Category Archives: Photography

Rokinon MFT 7.5mm f/3.5 MFT fisheye lens – Part I

Lenses, Micro Four-Thirds, Photography

Exceptional and cheap.



The Rokinon 7.5mm fisheye for MFT. Click the image to go to Amazon.



Garden cranes at sunset. There are no halos from the sun. Uncorrected original at f/8.


Corrected in Fisheye-Hemi from Imaudio. Graded darkening of the sky added in LR.

At $218 the Rokinon MFT fisheye lens costs less than a third of its Panasonic counterpart; it sacrifices AF and full EXIF data for truly outstanding all metal construction and resolution to die for. I have not tested the Panny FE but reviews disclose that the Rokinon is a far better optic. The 7.5mm fisheye is the only true MFT lens listed by Rokinon on its USA site; all others are either APS-C or full frame adapted to the Panny/Oly MFT bayonet mount and are, accordingly, huge and out of proportion on an MFT body.

I have no interest in the gimmickry of fisheye perspective but I am very interested in having an ultrawide prime. I first experimented with de-fishing images from my Canon FF fisheye here, concluding that defished images were almost as sharp as those from a very costly Canon 14mm prime and came in at 12mm effective focal length. That’s considerably wider.

While there are many fisheye profiles to be found in Lightroom, none does a great job and there is not one tailored to this lens. Some fishing around (sorry!) on the web disclosed that there was an outstanding plugin for LR from Imaudio for $30 and after testing the trial version, which watermarks the processed image, I sprung for it. There is no loss of edge definition unlike with the stock LR profiles and the image is considerably wider, less being lost. Look carefully at the above images and you will see that content loss really is negligible.

In keeping with the MFT aesthetic, the lens is tiny, unlike your FF or APS-C fisheye with an adapter.

Manual focusing:

The Rokinon is a manual focus optic. However the great depth of field means that careful focusing is really only needed at close distances and large apertures. Otherwise at, say, f/8 (the aperture ring has half click-stops except between f/16 and f/22) the focus is set at the hyperfocal distance (just short of infinity, like in the first image above) and you bang away, happy as a clam. When careful manual focus is required, using the relatively stiff focus collar, Panny MFT cameras come with the best focus aid in the business. Having first set ‘Shoot w/o lens’ on the last page of the third menu to ‘Yes’, allowing the lens to be recognized, you push the left quadrant rear button once, then the Set button. The center of the image is magnified allowing easy critical focus. On the GX7 you can vary the magnification using the knurled wheel around the shutter release button. I have mine set to maximum magnification.

When focused the group of lens elements extends within the confines of the petal, non-detachable lens hood. The total extension is around 1/8″. The rear glass moves forward a like amount suggesting that all the elements are being moved in unison during focusing. There is no way to attach filters and the deep, provided lens cap must be correctly oriented to clip on and lock in place. In practice the lens hood’s petals do a fine job of protecting the front glass. A rear lens cap is also provided and fits well.

The same lens appears to be marketed under a variety of brand names, including Bower and Samyang. Buy the cheapest. I much prefer chrome finish lenses and the Rokinon comes in a chrome variant; however, I have read that the chromed focus ring is plastic whereas the black one is very much metal, so I opted for the latter. The weight is just 6.2 ozs (176 grams). As I stated above, it is tiny, easily accommodated in a trouser or jacket pocket.

As I only ever use my GX7 bodies in aperture priority auto-exposure mode, correct exposure is guaranteed with the Rokinon, despite the absence of any communication mechanism between lens and body. Of course, one of the most appealing bits of magic of the MFT format comes into play here: as the aperture is changed the finder image remains the same brightness, for the finder automatically adjusts to the change in aperture. The only variable which visibly changes is depth of field.

Along with the outstanding 12-35mm f/2.8 Panasonic pro zoom and the small GX7 Panny body the user has a full frame equivalent lens range of 12mm to 70mm. The size:performance equation here seems to be impossible to improve on.

More in Part II.

Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 Power OIS MFT lens – Part II

Micro Four-Thirds, Photographs

Outstanding in every respect.

