Noah Aboussafy

What’s do we have here?

SHAZAM! It’s a Mamiya RB67 Pro-S medium format camera (6x7cm) with 4 lenses, 3 view finders, 2 backs, a grip, and a couple of other accessories that was very nicely GIVEN to me by a friend of my fathers… a very nice gift indeed.

Major components

Compared to my 35mm camera. Both with “normal” lenses. 50mm on the 35mm camera and 90mm on the 70mm camera. Both with eye level viewfinders. The Nikon is sporting a 50mm f/1.4 and the Mamiya a 90mm f/3.8 (as fast as they came.) An f/f1.4 for the Mamiya would be larger than a big coffee can had someone ever made one.

I’ve been very busy

I’ve been too busy to blog latley, but I’ll toss this teaser at you. I recently drove to Arizona and made a stop at Bryce Canyon on the way.

Apparently it can provide dramatic light for a self portrait. I wonder if it can do anything else well…probably not.

Today I went lens shopping, while I was out I tried the Tokina AT-X 116 PRO DX. I neglected to take a photo of it so here’s one from Bulliver on Flickr.

Technically speaking, it’s pretty wide; on my Nikon D90 it provides an equivilent of 16.5mm-24mm. That’s just a little narower than the full frame compatible Nikon AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED* which is about 3× the price.

It’s worth nothing that the the Tokina 11-16mm is a 1.4× zoom and the Nikon 14-24mm is a 2x, it’s very apparent in the following photos that the difference between 11mm and 16mm is quite small. As someone who’s been known to take the odd landscape I have to say there are very few times where a cheaper prime wouldn’t be just as good.

In the case of landscape, or architectural photography when a manual focus lens would do, one with an accurate focusing scale would be preferable to one without. Focusing without a scale can make it difficult to focus at the hyperfocal distance, giving you more foreground working space. If you’re shooting things that move, get something that auto focuses.

I’m not saying the Tokina is a bad lens at all; lots of people love this lens, but I personally wasn’t impressed enough to hand over my own cash for it because for the kind of things I like to do, it just wasn’t right. It’d either need to be wide, or faster. If it were say 11-16 f/2 I’d be all over it.

Here are some samples.

Tokina at 11mm

Tokina at 16mm

Nikon at 18mm

And for your enjoyment some center crops:

Tokina at 11mm

Tokina at 16mm

Nikon at 18mm

So there you have it.

*Does anyone else find Nikon’s use of Zoom-Nikkor and just plain Nikkor on zoom lenses oddly inconsistent?

I know these aren’t exactly great photos, but let’s be honest here, most of mine aren’t. What makes these worth posting is the only reason I had a camera was to take a picture of a scummy scrap of dirt in my yard. While I was out there I thought I’d take some others. I’m pleased with what I got considering I was in a “damn condo” frame of mind rather than something al ittle more creative.

*sigh*

I recently visited Kananaskis Country, while there I went on the Ptarmigan Cirque trail (right at the Highwood Pass). This was my first ever visit to the alpine. Okay perhaps I’ve been up that high when I was a baby or something but I certainly don’t recall it.

The trail is supposed to be an interpretive trail, however there are no informational plaques, just numbered “stops” on posts. I’m not sure, maybe I have to create my own meaning or something. For the first kilometer I could have cared less about the lack of interpretive plaques because it was quite steep and all I could think about was getting to the flat pretty part that and out of the fly infested slightly poop scented forest, I could have had that joy on level terrain.

You start at the Highwood Pass parking lot, go about 400m on a nice (though stinky that day) trail parallel to the highway, then cross the highway and start up the side throug the trees. The trail is narrow, steep, and has nothing of interest, I’m sure plenty of people turn back not knowing what’s ahead, and wishing there was at least one bench. Frankly if I didn’t have my two poles my fat butt wouldn’t have made it.

Once you emerge from the trees the trail is beautiful and there is lots to see, grasses, rocks. flowers, goats, mountains.

Some time I’ll postphotos from the rocky bit at the destination.

This photo is from the sunrise that followed the sunset on Upper Kananaskis Lake in Kananaskis Country from the previous post.

 This will probably be the last or second last photo post from my August trip to K-Country. I haven’t decided if I’m going to post any of the alpine pictures. Without a hiking partner for scale the photos are somewhat uninteresting.