A wolf in sheep skin - Hoya HMC 75-205mm f4 macro

Bought this lens from ebay... wanted an old Olympus OM lens of similar zoom range but couldn't find one that fit my bill... came across this lens and look at the internet for details. Not much... but was pretty positive in the only one that I read, so I decided to take the plunge and bidded for it...

Got it cheap.

When the package arrive, I was intending to use it with my OM-D... with the x2 crop, I am able to push the range up to a maximum of 410mm equivalent to 35mm film (which is good for birding). So I try... I would not say that I fail miserably... because I took this lens to Australia and it was a pretty good lens... except for very very bad zoom creep.

A few shots of the lens...

Talking about sharpness... this lens is a beauty... extremely sharp.

The bokeh was nice and creamy... and there is this film like grain in the shots I took. I loved it to bits. However, I don't seemed to be able to take clear shots of birds when I was in Australia with this lens coupled to my OM-D...

When I am back in Singapore, I adapt the lens to my Canon 7D... and was amazed at the lens' capability.

I am able to capture with decent sharpness of the small and fast sunbird in my front yard. I had problem to capture this bird with my more modern EF70-200mm f4L before, the AF simply couldn't follow the bird at a very contrasty environment.

Anyway the lens is not really very heavy and it is so much smaller than my f4L, so carrying it around is not a chore.

For that type of money, this lens is a pleasant alternative for modern lenses. If you happen to find one in ebay... do not hesitate. Grab it! And have fun.

Australia trip 02-Jul-2012 to 07-Jul-2012

Wow... it had been quite a while since I have visited here... I almost forgot about this place...

Anyway, many things had happen since I last stepped into this blog... Not going to go through detail of what happened... Here, I am going to write on my trip to Australia with my younger brother. It had been a fine trip... I get to test my dad's Olympus OM-D fully with a couple of lenses - Oly 40-150mm, Pany 25mm f1.4 (80% of the time), Hoya 75-205mm manual lens, Oly 14-42mm kit lens.

My favorite among these lenses... 25mm f1.4! A sharp and very responsive piece of gem :)

Well... the above are taken using the Hoya manual lens... I admit it is not the easiest lens to use... But result is pretty good... but so far I can only take photos of more or less stationary objects. Try birding... but failed miserably.

 (My handsome elder bro. Don't drool girls!)

Well the abovementioned are all taken using 40-150mm, 25mm or 14-42mm lens. I am very please with OM-D... but there is some areas that I really really wish that would improve... the most notable was the freak grip (or lack of one)... and the second is the lag between shots. There is this lag that would have caused some of my shots... and I missed the almost instantaneous respond of my DSLR... oh... and it take a while for the OM-D to wake up from its beauty sleep... my 7D, 1000D and 40D response is instantaneous in this matter too.

So if you ask me... I will not replace my 7D with the OM-D... but I will use the 7D lesser.

More of my Australia trip photo will be found here, http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiew_cy/sets/72157630473785164/with/7525391172/