Piesker Picon 135/3.5.... Cat portrait 3rd set of images

[mo]

My cat model finally co operated and here is her "set". I have used the hood again and these were about F4-5.6.Click on the images for a sharper image.

#1 I always try to focus on the cats eyes...left or right...lol as long as she stays still

#2

#3 Just some late afternoon/evening light coming through the trees.

#4 A funny little smirk...she is actually sniffing the air.

[Minolfan]

Pictures are soft, but with a bit of PP the rendering is nice!
Exciting lens, beautiful piece.

[mo]

I have noticed there is a very faint haze/milky coating under the front element that may be causing the softness.I can see it reflecting back at me when I look into the lens from the front.

I thought I had done sufficient Post processing on these? By bumping the contrast adding a little more brightness.

It certainly is a nice lens, and I hope I can get the best out of it with a little more cleaning and practice.

[pich900]

[hifisapi]

yes, the originals are too low in contrast.

[mo]

Thanks for the example...Post processing,I will understand how to do it one day... I may have to send a file to a friend who has a better monitor than me and see what it looks like on that screen.

[kds315*]

Soft and lacking contrast as it is often with lenses that age. Can by fixed easily also using some unsharp masking.

[iangreenhalgh1]

At first, I thought the results looked a bit crap, but then I looked closer and tweaked a couple of them and it seems to me, this is a very sharp lens indeed and has a nice overall rendering. However, the contrast is low and colour saturation a bit on the low side, but both of these can be fixed easily in Photoshop.

Some points Mo, there looks to be some veiling flare going on, so I would definitely suggest a hood if it hasn't got one. Also, the stuff you describe on the glass could very much effect the contrast. I've had a few lenses with light coverings of fungus on an element of three and they had poor contrast, but after cleaning they were much better. Same with haze, but that can be a bugger to clean off, sometimes impossible.

Seems to me you can use it as-is and have to learn a few PP steps to get the best from it, or get it cleaned (which it seems good enough to warrant); but it will still benefit greatly from some PP steps.

I had a play with this cat picture, I'm far from a cat lover but something about this one grabbed me. I increased contrast and saturation then sharpened it, then noise reduction (sharpening always makes things look noisy) then finally cropped it as I didn't care for the greenish background and wanted to draw focus to the eyes.



It looks a little over-sharpened now, but that's because I was working with a low res jpeg, it would look better if I worked from the original, obviously.

[patrickh]

mo, certainly looks as though this lens has potential. You nailed the focus on the cat's eyes.


patrickh