The mechanical aspects of the Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 12-35mm zoom were outlined here.

This is a costly zoom and for the money you get a fixed f/2.8 maximum aperture, a far higher standard of construction than the kit zoom, with silky smooth controls, and bulk not much greater than the kit lens. The original 14-45mm kit zoom was a fine optic and you can read about it here. It has long been discontinued but affordable ones can be found on the used market.

What does the 12-35mm add? Outstanding micro-contrast and edge to edge sharpness even at full aperture, an f/2.8 which comes in handy in marginal lighting. And the extra width at 12mm is a good trade-off for the loss of 10mm at the long end.

Here’s a selection of images taken in Williams and Sedona, Arizona the other day.


In Williams, AZ: Boat. 26mm, f/5.6


No halos, right into the sun. 24mm, f/6.3.


Brando lives! 12mm, f/6.3.


Hot rod. 32mm, f/6.3.


Steaks & BBQ. 25mm, f/7.1.


Cruiser’s. 14mm, f/5.6.


Deserted. Note the Art Deco touch on the bank building at left. 23mm, f/5.6.


Western outfitters. 23mm, f/5.6.


Sultana Theater. 12mm, f/4.5.


Sultana Theater plaque. 33mm, f/5.6.


Tasting and Tap house, formerly an opium den! 29mm, f/5.6.


Santa Fe. 17mm, f/5.6.


Native America Trading Post. 35mm, f/5.6.


Halloween witch. 12mm, f/4.


Italian Bistro (what?), 22mm, f/10.


Grand Canyon Hotel. 31mm, f/10.


Grand Canyon Hotel plaque. 16mm, f/5.6.


The Carriage House is a separate three room building in back of the hotel. 31mm, f/10.


In Sedona, AZ: Tinplate display at the Son Silver West gallery in Sedona. 19mm, f/6.3.


Hot peppers and T Rex. 23mm, f/6.3.


Pottery pumpkins. 19mm, f/6.3.


More hot chili peppers.

Except for modest use of the Highlight and Shadow sliders in Lightroom for the Williams images – the late sun lighting means very high contrast – these are pretty much straight out of camera, my Panasonic GX7.

Proof of the pudding? The Panny 12-35mm has replaced three of my other MFT lenses – the 14-45mm kit zoom, the Olympus 17mm prime and its brother the Oly 45mm prime. All sold. Now my MFT kit is back to basics, consonant with the ‘small and light’ concept of the original design. I own only one other MFT optic, the excellent 45-200mm zoom, with its mighty reach for special occasions. It resides permanently on my other GX7 body.

Here’s the ‘contact sheet’ from the Williams outing; having grown up poor and using film, digital waste is not something I indulge in:


The two images with a ‘2’ in the upper left corner were roundtripped via Photoshop – the first to remove overhead wires, the second to fix verticals.

Goodbye Lightroom

Hall of Shame, Lightroom

Crippled and costly.


The new Lightroom CC. Cloud only.

With typically devious sleight of hand, Adobe has split Lightroom into two applications. The fully featured one is named Lightroom Classic CC and has the features of the standalone Lightroom 6 – you know, the one you used to buy and pay for once. The other crippled version, near useless if you are a standalone LR user, is named Lightroom CC. Both the new versions run in the cloud and are subscription models – yup, you fork over money to Adobe monthly or say hasta la vista to your images or your ability to process them.

So there are three objections here. One is the monthly payment model. Age confers many benefits, one being an absence of monthly payments. No thanks. The second is dependence on Adobe not to lose your images or to stay in business. Remember how everyone said Kodak and film would be around for ever? And the third, and greatest, is Ivan in the Kremlin hacking Adobe’s doubtless fragile servers and rendering access to your images impossible.

There is no need to submit to any of this. I remain happy with the standalone LR 6 which I last upgraded to on April 22, 2015, and have paid zero for since. Likewise, when I need something fancier for corrections I round trip the image from LR to Photoshop CS5 which I last paid to upgrade on July 10, 2012 and whose enhancements since have been low value-added bells and whistles. The snag here is that the Adobe RAW engine in both apps will not allow me to process RAW images form the very latest digital cameras but as I am very happy with my two Panny GX7 bodies that’s not yet an issue.

