Day 119

119/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

I got a new lens in the mail today, and it came just as the rain let up, so I took it for a test drive.  

The picture is of a weird sculpture/bench/mystical object in a park down the street from my house. The lens is an old Pentax Helios 44M-4, and I use a Canon m42 Adapter to mount it on my camera. The lens is pretty sweet, you get some gnarly swirls with a shallow depth of field, and while you can't see it here, it has beautiful flares. Of all people, my little brother recommended this lens after seeing a video that was shot with it, and I bought one the next day. Two weeks later it came to my doorstep for the Ukraine. For 50 bucks, it was a worth a little experimentation, and so far I'm stoked with it.


On a side note, it's weird when you make a drastic lens change like this. When you shoot with the same gear consistently (which is what I've been doing for the most part), you learn to think like the camera. You take note of the pros and cons of the lens you're using, and you start exploiting the things the camera does well and avoiding the things you know it can't handle. I recently shot with my 35mm lomo fisheye and it threw me for a loop. I used to shoot with that camera a lot, and I was shooting good pictures pretty consistently. When I developed my last roll, half of the pictures sucked because my mind wasn't tuned to the camera. I'm going through the same thing with this lens right now, I have to learn how to exploit it, but I think it's good to change things up a bit. I gotta keep my brain nimble!