A Rainy Weekend

Between the weather and other activities I've not been photographing this weekend. I did, however come up with a new project which will blend well with the B&W Sprouts and Touch of Human projects.

I dug out one of my old manual focus lenses from a couple of years ago when I intended to use only fast prime lenses. The lens is a Minolta MC ROKKOR-PF 58mm f/1.4 (MC II version) which dates to around 1969. Here is a youtube video describing the lens.

I will open up the gallery for the project once it has some content. Here are some photos from the past few days with my usual setup.

EOS R6II, RF 24-105mm f/4L at 26mm, f/5.6, 1/350 sec., ISO 100

EOS R6II, RF 24-105mm f/4L at 53mm, f/11, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

EOS R6II, RF 24-105mm f/4L at 105mm, f/11, 1/500 sec., ISO 400

EOS R6II, RF 24-105mm f/4L at 42mm, f/8, 1/2000 sec., ISO 400

EOS R6II, RF 24-105mm f/4L at 105mm, f/8, 1/750 sec., ISO 400

EOS R6II, RF 24-105mm f/4L at 53mm, f/8, 1/1000 sec., ISO 400

UPDATE: And then, thinking why stop there, I dug out two additional Minolta lenses as I decided to expand the project. The additional lenses are:

        MC W.ROKKOR-SI 28mm f/2.5 lens (MC II version) which dates from 1969

        MC TELE ROKKOR-PF 100mm f/2.5 lens (MC II version) which dates from 1970

The three lenses will each have a gallery in a folder dedicated to the project. The Touch of Human gallery already contains a couple of images made with the 58mm and 100mm lenses from 2023.

FURTHER UPDATE 4/8/25: I was out and shot with all three of these lenses this morning. The only images I was content with were a couple with the 100mm lens. The 28mm lens has a strange look to it. The 58mm lens is nothing special. The 100mm lens could be useful and fun but other than wide open at f/2.5 there's not much point given my excellent 24-105mm f/4L lens.

A tipping point was when I realized a difficulty with my recent shooting method. I've been using Canon's monochrome Picture Style when I want to easier visualize a B&W scene as the viewfinder converts to B&W. Manual focus lenses, however, benefit greatly from focus peaking which outlines parts of the scene which are in focus in red. You can't see the red in a B&W viewfinder.

So, the Minolta lenses go back in their storage bag. At least it occupied me for a few mostly rainy days.