Sheffield Park

This is a series from my visit to Sheffield Park today.
All pictures are taken with the Epson R-D1 and the Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L lens and the last one with the Voigtländer Super Wide-Heliar f4.5 15mm L lens.

London View

GF1, f6.3, 1/400, ISO 100, RAW 16:9, 22mm

Two Sides

RD1, f4.5, 1/21, ISO 200, JPG, 23mm (Voigtländer Heliar f4.5 15mm)

Crossing the Street

RD1, 1/239, ISO 200, RAW, 23mm (Voigtländer Heliar f4.5 15mm)

Waiting for the Photographer

RD1, 1/1783, ISO 200, RAW, 23mm (Voigtländer Heliar f4.5 15mm)

A new addition to my camera range arrived today, my new Epson RD1.
It's a camera I always liked but never had the need or use for. In the spur of the moment and while looking at Fuji X100 prices, I decided to bid on one on eBay and got it for a very good price including the Voigtländer Heliar 15mm lens. I am looking forward to taking it out some more but now I will probably end up spending even more money on lenses.

Driving along the Mountains

Been doing some more driving around Colorado and decided to post another quick series. Pictures have been taken with the Nokton, the Panasonic 7-14mm and the Canon FD lenses.

For everyone who is bored of my mountain and landscape pictures by now, I will be heading back to New York on Saturday so there will be more people and street photography.

Colorado Landscapes

Colorado and the Pikes Peak area in particular are great for taking landscape pictures, this is why I have another series with landscapes. All pictures except the 2nd are taken with the Nokton.

Arrived in Colorado Springs

I arrived in Denver and went to see a friend in Colorado Springs, we went for a quick drive around and saw the Garden of Gods.
This series is just some quick impressions, all pictures except the first are taken with the Panasonic 7-14mm.

Views of the Hudson

The weather was great for most of the day, it was very warm and sunny so I decided to walk along the Hudson riverside and then cross over Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn's Dumbo area and take pictures there.
I have used the Nokton, Panasonic 7-14mm and the Cabon FD lenses today.

Pauls Walk

GF1, f5.6, 1/320, ISO 200, JPG,14mm (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

Boatride Home

GF1, f7.1, 1/40, ISO 100, RAW, 14mm, (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

Greenwich Maritime University

Today was the first day when I had enough time to go out and use my new 14-28mm lens for the GF1, I decided to post a series from the pictures I took around Greenwich University.
 

Colored Lights

GF1, f4.0, 1/80, ISO 400, JPG, 14mm (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

This is a picture I wanted to take but never could since even 28mm did not give me the perspective and field of view I wanted. Now with the 14mm lens it worked just great.

The Door

GF1, f4.0, 1/100, ISO 200, JPG, 14mm (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

After using 40mm and 50mm lenses for quite a while it is not easy to use such a wide lens but I like the field of view provided. Now I just need to remember to move closer instead of further away.
And I really wish the GF1 would have a electronic leveler since holding this lens level is not easy.

Look Upwards

GF1, f4, 1.3 sec., ISO 200, RAW, 18mm (Panasonic f4.0 7-14mm)

Today, I got my new 7-14mm lens from Japan. It is a fantastic lens and since I am a big fan of wideangke photography it was the next logical step. I wanted to get the new 14mm f2.5 lens from Panasonic but the poor quality made me re-think that decision. While I did not have too much time to take pictures I like the lens very much so far and can't wait to try it out propery tomorrow.

Fish-eye 3 - The Eye of the Fish

Ok, artistically today's pictures won't win any awards or are even worth discussing. I took a short walk and wanted to show the different field of view of the different lenses and the distortion you might expect from them and finish my report on the adapter lenses.
I already discussed the Raynox QC-303 that provides a 8.4mm field of view. On Saturday, I got the Raynox QC-505 that provides a field of view of 14mm and not 16mm as previously mentioned. The QC-505 is slightly smaller but thicker so you have to manually focus at around 4-5cm or use macro as with the QC-303. Overall the distortion is lower with this lens and you get more usable image with it. However I find it less fun to use since the distortion and huge field of view is what makes the QC-303 so much fun :). Overall there is not much to choose between the two lenses since none is suited for any serious photography where technical quality is important. Both however are a lot of fun to use and are suited to get an interesting look.

Fish-eye 2 - The Return

"Jesus"
GRD II, f4.5, 1/320, ISO 200, RAW, 8.4mm

"Sharp"
GRD II, f2.4, 1/40, ISO 200, RAW, 14mm

People are never happy with what they have and always want something else even if they don't need it. Since I am no exception to that I thought I have to try out the Raynox QC-505 adapter, too. So I went today to Tottenham Court Road and after some haggling got the adapter for a good price. While I tried it out shortly last week it was not long enough to really get to know what it can do.
Today I could try it alongside the QC-303 and while the QC-303 gives 8.4mm field of view the QC-505 is closer to 14mm so quite a big difference. On the other side it exhibits a lot less distortion and a more usable picture overall.
I will do a quick comparison tomorrow and show the different field of view plus other things I might find interesting.
For today enjoy these two pictures, one is shot with the 303 and the other with the 505 as you can see from the exif information.

Fish-eye

GRD II, f4.5, 1/250, ISO 80, RAW, 8.4mm

Now, what can someone buy who has every extra from Ricoh for his GRDs? Simple, one goes and buys a lens to make a Lomo Fish-eye camera out of the Ricoh. You take what is one of the best lenses on a camera and make it to one of the worst, sounds simple enough. Sounds silly to do so but it's a lot of fun actually and I can recommend it to the person who has everything but wants more :D.
After reading on Flickr and in the GetDPI forums about the Raynox QC-505 and QC-303 fish-eye lenses for camcorders I decided to buy the QC-303. The QC-505 gives you an equivalent field of view of 16mm but this was not good enough for me and I wanted more, so I got the QC-303 since goes down to 8.4mm :).
Now the lens is pretty well made and a snap on lens for 37mm threads. One thing I noticed that although it is snap on, for better quality make sure you snap it on and then screw it on a little bit. This fixes it better and the quality improves slightly (as far as this is possible). Once it's on you have to use the macro mode to focus but if you want an instant response just use manual focus and set it to 2-3cm so you focus on the lens. This will give you the snap mode and everything will be in focus.
I hear you say this is all nice but what about the image quality. Well, it is as expected very bad and you have distortion, chromatic aberrations in all the colors of the rainbow, some lens flare and the metering of the GRD does not work properly with the lens on. This is without me getting started on the dark corners and vignetting, although there is hardly any vignetting visible to be honest.
You probably wonder why I would recommend this lens although it goes against the optical quality of the GRDs? The answer is simple, if you always wanted to have a digital Lomo this gets you as close as it gets. Or if you just want to have some fun with it, then it's great and worth the money.

The picture on the top is heavily edited so in order to give you a better overview see the picture below for a straight RAW conversion with all the faults left intact ;). Finally the last picture shows the GRD II with the lens on.