Sonnar 2/35

It's raining a lot here in Tokyo (and Kyoto, apparently - you know who you are!), and so I decided to take a quick macro shot of my DSC-RX1.

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The Zeiss Sonnar is a photographic lens originally designed by Dr. Ludwig Bertele in 1929 and patented by Zeiss Ikon. It was notable for its relatively light weight, simple design and fast aperture.

It's an amazing lens, and sensor, and I am not sure why I would ever part with it. As point and shoot cameras go, I don't think there is a better one than this. It's arguably Sony's best ever camera.

Feel good hit of the summer

There's no mistaking summer in Japan. Any summertime anime scene will have their distinct chorus in the background. I say background, but sometimes it can feel as if you're wearing these things as headphones. They certainly have an awesome song.

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Camoflaged

The thing is, I miss them when they're gone. I look forward to their calls all year, as they signify that summer is really here.  It's also a noise not familiar to the UK, so I only associate it with Japan. Cicadas in different countries seem to have a different pitch. Apparently it's only the males which call, but I've not looked close enough to check. 

We go on our summer holiday today, so I'm not sure when I'll next make a new post.

Butterfly flyby

I don't think I ever imagined taking a photo like this. I spent around 5 minutes during my lunch break, waiting for this butterfly to settle down somewhere so I could get a nice close-up photo with my new-old, manual focus, macro lens.  In the end, I gave up, as the little critter was practically circling me.

Well, I almost gave up. I decided I would try and get a photo at any rate, and this was the result. It's a 100% crop, and the lens was wide open at f/2.8. There is no optical stabilisation in this lens, and it's manual focus, so I had to turn the focus ring as he flew diagonally past me. Normally I would put the camera into speed-priority burst-mode if I were trying to catch an animal mid-flight, as you don't know in what position its wings will be. I was in shutter priority, and just took this one shot when the butterfly entered the light. Only when I looked in the viewfinder to review the photo was I amazed at how lucky I was with my timing.

I'm not sure I will ever manage to do this again, but I'll certainly try.

Pollen

I rarely use my macro lens outside of the house, probably as its 30mm focal length is duplicated by the smaller and slightly faster sigma lens. I'm not sure which lens is officially sharper, but I've found the sigma to be extremely capable. Having said that, the Sony macro lens for E-mount is very sharp, and has a minimum focussing distance of ~1cm - useless for shy animals, but great for plants and food.

Anyway, the above photo is a crop from a handheld shot of a flower (click it for a larger file). I saw the flowers at the side of the road, and wanted to take a photo to show my brother the resolving power of the NEX-7 vs his Galaxy S3. His phone took a great photo, but only when I digitally zoomed in on the flower did we notice a small insect atop the pollen! We struggled to make out the insect with our eyes!