Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Some Captures with Jupiter-9 85mm f2:

(You can find more details about this lens in earlier post)

Family Pics:

Mom & Son Mom & Son

Cityscape and architecture:
(Bank of America Building (Atlanta)
Bank of America Building

Ceiling of Ohio Theatre (Columbus, OH)
Ceiling

Seattle Downtown
Seattle Downtown

Landscape:

Smoky Mountains

Sunset at Smoky Mountains
Smoky Mountains

Will discuss about bokeh and sharpness at some other time...
Jupiter-9: Real Jupiter in my lens arsenal

View slideshow (Slide show of Jupiter-9 captures)

In more than last one year, I have collected or say accumulated 50+ manual focus lenses. These from as wide as Zenitar 16mm f2.8 to telephoto lens as unknown branded 400mm f6.3; from legendary Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.7 to fast Super Takumar 50mm f1.4 to Nikkor-P 180mm f2.8.
But out of these are real gems. Standing proud and tall in these gems is Jupiter-9 85mm f2. This lens is M42 mount which I am using on my Canon Rebel XT/350D with M42->EOS adapter. The M42 mount Jupiter-9 lenses are black, some very rare (early) are silver in finishing. But mine is very different, it used to be one of the earliest M39 (39mm) mount lens, converted to M42 mount by earlier owner (from Russia).
But lens has some limitation (from its old age). If I rotate the aperture, it rotates the focusing ring too (The blue lines). This is the modified lens,

pic_le_f

But lens has its own class, little soft wide open.. horrible sharp stopped down...

Some resources on this lens,

http://m42.artlimited.net/lens_detail.php?lid=89
http://www.mflenses.com/gallery/v/russian_lens/jupiter/jupiter_9_85/
http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/eos350d_jupiter-9.html

But all has details of black finished Jupiter-9 85mm f2.

Seems like, I am the only one with this lens
View slideshow

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Amazon Unbox: A dream went sour

Launch of Amazon Unbox was an exciting event for me, finally on demand (offline) digital content from non-operators (Read Cable). Although the pricing had already put me on the negative side. This is a text from Amazon Unbox site,

"our rental video can be stored on your PC or TiVo DVR for 30 days. Once you press play, you have 24 hours to watch the video before it expires."

What a foolishness. You are paying rental, but why there is difference in digital content and hard copies (DVD or HD-DVD or Blue Ray).

And Amazon is charging $3.99 (most of the new movies) for each rental.

I am speechless...

Next Blog: Will update about my views on Amazon Unbox "Out of Mind" viewers profiling (viewing habits) algorithms.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Bonjour Web and netizens...


I was totaly out of blogging cycle from last 1 year, as I was putting some time to another hobby. That one is Photography, or should say "Retro Photography". You will find more details on this blog in new future about my experiments in photography (Optics).