Cutting Down

As can be seen in the Header image above I have a few manual lenses and other bits and bobs (I recently had a clearout after spending the best part of September and the first part of October 2023 mainly recovering from surgery for a collapsed right lung). So after getting home and resting for a while  and making lists (as you do) I decided it was time to shrink down my gear list.

Wow, what a gear list it turned out to be, I'll eventually get around to making the list look pretty, but maybe not:

Plus an awful lot of other  necessary photographic equipment such as books, lens brushes, blowers, well you get the idea, way too much gear to make a list out of. I seem to be edging away from the older zoom lenses and the extra weight is now not worth any benefit if any I get from using them, I have included below an itemised image with a description of the gear but won't be current as I change gear all the time.

Gear in the photograph:

1 : Tamron 200mm f3.5 BBAR MultiC Adaptall 2
2 : Canon 135mm f3.5 SC FD Mount
3 : Tokina SZ-X 630 60-300mm f4-5.6 FD Mount Zoom
4 : Tamron 28mm f2.8 (CW-28) Adaptall
5 : Olympus OM-D E-M10 16 MP M4/3 (No longer have this camera)
6 : Tamron SP BBR MC 2x Teleconverter (01F) Adaptall 2 + Canon FD Mount
7 : Tamron SP 500mm f8 BBAR MC Mirror (55BB) Adaptall 2
8 : AVE HiR 6mm f1.2 CCTV C Mount Lens
9 : FotoDioX Pro Canon FD - M43 EXCELL + 1, 0.72x Focal Reducing Adapter (FRA)
10 : Jessop Candid Angle Lens Attatchment with 58mm and 62mm filter adapters.
11 : Vivitar 36mm, 20mm, 12mm Canon FD Macro Extension Tubes
12 : Canon Extender FD 2x (B) FD Mount
13 : Weston Master IV (Model 745)
14 : Incident Light Invercone for the Weston Master IV

There was a lot of controversy surrounding the FotoDioX Pro Canon FD - M43 EXCELL + 1, 0.72x Focal Reducing Adapter when it was first released, quite a lot of users were having terrible results and demanding their money back. That was around 2013 where the adapter was selling for around  $149.00 US where it appeared that FotoDioX was simply jumping on the Focal Reducer hype at the time and the MetaBones version was being offered at nearly 7 times the price. Suffice to say these lenses got better over time and the one I have was advertised online by a well-known photography store, it was advertised as an "Extension Tube with built in lens and was in excellent condition", it was being sold for £20.00 including postage and for that price I bought it. I already had a PixCo Generic Focal Reducer, it wouldn't mount onto my Olympus OM-D E-M5 but did everything I expected on my other cameras, I purchased that originally for £35.00 (I sold it on for £45.00 after getting the FotoDiox). The FotoDiox was brand new, unused and in original packaging and had never been on a camera. After testing it produced some cracking results with my Canon FD Lenses  and other gear (the reason for selling the PixCo). 

I have used this FRA with most of my lenses and found very little image degradation except for one of my favorite standard lenses. The Canon 50mm f1.8 in FL mount is a total disaster using this focal reducer unless you use f5.6 or lower, using f1.8 or anything less than f4 the image it creates is absolute rubbish.