I kept thinking of 'Through Glass' when I shot this, so I figure the French translation of this sounds better.   Getting around to 'airing out' the Pinkham VQ, I've shot more still lifes/glass than I had ever intended, and now I'm exhausted, and also exhausted for now in what I've had to say about still lifes, and it's time for me to do something else.   I want to quit while I'm ahead.

This is frosted glass mostly and all backlight shot wideopen.   I gotta tell you what's great for me about shooting w/the VQ...........no headaches.

It's been fun, but I'm done.

This is a park from the late 70's that featured a leisurely drive thru a collection of wild animals.  Look it up on Wikipedia.  It lasted about 2-3 years, but closed after some people got mauled. The town of West Milford now owns the property and has opened it for hiking and biking.

Verito 14.5"

"Asphalt is Forever" - on the main parking lot, which looks to be 5-10 acres.

'Entrance Driveway" -- yes, it's 4 lanes. Think of the last time you got to stand on a 4 lane highway and not get hit.

Cheers,

George

I'm calling this 'Centroid', I've shot this artifact before, and I butchered the shot by using the wrong lens(the PS SA SerIII), while I was on the wrong side of the learning curve when I used that lens for shooting this artifact.

The Visual Quality does a better job on this artifact of handling the illumination reflected off this glass.  Again, I use this and the other images shot w/this lens to submit that you can throw out any dogma regarding the starting point of how soft a lens happens to be in relation to another lens to suggest that a lens is better or worse for that reason.   You start out w/what you start out with, and then your choices in lighting/focus/SM/composition et al then have as much or more to do w/the ultimate outcome of the shot, it's everything that went into the shot.

That's my take on this anyway.

This is a copy of one of my favorite childhood toys, the classic 'Slinky', which I wrapped around a clear/bare bulb.  

This shot showcases the way that the Visual Quality can handle specular highlights/glare/reflections off of mirrored or metal surfaces in a way that the semi-Achromatics simply can't.    Consider the glare pattern along the front of the 'Slinky', the Visual Quality handles this fairly, w/the Semi-Achromatics this area would've had absolutely GARISH and blown out halos that looked like someone had set off flares in the shot.

Along w/being difficult to focus, this is the 'Achilles Heel' of the earlier Pinkhams and the primary reason they're 'hard to handle', their inability to handle intense illumination.   It's very difficult w/the earlier Pinkhams to eliminate the glow, or get a glow, and make that glow 'pleasurable' or something that looks like it was important to the rationale of the shot w/bright, direct, frontal Illumination.   W/my wrestling around w/the earlier Semi-Achromatics, I was 'up against it' when trying to shoot wideopen with illumination brighter than the light coming from a 60 watt lightbulb in many scenarios.

Figuring out workarounds like carefully considered backlighting/indirect lighting/underexposure at wideopen w/prolonged shutter times to compensate(What I began to figure out w/the earlier Pinkhams was to underexpose at wideopen or NOT COMPENSATE for bellows factors on close-in shots as a way of knocking down the light) is what makes the learning curve so pronounced for the earlier Pinkhams, and I remember on week where I shot exclusively w/my P&S Ser III where I was totally exhausted afterwards, mentally and physically, along w/a three day splitting headache.

Things are not so bad w/the Semi-Achromatics once you began to know them, but the Visual Quality is more forgiving focuswise and in its ability to handle bright light.

Take care

Here are three Verito offerings. Taken with a 14.5 lens on 4x5 and 8x10.

1. 4x5, a bench on a lake in Davidson's Mill Pond Park in New Jersey. The sun was in front and at the upper left, producing a very high contrast situation. Something that the Verito (and I assume most SF lenses) love.

2. 8x10In the same park, but a view across another pond. This is the entire negative. At the size that fits a PC monitor, you don't see much of an effect other than it's "painterly." Most of the time I think shots like this just look out of focus, but this one maintained interest (at least to me).

3. A crop of #2, showing how the person sitting on the bench occupies a focal point. At a 11x14+ printing size, this tends to draw one into the picture (I hope!).

I love this lens. It has such limitless possibilities, given the availability of sherpas to carry all the other stuff.

George