My old Philips 31CT computer flash unit

▼ I have an old Philips 31CT "computer flash". No, it has nothing to do with computer memory—it's a flash unit that sits on top of your camera. And although calling it a computer grossly overstates matters, but it has a small amount of automation built in that allows the flash to measure the amount of light returning from the scene that's being illuminated, and actually stop flashing mid-flash once a proper exposure has been accomplished. These units can't actually vary their brightness, only the length of the flash, which can be anything between 1/500th and 1/100000th of a second.

Hooking up an old flash unit is actually kind of risky, as these flashes can send hundreds of volts through the camera. I measured the voltage, which was 230 V. The Nikon D7100 is good for 250 V, though.

But why risk it? After all, modern cameras have a built-in flash. Simple: the built-in flash isn't very powerful, and it illuminates the subject straight on. Which is good when you need a "fill-in" flash to soften harsh shadows when photographing portraits in the sun, but it sucks as the main source of light: everything turns flat, you often get annoying reflections or red eyes, foregrounds that are overexposed and backgrounds that are underexposed.

Most external flash units on the other hand, can be aimed to the side or up at the ceiling, which makes the resulting light much more natural and pleasing. The photos below were taken with the flash pointing straight ahead or up at the ceiling, with one taken with the built-in flash for comparison.

Unfortunately, the ancient computer and/or Xenon flash bulb didn't age gracefully, and failed to provide consistent illumination. What you see here is a dial on the back of the unit that allows you to select one of three color-coded programs. You turn the dial to point to your selected ISO (well, ASA or DIN) sensitivity and then you set the camera's aperture to one of the options the colored arrows point at, and then move a slider on the front of the unit until the little eye that measures the light is surrounded by the chosen color. For best results, the shutter time should be set to the highest flash sync speed, 1/250 on the D7100. Then, turn on the flash, wait for the orange light to come on and snap some photos. But those were all underexposed, and not always to the same degree.

So I think I'll invest in a Yongnuo or similar third-party i-TTL flash unit at some point. Like Nikon's flashes, these will let the camera measure the required flash strength through the lens for optimal results. Interestingly, computer flash units seem to have died out these days, flashes are either controlled by the camera through Nikon's or Canon's proprietary systems, or they only function in manual mode, where they simply fire at a preset strength. Unfortunately Nikon's cheaper flashes don't tilt and swivel and are hampered by tiny batteries, while the bigger ones are very, very expensive.

Permalink - posted 2014-03-05

The 31CT flash revisited

▼ After yesterday's experimentation with my old "computer" flash unit, someone on the dpreviews forums suggested that maybe I was getting bad exposures because the flash was a bit too slow for the D7100's 1/250 sync speed. So I set up a little still life to take some more test shots.

The sync speed wasn't the problem. But I did get very consistent results now. I think I need to shoot under some more varied circumstances to really get a handle on the flash unit's idiosyncrasies. But with the aperture opened up an extra stop the results weren't bad at all. These shots are straight out of the camera, save for resizing/cropping. (I had to apply auto levels on yesterday's test shots).

Click on the different links to see the same scene with the flash pointed directly at it, or titled up 30, 60 or 90 degrees. Straight on provides strong illumination, but it kills all the textures. Also, the beige-ish background is completely washed out. When tilted up, the light basically overshoots the scene, so it's not illuminated very well.

At 60°, all the light bounces off of the ceiling right above the subject, so it's illuminated from above. Last but not least, by aiming the flash straight up (90°), the light is quite diffuse and comes from both above and from the front, which is what I prefer here.

Permalink - posted 2014-03-05

Testing cameras on the oil rig

▼ As you may know by now, there's an oil rig 12 km off the coast of The Hague. 12 kilometers is pretty far away, so it's not easy to photograph. Even with a long zoom lens it shows up pretty tiny:

Today the weather was clear and sunny, so I tried once again with both my new Nikon D7100 with the Nikon 70-300 mm lens and the not-so-new Canon SX280 point-and-shoot. I mounted them both on a tripod and tried 300, 240 and 200 mm on the Nikon and the full 90 mm (about equivalent to 300 mm on the Nikon) with and without digital zoom on the Canon. I cropped the images to show just the oil rig.

The results (click the links to load the different images):

It looks like the Canon is slightly sharper than the Nikon combo. And although the 70-300 mm lens is supposed to be a bit soft at 300 mm but shaper at below 200 or 240 mm, it still shows a tiny bit more detail at 300 mm than at 240 mm and certainly more than at 200 mm. And as expected, the results for using digital zoom or simply cropping the photo on the computer later are virtually identical.

Permalink - posted 2014-03-02

Pentacon 135/2.8 "bokeh monster" lens

▼ I originally planned to get a D3200 or a D3300, which are part of Nikon's entry level DSLR lines. But I couldn't resist the extra features that are part of the more advanced D7100. One of those features is that you can use very old lenses that don't have a built-in CPU. So with a small adapter ring, I was even able to mount my 35-year-old (give or take a few years) Pentacon 135/2.8 135 mm f/2.8 lens, also known as the "bokeh monster".

Unlike modern lenses, the Pentacon 135/2.8 is manual-everything. Obviously the focusing is done manually, and the same thing for setting the aperture (the size of the lens opening). Nikon has been moving away from even having an aperture ring on the lens itself for about a decade now. Instead, you set the aperture through the camera. Or the camera sets the aperture automatically. But even when you set the aperture on the lens, the aperture doesn't actually close—that only happens when you press the shutter to take a photo. Not so on the Pentacon 135/2.8. Here, if you turn the aperture ring, you see the viewfinder image getting darker in real time. Which makes manually focussing a lot harder. Fortunately, the 135/2.8 has an additional preset ring that sits on top of the aperture ring. This allows you to set the minimum aperture. With that set, you can move between the maximum and minimum aperture without taking your eye off of the viewfinder by turning the aperture ring as far as it will go.

Surprisingly, the 135/2.8 holds its own on the D7100's 24 megapixel sensor as far as sharpness goes:

However, the lens has a number of other problems, including color fringing and the contrast is really poor in backlight, such as in this photo of my bicycle handlebar with the sun reflecting in the water behind it:

What you can see here too is what earned this lens its nickname "bokeh monster". Bokeh is a Japanese term used by photographers to describe the quality of the out of focus elements in a photo. The reflections in the water turn into very large discs here, which is often desirable. The edges of the discs are a bit sharper than they could be, though. In this case, I made it easy on the lens by shooting with the lens "wide open" at its maximum f/2.8 aperture, which makes for maximum background blurriness. When closing down the aperture, the shape of out-of-focus highlights is determined by the shape of the aperture, which is normally created by 5 to 9 blades. The Pentacon 135/2.8, on the other hand, has no fewer than 15 aperture blades, so the out-of-focus highlights remain round.

It's too bad that when using this lens with an adapter (Amazon link) on a Nikon DSLR makes it impossible to focus beyond about 10 meters...

If you want to read more about this lens, have a look at this review. I especially enjoyed the "hipster appeal" section:

The best feature: "Made in GDR" printed in large letters on the side of the lens. This is a two-pronged benefit: A. it's clearly not an American lens, and B. you will often get the opportunity to explain to people what "GDR" means and make a thoughtfully ironic comment about the Berlin Wall.

It's a lot of fun to be able to use a very modern camera with such an old lens, and having the focus indicator confirm that I nailed the focus manually 80% of the time—if those damn ducks would stay in one place for more than half a second!—is a nice little ego boost. And it makes you appreciate all the photographic automation we've gained over the past decades.

Permalink - posted 2014-02-24