The Case Against Zoom Lenses

Zoom lenses are convenient for sure, but unless you know how to use them properly, they can cause more problems than they solve…

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“In general, I do not find the normal lens especially desirable functionally or aesthetically. In my experience, lenses of shorter or longer focal length are usually preferable in an aesthetic sense.”

— Ansel Adams, The Camera

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“We must come to know intuitively what our lenses and other equipment will do for us and know how to use them.”

— Ansel Adams, The Camera

First Impressions: Loreo Lens in a Cap

How ironic is it that the Loreo Lens in a Cap arrived the day after my Holga HL-N? And just as I was snapping some test shots on a more Holga-friendly sunny day!

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Ruby Foo’s, Times Square

First Impressions: Holga HL-N 60mm f/8.0 “Lens”

I can’t believe I’m actually writing this. But then, this is likely to be such a misunderstood product, that it bears the shedding of some light.

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Happy Father’s Day, Brought to you by Holga

Well, I was right. Amongst the many thoughtful gifts I received today from my wife and daughter, was a genuine Holga NL-N.

Holga HL-N 60mm f/8.0 Lens. Photo Courtesy B&H Photo & Video.

The tiny lens-sized box gave me a hint, so I made it the last gift I opened. Once I got past the quaint, generic packaging, and removed the tiny rear cap (Kudos to Holga for not overlooking this detail) I ran for my D90.

It mounts with a reassuring click, much better than the Holgamods “body cap” version. There’s lots of play, but then that just adds to the charm. Perhaps there’s a light leak in my future. My daughter poses for a quick portrait, and right off the bat I can see that they got it right. This truly has the characteristic Holga look.

Another nice thing is that this qualifies as a “pancake” lens; very compact and lightweight. Technically a 90mm lens on an APS-C camera, this is the perfect length for portraits. Although it only focuses as closely as three feet, the magnification its focal length affords lets you get in pretty tight, and it’s incredibly sharp. Yet it performs equally well at with long shots at infinity focus. Very versatile.

It actually makes my D90 behave like my Holga 120FN! At ISO 400, it’s good in bright sunlight, but move to the shade or indoors, and the camera’s built-in flash is in order.

I’ve read that the “vignetting mask” tends to create an odd pattern, but I’m lucky to have received a version where the mask is perfectly aligned to create four dark corners. All I can say is, look out Lensbaby!

Lomographic Lenses for DSLRs: The Holga HL-N and Others

Somehow this one slipped by me. While I wasn’t looking, The fine folks at Holga began producing their own SLR lenses in Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax and Sony mounts. This is good news for me, because I have the Holgamods version of this lens, and well, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Holga HL-N, a 60mm f/8.0 “Toy” lens for Nikon DSLRs
Photo courtesy of RamboHK

The genuine Holga version has the lens correctly positioned in front of the aperture, and I’m pretty sure there will be a hard stop at minimum focus. And there’s no reason to believe that it won’t lock in place, since its custom mount is not based on a body cap.

I was not at all impressed by Holgamods version. I can accept its very long equivalent focal length of 90mm, as it makes for a nice portrait/closeup lens. But it can’t achieve infinity focus since the thickness of the body cap is too great, so it’s uses are limited. The genuine Holga version looks very promising indeed. And more so, since the Mark II is available, which addresses the vignetting issue.

The newer version includes a (second?) perforated aperture disk at the rear of the lens to create a vignetting effect. I’ve read mixed feelings about this, since the second set of smaller holes around the central aperture seems to create an uneven effect. Still, it’s a move in the right direction. It looks as though this is a separate piece of plastic glued to the back of the lens, so perhaps it can be modified further to refine the effect. It appears to use a genuine Holga 60mm meniscus lens in what may be a newly tooled lens barrel. The new mount is very thin which is sure to allow for infinity focus. So it definitely seems worth a try for under $25.00.

But I have to ask the question, wouldn’t it be great if Holga designed a lens from ground up for APS-C cameras? Instead of 60mm, it would be 24mm to yield a wide angle, or at the very least, 35mm to yield a “normal” angle. Then, I remembered the “Loreo Lens in a Cap” I came across a while ago.

Loreo Lens in a Cap, a 35mm f/5.6-64 “Pancake” lens
Photo courtesy of Loreo Asia, Ltd.

This is a 3-element, fixed-focus, 35mm plastic pancake lens with an adjustable aperture from f/5.6 to f/64. And, it seems to have native vignetting qualities. This also might be a good venue for digital lomographic experimentation.

Then of course there’s the Diana lenses along with their adapter. In particular the 38mm would at least yield a 57mm angle of view.

So, I have a Loreo Lens in a Cap on order, and a sneaking suspicion a Holga HL-N might be on the way for Father’s day. Perhaps we’ll do a “shoot out” at some future date to see how they stack up against one another.

My Digital Life Made Easier

I pride the Mac OS on its ability to remain compatible with legacy apps…up to a point. At some point, something has to break, and sadly for me that was Extensis Portfolio.

I had used this app for years, even back in the days of Mac OS 9, to catalog remote volumes. Even with 1TB of storage space, the practice of archiving to optical disc is not going to go away anytime soon. In fact, I’ve gotten it down to a science.

But archiving is pretty useless if you can’t find what you need relatively quickly. Enter CDFinder, a shareware app that has been around a long time. I used to use it back in the Mac OS 9 days when it was a system extension that automatically cataloged a 3-1/2" floppy disc (yes, you read that correctly, floppy disc) upon ejection, which today would present a problem being that most removable media is rated in Gigibytes.

Portfolio has increased in price to $199.00 per copy. I can purchase Apple’s Aperture 3 for only $79.00, and that’s an app that really does something. $199.00 is simply too much to pay for a removable media cataloging application. Extensis has priced themselves out of the market. At $39.99, CDFinder is priced just right.

After testing CDFinder I was pleased to find that it does exactly what I need it to do, and I like the way it stores its files. Searching is a breeze, and I can search across one or more of the catalogs, each of which appears as a separate file within the CDFinder database file/folder structure. Like Portfolio, you simply drag a disc to the CDFinder sidebar (or to a folder of your choice in the sidebar), and a dialog opens to select your cataloging options (you can set them in preferences, but override them if you wish each time you create a new catalog.)

The practice of archiving to optical disc and cataloging is going to be even more important in the future as we see the demise of the distribution of  applications and media being distributed by optical disc. Apple has announced that Lion, the next generation of the Mac OS, will only be available as a software download. Which means at some point you will need to burn it to a bootable DVD.

First Impressions: Voigtländer Color Skopar 20mm f/3.5 SL II

I had been fighting this for a long time. I’m a big fan of the Voigtländer Ultron 40mm f2.0 SL II, but often need a lens that’s wider. I carefully weighed the differences between the Nikkor 20mm and this lens, and settled on the Nikkor due to it’s additional speed and auto focus capability. The Nikon was also a tad sharper. But I’ve been seeing a lot of great sample images from the Color Skopar, and started to give it some thought.

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