Home Alone

Lalai is off attending a Financial Services Summit being thrown by her employer in Hainan, China. Actually she left early Wednesday morning and will be back on Saturday afternoon.

Meanwhile, I get to stay at home by myself. It does get lonely and it's hard to sleep, so I while away the time with all my usual useless trivial pursuits.

I was digging in my camera and lens drawer (as I don't have a dry cabinet) and dug out my ancient Canon EOS 50 (Elan II) film body. It has no batteries but the last time I used it, it was very much alive. I popped open the back and found a roll of film inside!



Of course all of the film still outside the canister (maybe ten shots) got ruined, but I'm curious what's on the roll. Will have it developed.

Here's my latest (and last) acquisition: the somewhat-rare and somewhat-prized Carl Zeiss Jena 50mm f/1.8 Pancolar, this one's from the 1967 - 1971 era:





Photos taken with this, the Helios-44-2, another semi-famous normal lens:



I actually got the Pancolar for $30 plus shipping, didn't expect to win at that price because they normally go for much more. This one had fungus inside but a few minutes with rubbing alcohol fixed that. Fungus no more!

It focuses really close (to 0.35 meters), much closer than my other 50mm lenses (and I have lots of those). Well it's a Zeiss, a "zebra" model, single-coated, and the focus ring is somewhat gritty and not buttery.

The Pancolar is supposed to be fantastic but I haven't gotten to use it for much of anything. I actually can't say anything about it except I think it's sharper than my Pentax and Helios normal lenses. But not as sharp as the Rollei Planar.

It's funny, eight months ago, I actually wrote:

I guess I know what normal lens I want now; I can forget about the Zeiss Pancolar or the Helios-44. A 50mm f/1.4 lens on an APS-C DSLR is pretty much equivalent to a conventional 85mm portrait lens on 35mm.

Today, I have all the normal lenses I mentioned. Got them all for giveaway prices.