This post has been a few months coming. Back in May, Ash mentioned they would be in town for work, and would be keen to do some photography stuff. They were happy to pose in the faux-studio for a simple session of b + w photos. So in the lead up to this, I wanted to get a new lens.
My normal cycle of purchasing a new lens is a cycle of researching bunch of lenses, comparing their details and price with each other, and then a rinse-repeat of agonising which one I would potentially have the least amount of buyer’s remorse. This process normally takes months to grind down my options to the item I end up purchasing.
However, Ash was coming up in a couple of weeks, and so I had to fast track looking for a portrait lens for the photoshoot. Native Fuji GF lens aren’t the most economical even when looking at the secondhand market. But I have Canon EF lens adapter, so this widened the possibilities to a variety of lenses. A fair amount of searches for a 85mm f1.2 that could satisfy the short telephoto/portrait lens slot. The next suitable one was a Fuji GL 110mm f2, but I could not find a secondhand one that didn’t make my bank account gently weep. Well, I would be weeping over the empty shell of a bank account. Occasionlly, I’d encounter another third-part lens, like the Mitakon. But there was one other lens I kept going back to which was another tilt-shift lens. It was a Canon 90mm f2.8 Macro T/S lens. Despite all of the other lenses I’d look at I kept coming back to this lens. So I ended up buying it, as it was cheaper than the 110mm, and could do more.
The lens arrived before the shoot date, but one of the knobs was jammed, so I had to send it back. But like an idiot, I sent it back before the shoot, thinking for some blessed reason, I would get another lens delivered immediately. Needless to say, I didn’t get the lens back before the shoot, but a few days afterwards.
I call it Astrotrain1, because it’s a portrait lens, a a macro lens and a tilt-shift lens. And it works as advertised. One thing I wasn’t told was the f-stop range of this lens, which stops down to f45. This basically means that everything gets to be in focus when it’s on a tripod and a shutter remote.
A bit more recently, I picked up the pro version of the Viltrox adapter, since I was tired of my aperture resetting every time my camera had to be woken up from sleep, and then having to faff around with the dials to get it right. And it turned out that the adapter remembers which f-stop the lens was at between power downs/sleep. Which is a rare unexpected bonus.
Either way, I’m looking forward to shoot more with this lens, maybe using the tilt-shift properties.
Here’s some sample images (yes, you probably saw some of these before in other posts):
- It’s a Transformer that could be a space shuttle, a train or a robot. ↩︎
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