Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai.
Today i'm out here with the Pentax
Asahi Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4 lens.
It is the original version. I have
a few other videos on this, but I thought it'd be a fun one to use today.
Also, the Canon EOS M5. I'm gonna set up a custom mode real quick so that I
don't have to change anything. With this lens and the crop we might be
able to get some insects or butterflies...
Right now I'm at f/4 just to get started...
Of course, larger apertures with this setup is not the easiest thing ever.
One thing I really like on the m-series cameras is some type of
grip extension. So just really short cameras...
That's about the minimum right here. Towards that.
Minimum focus distance on this lens isn't terrible considering what type of
lens it is.
It's beautiful day today. A little warm, but there's some wind which isn't great
for the video. But it is comfortable with the wind. At least I do
have my lapel microphone with the Olympus recorder.
I have quite a few of these Sony lapel microphones that are stereo.
I put little wind muff things on them. Feels weird..
with this specific shirt, so I am using one without the wind muff.
I kinda push it into the line of this side of the shirt.
So maybe that'll block the wind.
And I switched my pack to the other side.
Still taking photos at f/4. I don't think
it really needs to go any wider. But there is a lot of the same.
But then you get groups of the same plant or tree or whatever you want to
call them. And it looks interesting that way.
So sometimes you have a big collection of different stuff, but then you have
a segregated group of stuff like this.
Sometimes you have one lone different... or variation.
So you could definitely use that as a subject in the photos.
Manual focus with picking is pretty easy. In this case I use red most of the time,
especially outdoors. Unless you're red green color blind.
Which I'm not and I just shift myself or focus on the lens to get where
I want it. And of course you want it in the middle of where it shows
the peaking color. Otherwise some of it will be out of focus. So you really want
to aim for that middle ground. In this case at f/4 it's not challenging
to do manual focus. Far close.. close..
One thing I need to remember while I'm doing this is that I should rotate close
this way far that way. So that would be close
co... clockwise for close. Clockwise for close!
Of course that depends on the lens.
But while I'm out here I have to remember these specific things for what I'm using.
I have to say with the action camera as my
filming camera it is super convenient. I did mention the drawback of this
specific one splitting stuff up into four gigabyte chunks.
And I have to sync the audio for each piece.
Which is irritating, but it's not a huge deal. So this is really nice...
Just to have the tripod of course with the action camera,
and the cage. So that I get a direct tripod connection.
The scenery changed quite a bit.
In this case I'm going to go wider aperture, it's pretty dark in here.
Let's try f/2.8...
...stream... going...
I think that's good. I don't know what's down here.
For some reason the mosquitoes were super pushy in there.
And it doesn't make it fun. If I had a fast telephoto lens I might have stayed
in there a little bit longer, but not worth it.
One thing I have on most of the time in the viewfinder is the histogram.
Super helpful, I don't trust the exposure preview or whatever you want to
call it... simulated exposure.
It is relatively close but still...
The histogram is key to getting the type
of exposure that you want. You can see the
histogram in there on the top right. To help you
gauge that exposure. Given the lighting is pretty uniform right now,
I don't have to mess with the settings too much. So if you're ever
concerned about going into manual mode, just because of the extra stuff to it.
A lot of the time you set it up and you're not going to
have to change that much. There's a little guideline that I use, of
course with the focal length. This is a crop camera so it's not
amazingly applicable, but basically I want to shoot
over 1/60th
of a second with this lens on this camera. One drawback of
peaking is that it messes with your preview of what you're trying to take a
photo of. I really focus more on positioning of objects in the frame.
If anything is weird in there more so than the
feeling of the photo, you can always turn it off and just wing it.
It's a challenge because it does interfere
with taking the photo a little bit.
You're never going to have a perfect setup. There are always drawbacks and
some positives. Pentax made a video statement recently about
their focus on SLR technology, which means
the mirror inside and the pentaprism. An optical viewfinder...
It's an unusual statement, but I get the idea for some people that they're really
into that specific type of camera. I never really had a big
draw to those. They were just what technology was available at the time.
So I might talk about that in a future video, but it is
interesting that they went that route. In my opinion mirrorless does have a lot of
advantages. Like I said, there are some disadvantages.
Although, with a manual focus lens on a standard digital SLR
compared to this, so much easier to deal with on a mirrorless camera in my opinion.
I did try to use full manual lenses on
my pentax. Not easy focusing aps-c.
Pentax has.. had.. nicer viewfinders than most
companies but even still I was using like a
magnifier in the eyepiece. It just was not an amazing experience if you
were trying to be pretty exact where you want to focus.
With the DJI camera I turned off the face priority exposure.
I'm curious to see what that does. I've been using that in the
other videos. Getting photos of those butterflies would be nice.
But catching one...
Extremely difficult!
It's not long enough. I could make it happen...
Maybe... potentially... We'll see! When you're using one focal
length it is a good idea to try to get that
in your mind for framing. So you don't always have to keep
looking up to the viewfinder.
Come back!
I think minimum focus is a little too greedy for those.
I did get two photos, but they weren't.. They were slightly overexposed and
the focus, from what I can tell the camera doesn't look amazing.
That's it for this video. Hope you enjoyed it. Nice fun photo walk
out in nature again. This time with the Asahi Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4
adapted to the M5.
Scott of Photography Banzai, thanks!
you