My son - VERY cheap lens test

[wez130]

Bought a lens a while back from a car boot sale for the princely sum of a quid, it's a 42mm 'meyer - optik Gorlitz 135mm F/2.8, i've used it a few times but nothing serious, anyway, i've just had another play with it to see if i could get a decent picture and the following i think is not bad, but would like some critique for it anyway, so, what do you think of A: the lens and B: the photo?

and a link to full size...
http://www.wesleybrookes.co.uk/pics2/kye.jpg

Shot in RAW, made adjustments in Adobe RAW, mainly saturation and minor levels changes, then unsharp mask in CS3

 

[Yv]

The Lens - for a quid, I think you just got a major bargain, looks on my screen like there is a weeny bit of softness, but not much, DoF looks good from where I am and I can't see any obvious distortion, though not easy to tell with the subject matter and afterall, for a quid, if you only ever take that one pic it was worth it.

The Picture - very nice capture of your boy, but the background is majorly distracting, although you have the DoF spot on. As I said about the lens, he looks a tiny bit soft but nothing some gentle sharpening around main facial features and in particular the eyes wont sort out, and maybe there is a little bit or red eye there, or is that just me? :shrug:

In all, not a bad effort at all for playing around with a bargain lens

 

[wez130]

i forgot to mention, i shot that at F/8 i think (manual aperture) and i added a tiny bit of guasson blur after sharpening (only 1 pixel or so)

 

[kissfoto]

Not bad for a quid, you can get some good results with old lenses, I am still using some of my old manual Nikkors, don't want to get rid of the cause I' sentimental, but also don't want to put them on a shelf unused. Nice shot of you boy....

 

[Boon]

CT will be around shortly and make that picture look amazing (as usual)..

good capture though.

 

[CT]

LOL... I'm getting too predictable.

I dunno about 'amazing' but why apply blur after sharpening - the shot has just ended up looking soft? I gave it a sharpen, reduced the red skin tones, but that's largely a matter of taste anyway, and cropped a bit tighter on the right. Very nice shot and the background doesn't bug me at all, it's an opportune shot of a kiddie in his play environment and works really well.

 

[theMusicMan]

I had a quick go at sharpening the lovely lad, and blurring the background a little more... shout of course if you want me to take it down;

 

[wez130]

thanks for the crit, and re. the guasson blur, i dunno why i did it after i sharpened tbh, idid want to mask the background ad add more blur as themusicman has done there (thanks), but i've noticed taking the red out of his skin has improved it a bit too.