I’ve been shooting with and collecting quite a few of these old retro M42 screw mount lenses and now own four of the Russian made Helios lenses. The addiction is real!

Earlier this year I did a review of the Industar 50mm f3.5 50-2 Russian built lens. It’s a vintage lens that comes in an M42 mount. It’s a full frame or 35mm lens so it works on cameras like the Sony A7rII, but it performs really well on these APS-C cameras like the Fujifilm X-T2.

I’ve spent years learning all the crazy tricks in Photoshop for Landscape photography, building actions, buying plugins, etc. Then Macphun comes around and simplifies all that complicated workflow with a couple of sliders and a handful of filters. Brilliant!

During the seven-day Princess cruise up to Alaska, I tried to mix up my lens usage for reviews and to challenge myself. Carrying only a few lenses with me as I roamed around the boat seeing what I could capture.

My family and I took the seven-day Princess cruise from Vancouver to Alaska. That was a week ago and we’ve been traveling through Alaska since. With spotty cell service and often no free Internet, this is the first chance I’ve had to post.

I finally bit the bullet and got the Fujifilm X-T2 battery grip. I’ve been putting it off because I just wasn’t sure if I would really take advantage of all the extra features it offered – long story short, I bought it and it’s awesome.

There is a magical lens by Fujifilm that I feel just doesn’t get enough credit or praise and I wanted to dedicate a post to it and the insane bokeh it’s capable of producing.

I don’t do a lot of reviews on cameras I don’t own, but recently I had the Canon SL2 for a weekend and was so impressed by the way it shot and felt that I had to take it out for a day of shooting.

Here are my initial impressions. 

Lately I’ve been shooting quite a bit with the Helios 44-2 and other old vintage m42 manual focus lenses from the 80’s. While shooting with manual lenses takes more time and isn’t always as precise, it’s much more rewarding and you feel like you have complete control of every shot you take. 

If you’re looking to get started collecting old vintage lenses from the 80’s and 90’s, then the Helios 44 series is a great place to start. They are known for their beautiful large swirling bubble bokeh.

There are several variations of this lens all with different character. They are all similar and different but built with the same goal – to copy the Zeiss Biotar.

For the fourth of July weekend we returned to my homeland to hang out with some family. Shot with the Fujifilm X-T2 and the Fujinon 56mm f1.2

Not too far down in Malibu is this fancy little mall they call the Malibu County Mart. It’s a nice little escape from the over crowded city that is Los Angeles, but also is a great place for the little one to explore.