Canon EOS 20D | Helios 58mm | f/2 | 1/125 | ISO100 | handheld

This is my cousin Anja, again. And I don't ever get tired of taking pictures of her.

Today was a special day, because I've met my new cousin, Anja's sister, Gaja. She's this "little-10-days-old" person, who will, hopefully, grow up to be a "very-normal-sized-grown-up" person. I wish her and the whole Gruber/Lamot family a very happy years to come.

There's something else special about this picture... yesterday I finally got my "M42-to-EOS" converter exchanged for a right one, that does not cause a "macro-ring" effect. And now, I an proud owner of 4 "new" prime lenses that I can use on my EOS 20D. The combinations are as follows:

  • Helios 58mm f/2 (effective: 93mm)
  • Tokina 200mm f/3.5 (effective: 320mm)
  • Helios + Vivitar 2x-1 TC = 116mm f/3 (effective: 185mm)
  • Tokina + Vivitar 2x-1 TC = 400mm f/4.5 (effective: 640mm)

As you can see quite a nice collection. :) If you are wondering: the "effective length" has 1,6x crop factor of EOS 20Ds sensor calculated in.

Well today the Helios 58mm was my lens of choice and I made a few quite nice photos with it. It has a very nice f/2 which is very useful in low light conditions. It also has a quite nice length and shallow DOF which is very nice for portraits. I still have to re-learn how to focus manually with such a lens. Also, EOS does not use the internal focusing system for focus indication if the lens is not a AF/EF capable, so it is very hard to focus. Maybe I should get that "split-circle-viewfinder-replacement" thingy so I can focus manually... but I am not sure how will the AF/EF thing work then.


on January 21, 2007 at 12:44 http://slemc.org/blog said:

I think that it's cheaper and simplier to get an 'auto-focus confirmation circuit'. Mount it on M42-EOS adapter, so that camera thinks it has an auto-focus lens attached. So, when focus is correct, and your shutter release button is half pressed, you get an focus confirmation from your camera (beep or something ;) )

One similar product is on the following link:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V...

on January 22, 2007 at 00:09 Uros said:

Interesting idea. I'll look into it. And, FWIW, photos on your blog are awsome!