Evil Tow Trucks

No, I don't have a photo of the evil tow truck.

But after my meetings with two clients, I decided to have a Starbucks. So I parked at Valero and went to get my coffee. This was around 6:00 p.m. already and everybody was parked on the street. Actually the slot directly behind mine was a no-parking zone, complete with rumble strips. In fact, scrawled on the asphalt was a message, "Toyota Corolla TRT-xxx pick up at Yakal St." So I knew it was a no-parking area.

Trouble was, the SUV in front of me was sticking about a foot into the rearward slot. So I had to park intruding a bit (about a foot..) into the no-parking area.

After I got my coffee, I went to Velazquez Park to play with my camera. Good thing I only took a half-dozen shots, because as I was walking back to the car, lo and behold here came the decrepit tow truck.

They stopped right beside me and the evil conniving opportunistic towing guy said bawal mag park diyan. To all my pointing out that the SUV in front of me was sticking out of his slot, the evil conniving opportunistic towing guy's answer was bawal mag park diyan. Hm.

His confederate had actually gotten out of the back of the car with his nylon tow rope. I was thinking what I could do to forestall them. My only not-so-bright idea was to get into the car, start the engine, and hold down the brakes so that if they tried to tow they would damage the car and I'd sue them.

All of a sudden, they decided to leave. Maybe the sight of me in a tie with an obvious DSLR around my neck gave them pause. It occurred to me later that, had they tried to tow the car, I would document everything: how the SUV stuck into my slot, how much I exceeded my "parking ration," the plate number of their decrepit tow truck, and all their mug shots, while all the time saying I'd see them in court. Because the truth is, they are opportunistic bastards who are not out to enforce the law, but to earn some ill-gotten gains.

Anyway I never had the chance to use my PJ skills because they left. When I was driving off, I saw them stopped about 200 meters down in front of Makati Sports Club attaching (or maybe, attacking) their tow rope to an old car.

Anyway, here's one photo from my five-minute walk in the park, with the Helios-44-2, stopped down to f/4:

Сравнивая 50mm Гелиос-44-2 на другие обычные линзы

I recently got my hands on a nasty bargain: a 135mm f/3.5 Jupiter-37AM and a 58mm f/2 Helios-44-2 lens for the grand total of $9.00 (actually $17.12 including US shipping, and another 518 pesos for US-Philippines forwarding via Johnny Air Cargo "your friendly e-bay enabler!")

I must say the Helios-44-2 sets a new low in lows in the build quality department. Light years worse than the 1960's Pentax Takumars, significantly worse than my early 1980's East German Zeiss, measurably worse than my early 1990's Russian Jupiter-9 and Mir-1v. Seems after glasnost and perestroika the build quality of Russian lenses actually went up.



It's made of some grotty aluminum alloy (the filter ring was dented, when I tried to straighten it with some pliers, little aluminum bits fell off). The preset aperture mechanism wobbles perilously, the black paint is coming off, and it projects this air of mechanical cheapness. Kind of like a jeepney..

It does have that cool "Made in USSR" label though.

Anyway I just did some sample comparison images, these are by no means definitive.

Rollei 50mm f/1.8 Planar, Singapore, wide-open:


Pentax Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4, stopped down to f/2 (and yellow cast bleached out with UV light):


Pentax SMC-A 50mm f/2:


Helios 44-2 58mm f/2:


In the sharpness department, the Super-Takumar beats them all, as it's already stopped down one stop while all the other lenses are wide open. It also doesn't have the "bright outline" bokeh that all the other lenses have, it does however betray its non-cool six-blade diaphragm in the OOF highlights.

In terms of overall image quality, I kind of like the Rollei (can't explain it), there's something about that Zeiss quality.. but it's ugly, I took the lens unit of the Planar and stuck it into the (plastic) focusing helical of a Fujinon 55mm f/2.2 which I destroyed, as Rollei SL35 lenses have too short a registration distance for K mount.

But the grotty Helios does show some of that creamy Zeiss bokeh (it is after all a clone of the Zeiss Biotar). Maybe I will always use it stopped down a bit (it has a super round diaphragm like the Jupiter-9 and Jupiter-37AM).

Here's the Frankenstein Rollei at f/2.8 with the Helios-44-2 (that 16-45mm f/4 ED AL makes a nice pedestal for the ancient lenses!)



Still very nice, circular OOF highlights, creamy bokeh.. I think I'm gonna like the Helios-44-2, it's like a shorter Jupiter-9.

Worship

I was at Atrium Makati this afternoon to get an affidavit notarized. I seem to have misplaced my driver's license and one of the requirements to get a new one is an affidavit of loss.

Atrium is more notable because it's the national HQ of the PAG-IBIG Fund, which dispenses housing loans (Lalai and I are one of their millions of debtors). I was amazed and surprised that a government entity such as PAG-IBIG actually is useful, helped us pay for our house... but I digress.

Topic for today: for the first time I noticed a large (maybe four feet tall) statue of the Virgin Mary in the lobby of Atrium. The statue was on a pedestal so its head was like eight feet off the ground.

What I found slightly strange was that there was a woman there this afternoon who was all but clinging to the statue while mouthing some wordless devotion. Prayer for a foreclosed house? I don't know.. but there are a lot of foreclosures going on.

A month ago when I submitted two years' worth of postdated checks to PAG-IBIG, the man next to me was pleading for his house to the loan officer as it had been repossessed.

I just found the prayerful gesture a bit.. scary actually.

The Blue Light II

Last month, I tried to remove the yellow radiation-induced haze from my 50mm f/1.4 Pentax Super-Takumar using an incandescent bug zapper bulb.

That didn't work well at all.

But last weekend, I used a T5-mount fluorescent UV bulb for a money detector (PHP 200) plus an electronic ballast for it (another PHP 200) and.. after three days of UV, the lens is clear! (well, almost).

Details here.