When it does come time to upgrade I will be looking at Capture One which does not need the cloud, avoids Ivan’s depredations and is paid for once, not monthly. It supports all the latest RAW formats so could even be used solely as a RAW converter, otherwise retaining the LR/PS work flow. Meanwhile, standalone LR6 remains an excellent digital management system with excellent cataloging, retrieval, filtration, output and printing capabilities and Adobe can shove their latest versions you know where.


Capture One beckons. $50 from Amazon, or four months’ payments to the ethically challenged people at Adobe.

Reader PB writes:

“Capture One Pro is good, but it’s only $50 if you have a Sony camera – they did a deal. Otherwise it’s $299.

I’ve been using it since Aperture got shelved, picking it over LR under the assumption that Adobe would do this eventually. C1P seems to release a new version annually, upgrades costing $99 and have been applicable for the previous two versions, so when 11 is released in the next few months I might upgrade my copy of 9.

Having tested a whole bunch of other open source and paid photo editors/asset managers I’ve found C1P to be easily the best. The last one I was hopeful about was ACDSee Photo Studio, or whatever it’s called, but their method of non-destructive editing is to change the source file, save a copy in another folder and the details in a separate file. So if you subsequently have to move your library to another application you have to manually go through and remove all the ACDSee changes to your files to restore the masters. Incomprehensibly useless. “

Photography is over

Photography

Lost in a sea of garbage.

Over nine years ago I wrote that photojournalism, as a profession, was dead. The iPhone killed it. Everyone is now a putative photojournalist and he will be at the scene well before the pro with his kit bag and boarding pass. You can read that piece here.

Now with online services where you post an image which promptly disappears, where everyone is a photographer, it’s not irrational to state that photography as a whole is over.

By that I mean the well composed, considered image, objects arranged in the frame just so in the interest of the best dynamic.

Film director Wim Wenders states it well:

“It’s not just the meaning of the image that has changed, it’s that the act of looking does not have the same meaning. Now, it’s about showing, sending and maybe remembering. It is no longer essentially about the image. The image for me was always linked to the idea of uniqueness, to a frame and to composition. You produced something that was, in itself, a singular moment. As such, it had a certain sacredness. That whole notion is gone.”

You can read the interview in The Guardian here.

The art and artifice of making a great image are no more.


In the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1973. Leica M3, 50mm Summicron, TriX. I spent many happy hours here in my youth.

Nikon D850

Nikon bodies

No, you do not need one.

The Nikon D850 may well be the most capable camera yet made. A jack of all trades it comes with extraordinary sensor definition, access to a vast array of the best in lenses …. and you do not need it.

While the stress which this body will place on your lens and computer gear is immense, what with a 46mp sensor and 7fps continuous frame rate which will dictate more money for the very best lenses, the fastest CPUs and SSDs and just about everything else in the chain, the bottom line is that for – I’m guessing here – 99.9% of users the camera is total overkill. That’s because those 99.9% display their images on iPhones and tablets and small computer screens. The technology in that sensor is wasted.

If you want to read a comprehensive review the folks at DP Review do their usually excellent job. Click here.

Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics last week for his decades long work in the field of behavioral economics. Scoffed at by classical economists for years, for they argue that man is a perfectly logical decision maker in matters economic, we all intuitively know that his views are right. We are irrational beings who do not make coldly objective decisions. A YouTube video, a 62 second clip of a discussion between Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, goes a long way to debunking those classicists’ belief that money is a purely fungible commodity.

Were it not for the realities of behavioral economics, cameras like the Nikon D850 would never have been made as the professional audience which can justify the technologies therein is too small to turn a profit. It’s amateurs who need the bragging rights of 46mp and 7fps, and it’s behavioral economics which make this body a profit center for Nikon. Those amateurs have only irrational reasons for owning this body. Heck, maybe Professor Thaler will buy one with his prize money?