Tag: photography
Tom’s World – 25SEP2025 – Bloop
I like this one too, it’s about 1/100 of a second before the 1st shot.
Time and events exists on all scales, from Panck time roughly 5×10^-44th sec up to 10’s of billions of years or roughly 3×10^17th sec. We just happen to exist such that we observe events in our very narrow band of that scale.
Tom’s World – 18SEP2025 – A Tight Spot
Tom’s World – 15SEP2025 – The Black Cat
Laowa AF FF 180mm f/4.5 CA-Dreamer Macro 1.5X Lens
Regular readers of this site who read my photography reviews know that I am a macro-lens junkie of the first echelon. I have been trying to get Sony to upgrade all their cameras to allow my vintage Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro lens to perform like a lens thirty years younger.
Alas, that will never be. But in pursuit of a long macro (~ 180-200mm) I have always hoped that Sony or one of the third party manufacturers of lenses like Sigma or Tamron would one day produce an autofocus macro lens in this focal range. And autofocus is the trick because Laowa, a Chinese manufacturer has come out with macro lenses of various lengths but up until recently, they only made manual focus lenses.
But that has now changed. I saw this announcement:
Laowa AF FF 180mm f/4.5 CA-Dreamer Macro 1.5x Lens
It says this lens is coming out in a couple of weeks. And it’s even better than a 1.0X magnification. It’s a 1.5X. This is very exciting. If this lens autofocuses as well as my Sony 90mm macro it will provide a distinct advantage for things like hummingbird photos and dragonflies.
Now this is a big if. There is no guarantee that Sony will allow the autofocus of their cameras to work exactly as well with third part lenses as with their own. The only proof of the pudding will be when I have this lens in hand for a week or two of testing.
Now that’s not such a big deal. The Laowa lenses usually cost less than half of what Sony charges and renting one would even be cheaper still. So I think I have a plan to play around with this thing in the near future.
This unfortunately feeds into a long standing illness that I suffer from, namely; gear acquisition syndrome (G.A.S.). It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a flareup of this but apparently I am not cured.
To be continued…
Comment from TomD
I think the reviewer said that autofocus didn’t work at less than 1.5 meter distance. That being a little less than 5′, it won’t be useful for macro work.
I used to do a lot of studio macro work that I was paid for. I sorta specialized in gold and silver coin and numismatic photography. The attached picture was part of a series for an Australian coin distributor. These coins are all by The Perth Mint Perth Aus.
Most of my shots were with a Sony100mm 2.8 and shot with studio lighting.
Tom’s World – 07SEP2025 – Military Aircraft
Tom’s World – 06SEP2025 – Photo
If you don’t mind I’ll piggyback the scene below. Not planned, leaving my house at 06:30. I can tell from the sun location that it is mid September but several years back. This is why I tend to carry a smaller camera with me to capture unexpected scenes.
Guest Contributor – The Fat Man – 31AUG2025 – Photo
Tom’s World – 29AUG2025 – Chaotic Input
The thing about highly ordered systems like the social system of a large country is that they can only take so much disordered and chaotic input. And if the insanity forced down the nation’s throat over the past 12+ years doesn’t count as chaotic input, I’m not sure what would short of a total collapse.
I think that in a future in which social science has evolved from a pretend science for average or less intelligent people to waste money getting degrees in to a real evidence and calculation based science, one of the social real scientists would point to these happenings and say in consternation, “Well, what did you expect?”
