Blog · David Kennard Photography

Adding an aperture to an irisless lens

August 18th, 2018

I have a few projection lenses that can be adapted for taking photos with. The catch is these lenses have no aperture control, so they can only be shot wide open. I thought that it should be possible to add an iris either in front of or behind the lens to overcome this problem.

In this article I'll share my results, comparing a lens with a built-in iris, placing the iris behind the lens, and placing the iris in front of the lens. But if you want the quick answer, if you want aperture control then you'll need to buy a lens with a built-in iris.

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Tags: Aperture, Projector lens
Posted in Reviews and info | 1 Comment »
Last updated 2018/08/18 by Dave Kennard

Canon 55-250mm STM on A7R II

July 30th, 2018

There is currently a dearth of small, lightweight short to medium telephoto lenses for the Sony E mount 'full frame' cameras. And while some may be introduced in the future, I suspect they will be priced quite high.

So I thought I'd see how the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM lens performs on my A7R II. This is a lens designed for APS-C, but the A7R II has enough megapixels that using an APS-C crop isn't a disaster.

The main points I wanted to check with this lens were:

Does it cover a usable imaging area larger than APS-C?
How well does it work with a 1.5x teleconverter?

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Posted in Reviews and info | No Comments »
Last updated 2018/07/30 by Dave Kennard

LowePro FastPack 350 camera bag review

June 30th, 2018

I just purchased a new camera bag, so I thought I'd do a review of my old camera bag, the LowePro FastPack 350. I guess it's a bit odd doing a review of a bag that is quite old and no longer produced. However, I'm sure there is still old stock being sold off, or you might be looking at buying one second-hand. So hopefully this review will prove helpful.

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Tags: Camera bag
Posted in Reviews and info | No Comments »
Last updated 2018/06/30 by Dave Kennard

Lens test for UV photography 27mm – 58mm

June 9th, 2018

In this post I'll share a few test shots taken with a selection of my lenses from 27mm - 50mm. The goal of this test is simply to see which lenses pass enough UV light to make them usable for reflected ultraviolet photography.