Chinese Garden Shoot with my Minolta 70-210mm F4(Beercan) and Tokina 17mm F3.5

Took a stroll yesterday at the Chinese Garden, a place of relative tranquility in this citystate country of mine. Scorching weather so I did not stay long. Some snapshots to share though. Enjoy!

Minolta 50mm F1.4

A snapshot using the Minolta 50mm F1.4 lens taken today.

Minolta 70-210mm F4 (Beercan)

Some casual snapshots using my Minolta "Beercan", the classic 70-210mm F4! It was a cloudy morning with slight rain earlier on, but we still had fun and carried on!

Tokina 17mm F3.5 on Sony A700 DSLR

I tried the Tokina 17mm F4 on my Sony A700 and was pleasantly surprised that it performed very nicely! It has been lying for many years unused in the cabinet since I stopped using film. Perhaps due to the sweet spot of the A700 1.5X crop factor A700, the images that came out of the camera were sharp for a wide angle lens. The colours and saturation were beautiful and I do wonder if it were to be used on a full frame camera(A900?), will it unleash its full frame wide angle glory!

Tokina 17mm F3.5

I remember the days when I used to shoot in film and the times me and my friends were experimenting with black and white film. I chanced upon an old picture taken many years ago, which was my idea but taken with the help of a fellow friend. The Tokina 17mm F3.5 on my Minolta Dynax 7 was used. How I really crave for full frame again! Thank goodness DSLR are coming out with a little bit more affordable full-frame versions now, so its only a matter of time before I go back to full frame glory!

Carl Zeiss Jena 29mm F2.8 (M42 Mount)

I did some test shots with my old Carl Zeiss Jena 29mm F2.8 lens I have, puchased quite some many years back. I used to use it in my purely mechanical camera days! Being Manual Focus and mounted on my Sony A700 with a M42 adapter, I had to get used to it after relying so much on Auto Focus nowadays! But the colours and contrast are great, with surprisingly good bokeh to boot. Only weakness is a slight softness around the corner edges, but nothing to worry about in normal print size. Sharpness in the centre is excellent though.

Minolta 100mm F2.8 Soft Focus

I got this gem of a portrait lens at a store at stock clearance price. I took this lens out for a spin recently and it did not disappoint. Sharpness and bokeh are excellent, and it is quite flare resistant for a big aperture lens. Here are some sample pictures on my first try with the lens. I have not tried the "Soft-Focus" function that it is capable of, but perhaps another day when I get more familiar with it. The focal length of 100mm on my 1.5x crop factor Sony DSLR makes it a little bit too telephoto for portraits, but I still could manage. I feel this lens would really shine on a full frame DSLR though, which I believe Sony would be releasing soon, probably as the A900. Cheers!

Sony 28mm F2.8

I was fortunate enough that the alpha sales consultant in the Sony Style Store allowed me to test the Sony 28mm F2.8 around the vicinity. This small and rather unassuming lens was impressively sharp with nice colours and great bokeh for a wide angle, even though the test shots were taken indoors! He really does know how to tempt me!