The Fujinon 55mm f2.2 - A gem from the past...
I have had this lens modified for some time but never really came to use it as most of my work is centered around other areas of photography. But for fun, I pulled it out of the bag the other day and start playing with it. Here's a small backgrounder on the lens:
The lens was bought with a Fujica ST605 camera, which as then replaced for another as it developed a problem. These cameras come most of the times, if and when you find them with their standard lens, which is the Fujinon 55mm f2.2. So I ended up with two of them. I decided to try one on my Minolta DSLR with an adapter and at first I was none too happy as it really gives you a very short range and I could only really focus close , at about 4.5-7in away. I guessed it was something to do with the way the adapter was made/machined. Then one day I was playing around with it still with the idea that it doesn't quite work as I wanted it and I was cleaning it while looking through the viewfinder and it was a revelation...it had great macro ability with that same adapter. This lens was not intended for macro at all and it's manual. Not only that, I also found that the sweet spot (which is the area where the lens performs optimally and will be very sharp) is great.
But as with all lenses, it would be nice to be able to fully close down the lens to its minimum aperture so images become even sharper(with the adapter in this lens you can't as this lens has a pin which does it, but it's controlled by the camera). So, I crossed my fingers removed the T-adapter, pushed the pin all the way through, put a small screw in the hole where the pin is as to lock it, put the adapter back on and voila, aperture controlled by the ring on the lens.
Now the reason for this post really is that I only now had a real play with the lens and put it through it's paces. Even though this lens can do macro after the modification, the real shock came to me on the amount of detail it can resolve. It can do macro to some extent, but not frame filling insect macros...so that's exactly what I was headed for, insect macros by cropping the image. That would be the test.It's performance is outstanding for a lens this old! The difference with this lens and others is that this lens is 30 years old and only costed me around a fiver! It's performance, if used correctly is the same if not superior to several current lenses that surpass it's price by the hundreds of pounds.
I am posting a crop along side the full resolution image, so you can see the amount of detail that this lens can resolve. No sharpening applied to this image.
Hell, why should I spend £300-£500 if a lens costing a fiver gives me the results?!
Please note that Blogger may resize and reduce quality of the higher resolution picture to fit it's parameters. The original image stands at 3008x2000.
6MP JPEG from 6MP RAW (click image):
The lens was bought with a Fujica ST605 camera, which as then replaced for another as it developed a problem. These cameras come most of the times, if and when you find them with their standard lens, which is the Fujinon 55mm f2.2. So I ended up with two of them. I decided to try one on my Minolta DSLR with an adapter and at first I was none too happy as it really gives you a very short range and I could only really focus close , at about 4.5-7in away. I guessed it was something to do with the way the adapter was made/machined. Then one day I was playing around with it still with the idea that it doesn't quite work as I wanted it and I was cleaning it while looking through the viewfinder and it was a revelation...it had great macro ability with that same adapter. This lens was not intended for macro at all and it's manual. Not only that, I also found that the sweet spot (which is the area where the lens performs optimally and will be very sharp) is great.
But as with all lenses, it would be nice to be able to fully close down the lens to its minimum aperture so images become even sharper(with the adapter in this lens you can't as this lens has a pin which does it, but it's controlled by the camera). So, I crossed my fingers removed the T-adapter, pushed the pin all the way through, put a small screw in the hole where the pin is as to lock it, put the adapter back on and voila, aperture controlled by the ring on the lens.
Now the reason for this post really is that I only now had a real play with the lens and put it through it's paces. Even though this lens can do macro after the modification, the real shock came to me on the amount of detail it can resolve. It can do macro to some extent, but not frame filling insect macros...so that's exactly what I was headed for, insect macros by cropping the image. That would be the test.It's performance is outstanding for a lens this old! The difference with this lens and others is that this lens is 30 years old and only costed me around a fiver! It's performance, if used correctly is the same if not superior to several current lenses that surpass it's price by the hundreds of pounds.
I am posting a crop along side the full resolution image, so you can see the amount of detail that this lens can resolve. No sharpening applied to this image.
Hell, why should I spend £300-£500 if a lens costing a fiver gives me the results?!
Please note that Blogger may resize and reduce quality of the higher resolution picture to fit it's parameters. The original image stands at 3008x2000.
6MP JPEG from 6MP RAW (click image):
Crop from RAW and then converted to JPEG(click image):
Until next time,
Luis