January Monthly Challenge - "New Gear"

hmmm, might have a problem there, the only 'new gear' i got was one of those lens mugs, but hey, i'm sure i can make it work....................
Happy new year boys and girls and inbetweenies

 

Happy new year to you and your partner, Caladina, this is not canon but I needed it to put my lens filters in, cost 7 dollars offf of Ebay.

 

Johnsey wrote'..some new gear you recently got... and.....Lets see you put your newer gear to the test....'

Oh dear, I haven't bought any new Canon gear for a few years and have no plans to do so in the near future so it looks as though I am ruled out of this month's challenge unless some 'way-out of the box' thinking is acceptable.

 

yeah, like you nothing new, nor have i really any need for any thing atm, thinking outside the box we'll have to use some old gear in a way we havent used it before, maybe a longer or shorter lens for something that we'd use the opposite or a light to be the subject rather than light something up,

 

Okay, that helps as I haven't brought any camera gear for a while now.

Gary

 

Ok, time to kick-start this lazy brain of mine.

 

This is outside the box a bit but the camera used for the images was a Canon 60D. My new purchase was a Mamiya Sekor 65mm lens and a View finder for the 65mm. The camera being used for the lens is a Mamiya Universal medium format, a 60x90 mm roll film holder is fitted to the camera. I purchased the camera 3 months ago and the lens just arrived last week, 65mm lens in medium format is the equivalent of 28mm in 35mm format. This will enable me to do 60 x 90mm negatives for landscape panoramas
View attachment 17550

 

This is a photograph of my last two Canon purchases. This 50E is the last of three 50E's I bought and fixed, each of which I paid less than £10 for because the back door latch was broken and the camera disabled. It costs circa £7 per camera to buy a new door latch and about 45 minutes to install it and thus fix the camera.
The 50mm f1.8 MkII 'Nifty fifty' lens was purchased at a price I just couldn't refuse and it joins its rather older stablemate .

 

Interesting camera, Keith, I have never seen this variant of the EOS system so I looked it up on you tube and it has a lot of features and a very interesting eye control, some thing Nasa tried to incorporate in their systems but it aparently failed but the eye control is supose to work quite well on the camera.

 

Craig, this camera has more bells and whistles than Barnum's Circus however, this series of Canons 30, 300, 300v 1000 50E et al, have one fatal flaw - the internal part of the back door latch. The part is made of plastic and as well as the door latch - which is the part that breaks - it also carries a pair of sliding contacts which tell the camera that the door is closed. When the aforementioned internal latch breaks, these sliding contacts don't move to complete the circuit and duct-taping the door closed is useless as the camera still thinks the door is open and refuses to work.
I have never tried the eye focussing system so I can't comment on that or indeed most of the other functions, but it is a great camera to use and of course takes all of the Canon EF series of lenses. Sadly, I have had to move to auto focus cameras because my eyes are no longer in their first flush of youth and need a bit of help but my A1 and AE1 still get regular outings along with my other brands of cameras and focus is a bit hit and miss.

 

This is one of the drawbacks of putting too many features on a camera, the more pipes you put on a crapper, the easier it is to clog up.
I must admit, I do like th e 1000 model as this was my first decent camera and one I still have,

 

I have all the cameras mentioned above Craig and the 1000 is the only one I haven't had to repair the latch on. (I have a spare latch just in case ) IIRC the body cost me £5 from a charity shop. It's quite small and lightweight too and when paired with a 'Nifty fifty' it makes great unobtrusive walkaround camera.

 

dont tell the missus but mpb might have made a delivery................. 85mm of it

 

Canon ef 85mm ƒ1.8 usm
my first Canon EF lens, been after an 85mm for a while but didn't want to go for the sigma art due to the weight mostly and the price,
this one was one of the cheaper ones just to test it out, its decent to good for sharpness at ƒ1.8 and gets nice and sharp at ƒ2.2 on wards on my M50
it certainly fits the main criteria at the moment, cheap and light weight, with good sharpness, i'll test it on a walk about at some point, i'm waiting for a mickey mouse lens hood so i can keep the lens protected and i'll get a proper one if i keep the lens, to which will depend on its keeper rate in the field tests.
so while i have it i can play this month

 

Enjoy the lens Caladina. I can't say I've ever hankered after an 85mm prime so I'm interested in your opinion after you've used it for a while.
Blimey, MPB have got 80 of them listed on their website. Is this the most un-loved lens in the UK?

 

to be honest its not really a prime i needed for anything specific but its where i had a gap between the 56mm ƒ1.4 and 105mm ƒ1.4 as far as fast primes go and i not wanting to go for the sigma 85mm ƒ1.4 art at this time just to fill a gap, sure i expect the sigma art to be better than this one for over all optics but the light weight and cheaper price of the canon 85mm ƒ1.8 is alot more where i wanted the lens to be, the sigma is nearly 3 times as heavy

its a lens i was honestly expecting to send back within a week hence getting it from mpb but it seems to be pretty good so i got the official lens hood now.

the weight thing was important hence previously trying the sigma EX 85mm ƒ1.4, sadly it didn't play well on my M50 firmware, it means i can carry the 85mm when i have a couple of other lenses as well, where as the sigma art would probably be that and one extra efm lens to keep the weight down
generally i shoot using a shoulder bag for myself if i was doing paid work i'd be more incline to use a bigger bag and bare the weight

the canon certainly passes the clarity test on my text box i use for most lenses.

been converting machine mart tool trolly into a cutting trolly for my plasma cutter so not been out and about too much atm, still on the chilly side too though its been alot warmer last week

 

Thanks for the update Caladina, it sounds like a good deal.

 

Canon 85mm ƒ1.8
some stepping stones across a local wetlands water course