Slim's Pickings

Monday, April 6, 2020

Tamron 28mm 2,8 Adaptall, on an XT2.

New FOV.
On the XT2, the lens has different field of view. The XT2 uses an APS-C sensor. Its just me, but I seemed to be more comfortable in shooting with a 42mm field of view. So these are the pictures from the set up.

The set up, on my carpet. A7m2 with canon 50mm 1.4 LTM

Flower. Chilli.

My watch.

Almost monochromatic.

Palm tree and fruits.

Small flower.

That should be it.

More pictures can be found in my flickr account. https://www.flickr.com/photos/qathirah/

Sunday, April 5, 2020

Tamrom 28mm 2.5

The front cap, the lens, the adapter and the rear cap.

Taken with the Tamron 90mm 2.8 macro, 172E

The design.
I love the design. It's so industrial. Was not very sure about the adaptall rear end, and that was what made me hesitated. And also, never was fond of the 28mm focal length. But for $20, with adaptall to nikon adapter, I said, go to heck and lets see what this thing can do.

Unfortunately.
The focussing rings was stiff, sometimes the aperture blades will stick between f4 and f5.6 and the aperture ring is almost stuck. You have to grab it as though you are twisting a bottle cap off. Then it will turn. As it is, however, it works. Previous owner claimed it has fungus, but I have seen and work with, worse.

Impressions.
Its small, its compact. As thick and as long as the adapter. Pictures are nice. No complains. At wide open, background blur is nice. Not busy. I shoot mainly at f4, in this way I still got some isolation from the background and sharpness should increase.

Here are some pictures.

With the adapter on. Taken with the Tamron 90mm 2.8 macro, 172E

Trying out close focusing. At wide open.

Drive by. Wide open. Lens prone to flare.

At f4. Flare.

Shot inside. Nice focal length shot with me standing up, eye level. Edited in Lightroom.

From lower than ground level. Distortion wise, in real life, not apparent enough to be bothered.

F4. Minimum focussing distance.

Sharpness is nothing to complain about. Background blur at f4 is nice.

Wide open. Focusing is near the second set of leaflets closer to you. Edited with Lightroom, vignette added.

Orchids, in the lift lobby.

Images are taken using the Sony A7m2. With the current covid-19 situation, I dont know if I can take pictures outside my house. If I do, I will update this page.

From this inital impressions, I am happy with the lens. At $20. But if you can get one that has a smooth focussing and aperture rings, and a good price, get it.

More details can be found in this blog. More details on the adaptall mount can be found here.

6th April 2020

Monday, October 7, 2019

Creative E5

Another great find I got from the internet. Bought it used for SGD$60. Comes in the box and everything else that comes with it. Creative's website still selling it for SGD$229, and thats on promotion.

This happens to be my first portable amp for my headphones. Although I have several high impedance headphones, none exceeded 300 ohms. Decided to try a portable amp as I could not hear clear audio coming out of my Beyer DT 880 while I waiting for my wife, in the car, with the windows down. Being a newbie in this portable audio world, this really caught me by surprised as I did not expect a lack of audio, even when the volume on my redmi was cranked all the way up.

The headphone was, as usual, connected to me mobile, the Redmi Note 6 pro. Granted the 880 was an open back headphone but it should work even outdoors. Pictures of the newest model is here, On google. I would think mine is the one with the words Beyerdynamic across the headphone cover.

So, being the regular guy, who just wants things to work as they should be, I realized the headphones might not be getting enough juice. Thus, the "need" for a portable amp. Did I say "need", maybe the term "a partial need and a partial necessity" would be more appropriate.

As mentioned above, I got the E5 at $60 used. The seller was kind enough to list and explain to me the various capabilties of the amp. The E5 as it turned out, is also a DAC. That means it can take Digital signals and Covert them to Analogue signals.Th seller,as it turned out uses it primarily to listen to music from his laptop. As I am typing this, that is what exactly what I am doing. This time, connected to my Dell, and listening through my Koss Pro4aa. More on that later.

