

Another mélange

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In the same vein as before - a soufflé of images with little cohesion. The two Fowlmere RSPB Reserve images (nos 2 and 3) were taken with an 8 stop neutral density filter on a really windy day. The rest were taken in and around Arkesden, my home village.

Late afternoon at Fowlmere

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With a belated sigh of relief we took shelter from Christmas for a couple of hours in Fowlmere bird reserve. I now think that the word reserve is applicable to the birds as they were nowhere to be seen apart from 2 moorhens and 3 mallards. Alan saw a green woodpecker fly past but I was looking the other way at the time! I did take some photographs though. The latter ones were snapped with the Holga pinhole lens.