Quest for the magnificent light

Let's start today with some background about how I select the pictures shown on this blog. This would explain why I present now a couple of shots taken in early March, when my country was still covered with thick snow... Living in the digital age It is cheap to take a photo. And the relative cost is basically the same as taking 1000 shots.  Most probably every photographer has some kind of process to select the pictures they publish; this is even more important in the age of digital cameras! (But if you check popular photo sharing sites, you can see the opposite as well..) So how can we ensure that we keep only the best photos? Check my guide to find some advices. :) Capture only the scenes you really like.  It is hard not to use your expensive photo gear just for the sheer pleasure of operating your equipment; but this habit rarely leads to good pictures. However if you find something interesting, then it is worth taking pictures with different settings and fr...

First post of this series is about the brilliant Jupiter 9 (85mm F2). The lens has a pretty long history! In fact it is a direct copy of an earlier Zeiss design, which was acquired by the soviets after WWII. At first it was available for Zorki and Kiev rangefinder cameras, but later it was added in M42 mount to the Zenith line. My copy is a multicoated (MC) one, which is pretty commonly available where I live. You can find more pieces of the story here . Let's see the lens! Jupiter 9 front  Jupiter 9 front It is a classic preset lens, which means that aperture must be selected, and then set. The aperture values shown on the picture above can be directly selected, but the aperture is stepless. It is sometimes called as the "bokehmonster" , because it has 15 blades! Jupiter 9 side Minimum focusing distance is 0.8m, which is not suprising knowing that it is basically the evolution of a rangefinder lens.  Made by ...