Limkokwing Fashion Club Thursday Fashion Show (9/03) - First Time Using Vintage Lens: Review and Tho
Konica had produced few legacy lenses, including one of the most sought after (or am I exaggerating?) sharp lens Konica Hexanon AR 50mm f/1.7. Of course, if you compare it to Leica and Voigtlander lenses you will find yourselves broke as hell.
The reason I mention sharpness is because in modern days, we took lens sharpness for granted. In fact, we took high contrast, low vignette and low chromatic abbreviation and zoom for granted. Look at all the amazing kit lenses, I bet they are doing a much better job than most of the old lenses.
The one I'm going to talk about is the vintage Konica Hexanon AR 52mm f/1.8 lens. Hmm, "that bokeh must be delicious" I thought. Turns out it's so delicious that it affected the overall sharpness of the image.
That's why good lens come in great price.
Just recently I've sent it to be cleaned (due to fungus infections) and bought an AR-FX mount adapter and use it with my Fujifilm X-A2. I could say the result is astonishing despite it's...free! (and you could get it on ebay for a relatively cheap price compared to other Konica lenses.)
And then I waited for the coming (last) Thursday Limkokwing Fashion Club Weekly Fashion Show to test out my new lens to see if it is still usable and able to replace my Fujifilm beast of kit lenses.
In this post, I'll be covering the behind-the-scene preparation in studio. I'll cover the ongoing fashion show in the next post.
Mind you that it has no autofocus. I had rotated the manual focus ring for the whole time using it. The focusing ring is not as smooth as most lenses you can find, I guess it's due to the dried out lubricant underneath the ring.
Most of my settings is as below (if I'm not mistaken):
Highlight +1
Shadow +1
Sharpen +1
Noise Reduction +1
I couldn't bother to heavily post-process these images, therefore it's important for me heighten the sharpness and contrast beforehand. You'll know why.
Click to enlarge
Most of the original images came out to be low in contrast probably due to the low-light in the room. Images produced from the Konica lens are warmer compared to my Fujifilm kit lenses. Not a big deal, because amateur like us throw pictures into Adobe Lightroom! (and Instagram!)
And if you're wondering why crop the beautiful model's eye? Oh please, do forgive me. Everything behind the scene is so fast-paced and manual focus is kinda challenging for me. I do appreciate the story happening in the image tho. Creamy bokeh!
I personally like the rendering of bokeh (as I never had one). Anything in the center of the image is sharp as usual, but everything near the edge of image had soft focus. Just look at the example below.
Look closely at the sequin on the right arm of the model you'll find soft focus / glowing sequin despite focused. I guess this is what makes vintage lenses distinct from modern lenses. Mind you from my personal experience, the bokeh you get from a telephoto lens (like 100mm/150mm or above) is quite different from the bokeh of 50mm, probably due to subject and background distance.
Defects are pretty pretty for me, at least for this moment.
While I was busy refocusing the focus ring and compose the frame with my camera held above my head, only I realise autofocus had make me a lazy person. Not so say that modern stuffs make people lazy, but the convenience of it had made me shoot without thinking for most of the time. Click, click, click.
As you can see a 52mm lens on a crop sensor body (APS-C size) would turn it into a portrait lens. I love shooting people ya' know! (Opss)
If I had to be picky and discourage you from using a vintage lens, it would be...none. Can't think of any reason to tell you not to pick up a vintage lens. Why?
Because you can't possibly find a cheap 50mm lens with large aperture with the price of RM150 (more or less) in Malaysia. Not technically impossible, but you'll spend most of your time googling for the best price.
Lens flare is quite a serious problem here, probably due to the lack of lens hood. Under bright sunlight the image will be damaged terribly with the lower contrast and saturation images. However, if you shoot in RAW, it's possible to recover most of the details.
But I don't shoot RAW, I have faith in my jpegs straight out from my camera.
Kidding, I do shoot RAW sometimes under harsh light conditions.
One of the additional feature (in a wrong way) I like about the lens is that it renders images like oil painting. This could mean you'll suffer in lost of fine details (just as minor texture). However, skin texture is fine.
One thing I would like you to remember before purchasing a manual lens (for collection or use) especially zoom lens is that, you will not get OIS feature as is in your kit lens / work lens.
For stills like product photography which you could use a tripod, it's fine. If you're shooting portraits / events / weddings you might find yourself shooting at large aperture most of the time with high shutter speed, which means you will possibly get soft focus at the edge if you're at f/1.8. Stop down to f/2.8 or above will greatly reduce the problem but you'll lose that creamy bokeh.
And to be honest, I couldn't care much but to shoot with ISO2000 and above (as long as it's below ISO6400). My hand is not strong enough for a speedlite for hours.
In short, no OIS would force you to use high shutter speed and large aperture. If you find yourself shooting dark images, do use pop-up flash and deflect it onto the ceiling.
Conclusion
Would I switch my working lens from my original sharp kit lenses to this manual-defectful-slow-focusing lens? Hell yes. Bokeh is the number one reason for me to do that and the way that Konica lenses render images (soft focus around and oil-painting like images) just enhanced the artistic feel of my images. Of course, it depends on what you're shooting.
If you're worrying about the low saturation / contrast images, please don't. There are photographers out there who shoots only in flat profile just to preserve the highlight and shadow details to be edited in machines.
How about out-of-focus images? I could only tell myself that practice makes perfect. If early Olympic photographers can do it with film camera, why not me?
Stay updated for part two, follow K2Studiobox on instagram to stay subscribed. I'll writing about Limkokwing Fashion Club Fashion Show: Outdoor Photography as it is totally another kind of experience for me.
For full gallery please click here.
Cheers.
