Sunday, August 09, 2009

photowalk: 9 aug 09

The weather on Sundays has been great these last few weeks, and I continue my photowalks as usual. This time its with my regular photo pal, Ananda.



We pass by a busker on Bourke Street...


... and admire some tiny dolls in Royal Arcade...



The Flinders Lane area is as crowded as usual on Sunday afternoon.


I saw two large dogs being tightly wound around a sign pole in front of the City Library in Flinders Lane. It is quite pitiful to see them, in my opinion.


Cathedral Arcade is a pretty neat place to be.


During a quick bite in Mc Donalds, I decided to try out Ananda's classic 50mm f1.4 Minolta lens. Being originally used for film cameras, the lens has numerous characteristics, such as:
  • manual focus - it helps you to train your eye and determine where would we would like our plane of focus to be
  • extremely high build quality - the manual focus ring is smooth and the lens is quite durable, if properly taken care of
  • high chromatic aberration, flare and softness, alongside low contrast (and a multitude of ''weaknesses''), especially when used at maximum aperture (which is f 1.4)

Other than that, I pretty much like this lens, because when I use it wide open, its akin to an art filter introduced to the latest Olympus SLRs, like the 'light tone' and 'soft focus' filter combined, although most folks would criticise it as the weakness of film lenses (which then leads to the digitally optimised lenses we have today).


It is still possible to get things in sharp focus, as this image shows.


Highlights are rendered as lovely donuts, which gives an ethereal quality to this place, which is the historic St Paul's Cathedral located at the busy intersections of Swanston and Flinders Street.


Most, or all of the elements in this cathedral serve as a wonderful testimony to the elegant craftsmanship of the people who built this cathedral more than a century ago.


This is a place of solitude, to rest, pray and contemplate in the midst of our busy lives.





One great thing about having in-body image stabilisation systems is that any lens that we attach will become image stabilised. So having an image stabilised lens means that I can shoot at slower shutter speeds, such as 1/15 second on a 100mm equivalent f1.4 lens :)



The T.C. Lewis organ is a musically and historically significant instrument. It better be.. they spent $726,000 to restore this organ in 1990.


The timber pews and chairs in this cathedral are meticulously arranged before each service.


It feels really peaceful to be sitting amongst the pews..


Hopefully I'll have some more fun with the Minolta lens in this coming week.

Ever wondered how you could get some event photography done without having to push yourself to the front ?

Here's your answer :)

cheers

3 Comments:

@lv1nX said...

lol.. there's a cute looking girl in your fourth photo:D and nice photos of the church.... i tried doing that with my crappy compact camera.. but they always turn out horrible:( anyway, you should try out the "BATS!!" thing soon;)

Ananda Sim said...

Hey Brandon,

Nice shots. You are using that 50mm with much more confidence and style than I am - maybe your E3 has a better Optical Viewfinder but I reckon it's your skill and style. You can extract feeling and mood that I have not been able too, yet.

The Skatemusicianer said...

love this post! : )

 

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