Saturday, February 23, 2013

A Few Garden Photos with the Olympus OM 35mm f/2

I Piddled around the yard yesterday with the Olympus OM 35mm and took a few pictures of things going on.  Stuff is starting to bloom. Here they are:

Buds on the Valencia Orange.  You can see it has fruit on as well.

New growth on the Moro blood orange.  It's going nuts.
Peach Blossoms on La Feliciana.

More Peach Blossoms
Flower buds on Ein Shemer apple.  Ein Shemer was developed in Israel and is supposed to be good in the central Texas climate.
 

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Olympus OM-System Zuiko MC Auto-W 35mm f/2 and The First Rose of Spring

Zuiko's on the right.
I added a new 35mm to the bunch.  The Zuiko 35mm f/2 doesn't have a reputation for being a great lens, but it was available for a good price, so I couldn't resist.  I put it through the same paces (more or less) as the Rokinon and Canon 35s I reviewed previously (here).

The new Zuiko was a bit scruffy on the outside, but the glass was perfect. Here are a couple more pictures.

Fronts

Butts
Here's the chart:


 
The Olympus sharpens up in the center by f/2.8 and there isn't really any noticeable sharpening  beyond that.  The edge is not great and doesn't really seem to sharpen up much at all with stopping down. The corners are dismal wide open and improve incrementally towards bad the more it is stopped down.  It's important to add that there is some weird glowy halation wide open that seems to affect only the bright highlights.  It has the potential to be distracting.


Here are the comparisons with the Rokinon and Canon 35mm:
 

It's hard to tell for sure, but I think the Zuiko has less color fringing than the other lenses at f/2 and is as sharp in the center, and maybe a hair sharper by f/2.8.  The Rokinon sharpness seems to lag behind the others just a wee bit throughout the range.

 
 Rokinon > Olympus > Canon at the edge of the frame. The Olympus and Canon both have chromatic abberation that the rokinon does not. They all get pretty close, sharpness wise, around f/8. Pretty poor showing for the canon.


Rokinon > Canon > Olympus in the corners.  The Rokinon is by far the winner here and it gets pretty sharp by f/4.  The Canon lags far behind the Rokinon and the Olympus is even softer. The hierarchy holds through the entire aperture range.

Here's the bokeh ball comparison:

 
 I think the Canon has the best bokeh balls wide open.  The Olympus gets some weird outlining near the frame edges due to mechanical vignetting. It also has a ninja star shape at f/2.8.  It's not awful, but it is the clear loser in this department.

Here are some Tiki torch photos like in the other review:



 
 The background blur might be a little better than the other two, but that might just have to do with the time of day I took these pictures.  Softer light. Certainly not a very significant difference.

On top of these pictures, here are some things that might be pertinent.  The olympus f/2s have a moving element that adjusts to maintain sharpness at close focus. This lens is pretty sharp at minimum focusing distance.  I also think it might have a more "3D" rendering than the other lenses.

So what's my conclusion?  The Rokinon and Canon are better.  If you can find the Olympus for less than $200 it's a good deal. It's a decent lens.  Fun to play with.

A couple of photos:

Orchid Blossoms: Canon 5D w/ Olympus OM Zuiko 35mm f/2 @ f/2.8, minimum focus distance

And finally, the first rose of spring. @f/4

 

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Spring Has Sprung

La Feliciana awakens early

     Well, It's February second, and I hate to say it, but it appears that spring has sprung. We've had incredibly warm weather for the last couple of weeks. I was wondering the yard this afternoon and low and behold, to my horror, my peach trees have broken dormancy.

     Why is this bad? Peach will lose all their flowers and/or fruit if there is a late season frost.  Here in Austin we aren't out of the woods until about March 15th, so we've still got a month and a half to go. Yikes! Fingers are crossed.

     Also, usually I wait until late February to prune.  The break in dormancy means I need to do my pruning now, and it also means I missed my dormant anti fungal spray.  I guess this year will be an experiment to see if I can get away without doing one.  I usually prefer to avoid chemicals if possible. 


Junegold saying hello to spring
   
      Homegrown peaches are the most amazing thing in the world. No kidding.  Texas is a great place to grow peaches.  I firmly believe that everyone should have a peach tree in their yard.  I have four.

     When choosing a tree for your yard, make sure and pick one that is right for your area.  http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/fruit-nut/files/2010/10/peaches.pdf  is the place to go for good peach growing info if you live in Texas.  They have a pretty comprehensive list of varieties along with chilling hours and ripening times.  You'll need to figure out what chill zone you live in a choose a variety appropriately.  Austin is in the 700 chill hour zone. If you get multiple trees, get them with staggered ripening times so that you have a longer harvest season.  Ripening times are relative compared to the ripening time of the Elberta variety.

     The four varieties that I planted are:

     Junegold   - 650 chill hours - 46 days before Elberta
     Harvester - 750 chill hours - 26 days before Elberta
     La Feliciana - 600 chill hours - 18 days before Elberta
     Redskin - 750 chill hours - 2 days before Elberta

     So in theory, my peaches ripen over a period of a month and a half (44 days to be exact) starting in June, although with the warm weather, and if there isn't a freeze, the harvest will probably start earlier La Felicina and Junegold, my lower chill varieties, are the two that have broken dormancy, but the Harvester and Redskin look like they aren't too far behind.

     Having a variety of trees is a good way of hedging your bets.  If there's a frost before my late chilling trees break, they should be fine, even though I might lose the fruit from the low chill trees.

     Last year was an early spring as well, but not this early.  I had a good harvest.  La Feliciana and Junegold gave the biggest and highest quality crops.  Harvester and redskin haven't hit their stride yet.  Maybe this year will be the year.