CCC Forum

In my post about digital vs film photography, I set Croydon CC members a test. Could anyone identify an image taken with an inexpensive lens from the film era which I had submitted to the DPI competition on 22 November. In the event, the challenge was easier than I had anticipated, although it turned out that the equipment I used had nothing to do with the outcome.

The lens I used is a manual focus Vivitar 70-150 f/3.8 which was probably manufactured at least 30 years ago. It came mint with all its original packaging and cost £24-95, postage included. eBay, of course. lt has an OM mount and I use an adapter to attach it to my X-E2. There is a perception that older zoom lenses do not perform as well as primes from the same era, but the Vivitar is sharp and renders colour well.

The shot in question was of the Chelsea Pensioners. I cannot recall the focal length I used, but it would have been towards the long end and the aperture was either f/5.6 or f/8. As our judge rightly pointed out, there were two large discoloured areas on the tunic of one of the former soldiers. The question is, how did it happen? The lens was an obvious culprit. Initially I thought it might be sensor reflection. Old lenses designed for film do not always perform so well on digital cameras. Occasionally light can reflect between the surface of the shiny sensor and the rear element. In that instance, I would expect there to be a single resulting artefact which is round and in the centre of the image. Neither was the case here.


Looking at the original capture in Lightroom, it was clear that the lens had performed satisfactorily. The cause had to be in the post processing. One benefit of using Adobe’s raw conversion in Lightroom rather than Photoshop is that its History function retains an audit trail of the inputs. Stepping through the changes quickly revealed the culprit. Fuji cameras have built-in simulations for a number of their films when shooting in JPEG and these are replicated in Adobe Camera Raw. When I selected Astia/Soft, there was a subtle change in hue to the effected areas. In my defence, I will say that this was not very apparent in the Lightroom preview displayed on my monitor. However, the conversion to JPEG made it much more obvious.

There is a lesson to be learned. Our judge on the evening left us in no doubt about the care required at every stage to produce a successful image. I failed to check the final result, assuming that the high resolution JPEG which I produced for the competition would mirror what I had seen on my computer display. Usually that is the case, but not on this occasion. I paid the price for my lack of diligence as the shot got a mark of 5, the lowest I have received in any competition. Mind you, I suspect I might not have been alone in that on the evening as scores were down across the board.

Here is the photo as it could have been presented. I have reduced the exposure where there is dappled sunlight on the Chelsea Pensioner’s jacket. Oh, and I used the Provia film simulation. Looking at the shot again, I feel that it gives a more realistic result. I am still not entirely satisfied about the rendering of the two areas in a low resolution JPEG, but that is down to them being more brightly lit and not quite in focus due to the limited depth of field. Sorting that out is probably beyond the scope of Lightroom and more a job for Photoshop.

Hi Mike,
What a big entry for the advanced members in Wednesday's PDI competition.
I was wondering if you had entered images in that PDI competition.
Hopefully you will continue taking part in the CCC PDI competitions.
Best wishes,
Iggy

Iggy wrote:What a big entry for the advanced members in Wednesday's PDI competition.

72 images in total, the same as the first round. 39 for Advanced, 15 for Intermediate and 18 Standard this time around.

Iggy wrote:I was wondering if you had entered images in that PDI competition.
Hopefully you will continue taking part in the CCC PDI competitions.

I have entered both rounds so far, but have not been trying too hard. The judges have noticed.

What has surprised me about my original post is that no one has queried my choice of lens. An ancient manual focus Vivitar? What was I thinking, especially when I have an excellent, modern Fuji lens which covers a similar focal range? Davidc would have been on it like a shot. I miss his questioning ways; it made me think, even we did not always agree. Much to the entertainment of those who only read the forum.

The answer is simple. The Fuji lens is a brick, both in size and weight. True, it is not quite such a lump as the full frame focal length equivalents from Canon and Nikon, but after a day lugging it around you still know it is there. I saved a bit of weight by carrying the 70-150. Experience of the Chelsea Flower Show had taught me that I would not use it much and manual focus would be less of an issue when most subjects would be static. Yes, I forsook image stabilisation and autofocus, but my back thanked me.

That was not the real reason why I bought the lens, though. I have a couple of similarly specified Olympus OM zooms which do the same job. Vivitar never made any of its lenses and outsourced manufacture to third parties. This lens was made by Kino Precision which also produced the legendary Nikon E series 75-150 f/3.5. (Just because a lens has a comany's name on it, it does not mean that they manufactured it. A practice which continues today.) Kino also made a 70-150 f/4 which it sold under its own Kiron brand name. The Nikon lens is famed for its bokeh or out of focus rendering, as a Google search will confirm. Despite the small differences in specification, the lenses are essentially the same design and perform similarly.

Look for a Nikon 75-150 on eBay and the prices might surprise you, particularly as it came from Nikon's budget range when it was new. The lens also has the disadvantage that the combined one touch zoom and focus ring can work loose. That appears to have been rectified on the other variants. I have not yet really tested the out of focus rendering on my lens, although I like what I see in the Chelsea Pensioners shot. Nonetheless, I consider it a bargain.