Toni Ahvenainen
Being and time
Season of Touit - picture 17
Week 41, Wednesday
I’ve been using the Zeiss Touit 2.8/50M in different scenarios and while it is a lens with great versatility, it is also difficult to come up with right kind of pictures that demonstrates its marvelous macro capabilities and still be interesting enough from photography’s point of view. To demonstrate these macro capabilities I wanted to do at least one picture at minimum focusing distance just to have a concrete example how close one can get with 2.8/50M and what kind of magnification does it offer. So here is a regular housefly, the most common of all domestic flies at minimum focusing distance (and as filthy as they tend to be in the real world visible with human eyes). I had to approach this one very carefully not to scare it away and because of that I cannot say this picture is exactly at minimum focusing distance, but it’s there at least by 95 percent (the fly was about 8 mm long and I’ve cropped the picture just a little bit for better composition). I kind of like how this turned out even with as ordinary subject as this. With the original unresized file one can see individual photoreceptor units of the fly’s compound eyes and expect even greater details with newer sensors like the 24 mpix sensor inside the Sony Alpha 6000 (I’m working with older generation Sony Nex-5N which only has 16 mpix sensor). Not only does this picture exemplify the Touit 2.8/50M’s great 1:1 reproduction scale, it also shows how nicely the lens resolves even at aperture of f/14 where most other lenses would already had a diffraction kicked in. Also, notice the very smooth and buttery background bokeh which I absolutely love with this lens.
Looking at this picture as a simple photograph it brings up an interesting recollection from my childhood in me. Being a five or six years old I remember sitting in from of TV and watching a nature documentary about houseflies. The voice from documentary told that houseflies are very difficult to kill with a flyswatter because they see much larger field with their compound eyes and perceive time differently. Then the documentary showed a slow motion scene of typical apartment room where woman is trying to kill a fly with the flyswatter. Everything is slowed down to extreme and I remember seeing at least a flickering TV-screen and some people talking with their pitch lowered to unrecognizable sounds. Then the woman swings her hand with flyswatter and it takes from 10 to 20 seconds – of course she misses and the fly gets away. For some reason I remember that the claim about fly’s different perception of time had to do something about having so much more eyes than human. Despite of being all grown up today this sort of question of subjective perception of time has certainly fascinated me ever sense. Particularly one thing in this slow motion analogy intrigues me: it makes it look like the fly sees outside world in ‘slow motion’, but at the same time is able to think and reason within its inner cognitive world in ‘standard time’ – otherwise the explanation that the flyswatter misses because the fly has so much more time to see it and react to it, would be false. This sort of paradox of two different times filled up my mind as a child, but today I see it just a bad example of popularization of science. However, I’m still not sure how one should conceptualize it, but I’m pretty sure – if the phenomenon exist – it has nothing to do with eyes. Still, makes me wonder how this particular fly perceived me photographing it in that particular moment..
Year of the Alpha – 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com
Being and time
Season of Touit - picture 17
Week 41, Wednesday
I’ve been using the Zeiss Touit 2.8/50M in different scenarios and while it is a lens with great versatility, it is also difficult to come up with right kind of pictures that demonstrates its marvelous macro capabilities and still be interesting enough from photography’s point of view. To demonstrate these macro capabilities I wanted to do at least one picture at minimum focusing distance just to have a concrete example how close one can get with 2.8/50M and what kind of magnification does it offer. So here is a regular housefly, the most common of all domestic flies at minimum focusing distance (and as filthy as they tend to be in the real world visible with human eyes). I had to approach this one very carefully not to scare it away and because of that I cannot say this picture is exactly at minimum focusing distance, but it’s there at least by 95 percent (the fly was about 8 mm long and I’ve cropped the picture just a little bit for better composition). I kind of like how this turned out even with as ordinary subject as this. With the original unresized file one can see individual photoreceptor units of the fly’s compound eyes and expect even greater details with newer sensors like the 24 mpix sensor inside the Sony Alpha 6000 (I’m working with older generation Sony Nex-5N which only has 16 mpix sensor). Not only does this picture exemplify the Touit 2.8/50M’s great 1:1 reproduction scale, it also shows how nicely the lens resolves even at aperture of f/14 where most other lenses would already had a diffraction kicked in. Also, notice the very smooth and buttery background bokeh which I absolutely love with this lens.
Looking at this picture as a simple photograph it brings up an interesting recollection from my childhood in me. Being a five or six years old I remember sitting in from of TV and watching a nature documentary about houseflies. The voice from documentary told that houseflies are very difficult to kill with a flyswatter because they see much larger field with their compound eyes and perceive time differently. Then the documentary showed a slow motion scene of typical apartment room where woman is trying to kill a fly with the flyswatter. Everything is slowed down to extreme and I remember seeing at least a flickering TV-screen and some people talking with their pitch lowered to unrecognizable sounds. Then the woman swings her hand with flyswatter and it takes from 10 to 20 seconds – of course she misses and the fly gets away. For some reason I remember that the claim about fly’s different perception of time had to do something about having so much more eyes than human. Despite of being all grown up today this sort of question of subjective perception of time has certainly fascinated me ever sense. Particularly one thing in this slow motion analogy intrigues me: it makes it look like the fly sees outside world in ‘slow motion’, but at the same time is able to think and reason within its inner cognitive world in ‘standard time’ – otherwise the explanation that the flyswatter misses because the fly has so much more time to see it and react to it, would be false. This sort of paradox of two different times filled up my mind as a child, but today I see it just a bad example of popularization of science. However, I’m still not sure how one should conceptualize it, but I’m pretty sure – if the phenomenon exist – it has nothing to do with eyes. Still, makes me wonder how this particular fly perceived me photographing it in that particular moment..
Year of the Alpha – 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com