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Beautiful Moon and Takumar 500mm f/4.5
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 1:48 am    Post subject: Beautiful Moon and Takumar 500mm f/4.5 Reply with quote

Hi all,

Great moon out tonight, and a pretty clear sky, so....

out comes the 500mm f/4.5 Takumar. She is worn, but not worn out. It used to belong to a wildlife photographer in Alaska. I bought it from him very reasonably several years ago along with a really nice old wooden tripod.

Anyway, I mounted the lens on the NEX-3, or should I say I mounted the NEX on the lens, put the whole thing on a sturdy Bogen 3046 and went to town.

The image is not bad for vintage glass. Sharpness isn't tops, and there was some blue CA, but I feel the image is definitely passable. A 100% crop is shown below.

Look at how even the massive Asahi lens cover for the 500 dwarfs the NEX!

I shoot some daylight photos with this lens in color soon.

Best, Paul




PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 1:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very nice, I find the partial moon shots much more pleasing.
I wouldn't like to carry that monster very far Laughing


PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 1:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tervueren wrote:
Very nice, I find the partial moon shots much more pleasing.
I wouldn't like to carry that monster very far Laughing


Thanks!

I wouldn't want to carry very far either. I shot this moon pic in my back yard.

When I got the thing, it came with this huge wooden tripod with metal head and handmade lens bracket made of 1/4" aluminum bar stock. The bracket alone must have weighed about 5 pounds, plus the tripod, not to mention, the wildlife photographer who used it in Alaska had it mounted on a 16mm Bolex!

What a great way to stay in shape.

P.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 2:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

LOL must breed em tough in Alaska


PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 5:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i love it! Both the lens and the moon-photo.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 9:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gotta say I like moon shots to be very sharp, I like the detail in it.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 1:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good results -- pretty sharp for a 100% crop


PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 4:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks!

I looked back through the exposures, and it is quite sharp. Better than my first impression. I did desaturate in PS along with some level adjustment and since I have all sharpening turned off in-camera, I used my standard "for print" unsharp mask sharpening recipe of 102% with radius set at 1.0 Pixel and a threshold of 3 levels. I had to work from the NEX-3 native Fine JPG since I don't as yet have a new enough version of Camera Raw to read the Sony raw format.

I would like to compare it to results obtainable with a newer lens, possibly the EF 400mm f/5.6 Canon L and the 400mm with a 1.4X attached.

Best,

paul