Lee in the Park [Super-Takumar 55mm f1.8]

Images shot with the vintage Super-Takumar 55mm f1.8 on the Sony NEX-5N

You can plan a pretty picnic but you can’t predict the weather.

Not my words. The words of Andre 3000.

Sometimes, photography is impossible to predict. Other times, it isn’t. And you never know when it will or won’t be.

There are a lot of things you can control when doing some vintage lens, or any manual lens, photography though. All of your camera settings basically. And with practice, you’ll be able to master them.

If you’re doing street photography however, there will remain a lot of elements you can’t control. Like what people are going to do, how they might behave, and even how the light may be or change on the day.

With practice and a little research, you can become better at guessing or forecasting. Like composing a scene and waiting for people to walk into it. But for the most part, you’re likely to spend more time being reactive than proactive.

This isn’t a bad thing at all. Learning how to react to situations rather than always engineering them keeps things interesting.

Often, the best thing you can do is just get out there and get shooting.

The elder generation in Zhongshan Park

One time when I just got out there to go shooting, I went to Zhongshan Park in Shanghai with the Super-Takumar 55mm f1.8 attached to the Sony NEX-5N.

A vintage lens and a little Sony mirrorless camera is always a good combo for shooting some street photography with.

I didn’t know exactly what I was going to find that day, but you can always take a good guess when you go to a park in China.

The elder generation, for one thing.

Whether gambling, dancing, flying kites, singing, painting water graffiti on the floor, looking after the grandchildren, or just having a nap, they will always be there.

Playing with a shallow depth of field

Putting the 55mm Super-Takumar on the APS-C sensor Sony NEX-5N meant it was more like shooting with an 82.5mm lens, thanks to the 1.5x crop factor.

While this meant no sweeping vistas of the park, it was good for getting some of these photographs of people without being too obtrusive.

That focal length along with the f1.8 capability of the lens was also good for playing around with some shallow depth of field shots. Some more people, some birds, and some inanimate objects too.

I prefer the ones with some in life in them, but not everyone does. And they all go some way to showing what you can do with this lens too, or any other with similar specifications.

Practising pre-focusing on a distance

In my experience, this old Super-Takumar 55mm f1.8 performs really well with black and white shots.

Only having manual focus means it’s also a good teacher.

Other posts like Monkey Town, On the Road to Pai, and Chiang Mai Street Photography feature monochrome images taken with this lens that I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to shoot when I first started using vintage lenses.

On this day in Zhongshan Park, the rollerblading kids gave me the chance to practice pre-focusing on a distance and capturing them as they passed through it.

Needless to say, there were a lot of missed shots.

As you can see though, even with manual focus lenses it’s possible to get sharp images of moving subjects with a little practice of certain techniques.

Rounding up the last shots from the day

This was a good day spent in Zhongshan Park. I always liked going there to escape the hustle and bustle of the streets outside. It was surprising how calm it always felt with the whole city of Shanghai just outside its perimeters.

I remember on more than one occasion sitting down by myself to eat a grapefruit and listen to The People’s Key, which was the latest Bright Eyes album at the time.

It was a good day too because I got a set of photographs that I like with that Super-Takumar 55mm f1.8. I liked them at the time, and then I didn’t look at them for a few years, and now I like them again while I’m giving this post a quick refresh and tidy up.

All that’s left to see on it is the rest of the shots from that day.

If you’ve got this far, you might as well have a look at these ones too.

And after you have, take a look at some of those other linked vintage lens photography blog posts that might interest you too. 🙂

If you enjoyed these shots from Zhongshan Park with the Super-Takumar 55mm f1.8 and want to read more posts about images shot on a mirrorless camera with vintage lenses, why not have a look at some of these too:

Circles in Chiang Mai [F.Zuiko 38mm f1.8]

Visiting Chongqing’s Luohan Temple [F.Zuiko 38mm f1.8]

Chongqing’s Bang Bang Men [Super-Takumar 55mm f1.8]

Life’s a Pitch @ Chiang Mai FC [F.Zuiko 38mm f1.8]

And if you think others will find this post worth a read, help them find it by giving it a share 😀