Anyway, before I listened using the Dell, the E5 was connected to my Redmi via Bluetooth. Connection was simple enough. Download the creative app and you can have more control over the functions of the E5.

The E5, with my my Redmis note 6 pro.

With the Sennheiser momentum 1

The initial setup.

As a reguilar guy, who needs more juice in pushing up more audio from his high impedance headphone, this works.No complains.

Th regular guy.

Monday, September 30, 2019

Audio Technica ATH M50x

Woah, I did not know I have this blog. Interesting. I guess this will be my 2nd posting on this blog.

Lets talk about the Audio Technica ATH M50x. Nice little headphones it is. I bought the ATH M20x new at SGD$90 from Amazon. But curiosity got the better of me and I bought the M50x, used, for SGD$70. Cool. Cooler when it comes in its complete set, box and cables etc etc and its brown. It could be cooler if the "leather" on the headband was not peeling away.

With my Creative E5.

Not in anyway would I consider myself a serious audiophile. I just like to listen to music and I want my music to sound good. Its subjective as to how good is good enough, I realise that, but, yeah for $70, this is good enough. In other words, I am just a regular, average guy, who just wants things to work as they were supposed to. And to help the environment, I buy and reused pre-own stuff, to save some money, and also older editions tend to have limited runs.

Its brown.

When I bought this headphone, I did not know it will lead me to other sets and as I am writing now, I am waiting for a portable amp, and a set of earbuds to come my way. But they could be in another post I may write about.

I don't particularly took a fancy to this set when I first set my ears to it. It sounded clinically, er, digital. The bass was skinny and if it was any worse, it will sound like the output that comes out of a transistor radio. The M20x was worse. The music or the audio spectrum from the m50x was not full enough. It just does not fill you up. So it was left on the shelf and I went on to more grander things. It was user error or inexperience, as just a few days ago I remembered what a friend said about listening to reproduce audio. It was the source. All this while I used the phones as any regular guy would, connected to a mobile phone. And in this, I mean its my Redmi Note 6 pro listening to spotify or tidal. So, what I did was to link up my Redmi to my Marantz pm6006 and output the sound from there. Wow! Its just delicious. The sound was delicious, not the toasted cheese sandwich I was eating at that time. What this tells me was that this headphones has potential. And what this leads to, is the fact that I purchase a portable amp to use it with. I am loving it!

As I am writing this post, I am listening to the Beatles on it. I don't know how much better this headphones can be, as I don't intend to buy a Digital Audio Player. Don't think I want to lug around another gadget. However, this headphones, ladies and gentlemen is sensitive. It is sensitive to which and what type of source you put into it. I guess if you connect it to a player that can input those files which are a gazillionkhz and multi bits, I am sure it will output a different audio signature. But right now, it runs right by me.

The clamping force, oh my, it has a force alright. When I first wore it, it felt quite tight over my head. However after a few minutes or maybe tens of minutes, it started to get alright. Its definitely heavier than the M20x but soon, the unbearable lightness of wearing becomes almost nothing. It becomes vry comfortable and it does not hurt my ears, either physically or mentally.

The bass. Some reviews online has said it is bassier than the m20x. I find the bass, good enough. Its not bass thumping "Boom Boom". Its quite delicate. Its able to pick up bass notes, notes that differ. Thus, I find this quite musical. Its marketed as a monitoring headphone, not a super knock your brains out type. My suggestion is to have a listen to it. The bass may not be to your liking.

The mids, and the highs, ooo, they are awesome. Guitars, vocals, you can clearly hear the difference in the pitch, the emotions and the imperfectness, perfect.

For SGD$70, its worth it. Its sits on its own pedestal. It does not beg to be compared to other headphones. It does beg to be fed a good source. Feed it well and it wll grow.