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!