Red Taillight Abstract
I decided to try some vintage glass, specifically a mid 1960s Pentax Super Takumar 50mm 1:1.4 (a so-called radioactive lense) on my Olympus OM-D EM-5 via a simple adapter to see how it shaped up in the digital world. To be blunt, it is not as sharp as it seemed especially wide open in the film days. But it was fun to use wide open to mess around with shallow depth-of-field. It will likely be fun to try as a portrait lense. Anyway, I pointed it at a taillight on a parked car and deliberately found an angle that yield an abstract image featuring red, grey/silver and black diagonals. And thus this image is a Red Rule shot. - JW
Date Taken: 2021-03-27
Tech Details:
Taken using a hand-held Olympus OM-D EM-5 fitted with an adapted M42 Pentax Super Takumar 50mm 1:1.4 (yes, the so-called radioactive one), Intelligent Auto mode, Auto WB, Matrix metering, ISO200, f/1.4, 1/3200 sec. PP in free Open Source RAWTherapee from Olympus RAW/ORF source file: set final image width to be 8000px, in the Color Management section use camera Standard and then change the Working Profile to ‘WideGamut’ and adjust the tone curve response to Custom with Gamma -1.594 and Slope to 3.58 and then set Output Profile to RTv4sRGB ( and the Output Profile to RTv4Wide, slightly boost Contrast as well as Chromaticity in L-A-B mode, apply noise reduction, sharpen (edges only), save. PP in free Open Source GIMP: use the Contrast/Brightness tool to slightly boost contrast, sharpen, save, scale image to 6000px wide, sharpen, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 2048 wide for posting online, sharpen slightly, save.
Red Taillight Abstract
I decided to try some vintage glass, specifically a mid 1960s Pentax Super Takumar 50mm 1:1.4 (a so-called radioactive lense) on my Olympus OM-D EM-5 via a simple adapter to see how it shaped up in the digital world. To be blunt, it is not as sharp as it seemed especially wide open in the film days. But it was fun to use wide open to mess around with shallow depth-of-field. It will likely be fun to try as a portrait lense. Anyway, I pointed it at a taillight on a parked car and deliberately found an angle that yield an abstract image featuring red, grey/silver and black diagonals. And thus this image is a Red Rule shot. - JW
Date Taken: 2021-03-27
Tech Details:
Taken using a hand-held Olympus OM-D EM-5 fitted with an adapted M42 Pentax Super Takumar 50mm 1:1.4 (yes, the so-called radioactive one), Intelligent Auto mode, Auto WB, Matrix metering, ISO200, f/1.4, 1/3200 sec. PP in free Open Source RAWTherapee from Olympus RAW/ORF source file: set final image width to be 8000px, in the Color Management section use camera Standard and then change the Working Profile to ‘WideGamut’ and adjust the tone curve response to Custom with Gamma -1.594 and Slope to 3.58 and then set Output Profile to RTv4sRGB ( and the Output Profile to RTv4Wide, slightly boost Contrast as well as Chromaticity in L-A-B mode, apply noise reduction, sharpen (edges only), save. PP in free Open Source GIMP: use the Contrast/Brightness tool to slightly boost contrast, sharpen, save, scale image to 6000px wide, sharpen, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 2048 wide for posting online, sharpen slightly, save.