Beacon Camera Club

Inspired by Peter, I got out an old macro lens this afternoon. Olympus 135mm macro. Nothing spectacular, but gives a smooth background, despite probably being f8 or even f11, to get the tulip sharp. No sharpening applied in the computer.

Not a lens I have come across Roger even though I do have old OM1 and OM2N cameras. Was it taken on the full frame Sony or the micro 4/3rds Olympus? I'm guessing the Sony as 135mm would effectively be like 270mm on the Olympus.

Love the use of old lenses on digital cameras, it just slows down the whole process and makes you really think about what your doing.
I really like the images Peter and Roger have posted, wonderful colours on beautiful soft backgrounds.
Digital lenses are fantastic but also expensive.
Inspired by your efforts I had a play yesterday but haven't had time to look at the results properly yet.
Cheers
Bill Fleming

Its taken on the Sony. I don’t know why the EXIF data did not get into the image, though there is a clue in the filename! Probably a box in the export dialogue that I forgot to tick.

Incidentally, if you want to record which lens images were taken with, Exiftoolgui (Windows only) seems to work well, once you get used to how to use it. If you use Lightroom, Lenstagger is good (it is a Lightroom extension and uses Exiftool, which is a command-line program) but Exiftoolgui is standalone and does not need Lightroom.

To Bill, the lens is one of those designed to be used with Bellows, so, though it has an OM mount, it will not fit directly on to the camera and needs either bellows or an extension tube. I use it with an adustable extension tube that came with the lens on ebay. The method is to extend the tube till it is approximately in focus, and then use the focusing ring on the lens to fine-tune the focus. I got the lens to get a bit more distance between me and bugs, so I am less likely to make them fly off. But I haven’t used it that much because I decided I preferred an even longer focal length. For nervous insects, 400mm or 600mm are better! But you are right: I should use the OM lenses more often because they do make you slow down and think, and being designed for manual focus, they are better for that. You generally need to turn the focus ring further than on autofocus lenses, which makes it easier to adjust the focus precisely.

And I reckon I use manual focus at least 95% of the time for close ups anyway. For this reason, I'm more likely to use a manual focus macro than any other of my old lenses. It is very hard to justify using a 1970s or 1980s zoom lens as they usually fall a long way short in comparison to the modern equivalents. However, some of the old primes can be very good indeed and will often outperform a modern kit zoom lens set at the same focal length and they will usually offer the advantage of a larger max aperture.