RectFish with a Peleng 8mm fisheye is pretty neat. Compare:
RectFish‘d
And yes, I know there is watermarking, but without paying $30 for a license I can’t export non-marked full res images.
I’ll research other apps for it later. OSS stuff, things which remove all distortion (resulting in a dogboned image), etc.
Oh, and click each image for a full size copy, if you’d like. Now, off to the post office. And my parents house.
Well, the Peleng 8mm f/3.5 (photo gallery retired) lenses have arrived. I’ve only opened the one used in the photo above, but this one looks pretty good. The lenses appear to be completely metal and glass and the bits move pretty smoothly. The aperture ring has a very nice, solid action to it, and except for its English markings (I think this is an export version) the whole lens has a very Eastern Bloc feel to it. Focus is a little rough, but nothing to cause any concern. Overall I really like the feel of it.
The lens is also a lot smaller than I expected. With front and rear lens caps and M42 to EOS adapter fitted it weights 470g (~1 pound .5 ounces), is ~72mm in diameter (aperture ring), and 78mm in length. It easily fits on a 20D and doesn’t stick out very far, and except for the large inverted bowl-like of glass, doesn’t look much bigger than a ‘normal’ lens.
I only ran into one problem, and that is that the set screw to hold the M42 to EOS adapter (yes, the lenses are natively M42 mount) to the lens doesn’t really work. The entire body of the set screw isn’t threaded, so it can’t actually be screwed in. Since the set screw was small enough that it may have fit anyway, I attempted to screw it in anyway, but ended up chewing up the head of the screw. Fortunately friction holds the adapter on plenty well, so I’m not using the set screw. I may add a small drop of a Loctite thread locker compound to the adapter, a drop of cyanoacrylate adhesive (super glue) to the edge of the adapter, or just leave it.
When the lens arrived the front element was a bit dusty, but most of the dust blew off with a bulb blower. I then cleaned it with some lens paper and cleaning solution and it looks great.
Image-wise, the Peleng 8mm f/3.5 (photo gallery retired) seems pretty nice, although I haven’t tested it out much yet. With the camera on a tripod right in front of my workbench (approximately the same distance at which I was taking the other photos with the 24-70 f/2.8L (photo gallery retired)) I was able to capture the entire workbench, floor to ceiling. There is a bit of lens flare from the floods, but I figure that this is very difficult to avoid on such wide lenses.
Two other interesting things to note about the lens: It comes in what can best be described as a patent leather case I’d swear this is the same vinyl used to make all manner of club pants and fetish wear.
The lens also can be used with filters, and ships with a total of four of them. The filters are small threaded metal discs attach to the rear of the lens, inside of the mount. The lens ships with a clear filter fitted, and packaged separately are UV-1x, YG-1,8x, and O-2,8x filters.
So, that’s about it. The total cost for each lens is US$239 when purchased in bulk as we did. After I have a chance to check over the lenses I’ll email everyone who is getting one with cost including postage and such. And yes, this will probably be expanded into a page on my site too. I figure more information about such a strange, interesting lens will be rather worthwhile.
If you would like to see more photos of the lens, including the boxes they shipped in, mounting on a 20D, sample images, and other such things, take a look at the Peleng 8mm f/3.5 (photo gallery retired) album in my photo gallery.
Ah, I finally ordered a lock picking set. Southern Ordinance’s Outlet has blemished 14-piece (MPXS-14-O) set for just over US$30 after shipping.
Now I can stop screwing with bent paperclips, T-pins, and screwdrivers when playing with lock picking.
Two hours, twenty six minutes, and sixteen seconds (2:26:16) after starting the Apple Hardware Tests, my machine can finally be said to have received a RAM upgrade. For the last three years I’ve been running it with 1.5GB of RAM, and that had been enough. Until I tried to work with 4000dpi scans of 35mm slides.
I must say, things run much better now. Especially with my compliment of other apps running, including Safari, Mail.app, Adium, SSH Agent, iTunes, Xjournal, Obsession (LJ Checker), Terminal, Gallery Remote, Vienna, and a few others.
I know that most of you don’t care, but here are some photos of the mikroElektronika EasyPIC4 which arrived today, along with some other PIC dev tools: mikroElektronika EasyPIC4 (photo gallery retired)
Here’s one unretouched scan of a 110 slide (13mm x 17mm) which I just scanned with a Nikon Coolscan V ED. In short, I’m very impressed. For an almost 30 year old, tiny negative to… that. And film grain is visible.
Now, to find out how to get good correction for Ektachrome’s horrible reddening problem properly implemented. And to scan ~600 slides.
I finally just gave in and purchased a Nikon Coolscan V ED. I’ve been fighting with scanning a bunch of 110 slides for three days now, and thus far I’ve been having mixed results with my flatbed scanner and a copy of Vuescan.
After checking prices on eBay and seeing that these scanners regularly sell for near $500, I figure I can spend the $550 to buy a new one, scan a bunch of stuff, then sell it. On top of the 600-some 110 slides my parents have from the 70s and 80s, I have a bunch of 35mm slides I want to scan (similar to these (photo gallery retired)) which I hope the Coolscan V ED does better than my flatbed did.
Oh, and there are a whole bunch more 35mm negatives in the basement from my grandparents… < sigh > This will likely be a big project.
I really didn’t want to spend this much on them, but at this point my choices are to either scan the slides for viewing then re-scan them in the future, or scan them at the best quality I can realistically do and call it done. Or, as done as possible with current decent technology. Since some of the Kodachrome slides of my parents are starting to get the typical red tint to them, I think they need to get digitally archived sooner than later, too.
Today a USB Oscilloscope from HobbyLab arrived. The nice thing about it is that it also has a logic analyzer build in. So, if things go as planned I’ll hook it to the Honda Music Link tonight and start picking apart its serial data.
Also, I’m moving photos of things I’ve acquired (purchased, traded, or otherwise come into possession of) into a photo album called Stuff I’ve Acquired (photo gallery retired). Thusly many of the links down below have probably broken. My photo gallery is long overdue for a reorganization. It’s become difficult for me to find things.
Do any of you here have and/or use a Lensbaby? The new Lensbaby 3G looks promising, but it’s not exactly cheap.
I’m surprised by how un-dusty the inside of the cold air return is, just above my furnace. I opened it up today as part of installing a second doorbell chime in my basement because, as anyone who has come by my place has likely noticed, I can’t hear the doorbell when I’m down there. Additionally, I tend to be downstairs working on things fairly often, so the lack of doorbell pretty much makes people have to just walk in.
I am also really liking Adobe Photoshop Lightroom again. Beta 4 is really quite polished, to the point where I’m considering buying CS3 when it comes out. It just simply seems like a much better app than Digital Photo Professional, which I’d been using for a while now.
Today an order of camera stuffs came in, too. This is good. Now I’ve got a hunk of protective glass on the 24-70 L, a lens cap for it, more lens cleaning stuffs, and step-up rings so the circular polarizer can be used on both the 50mm and 100mm lenses. However, when going to take a photo of the bottle of Fiddler’s Elbow I’m trying tonight I didn’t put a memory card in the camera. With the camera set to take pictures when no card is installed, you can imagine where the photos went. Whoops.
