So, what I intended yesterday was to do some pictures & a sort of retro review on old Minolta lenses. But then I do live with a trillion cats...
I think I'll have to get back to the in-depth review later, but at least here is one of the most important items from that: the Minolta 70-210/4 "Beercan"
Actually I'm not sure if I have 2 or 3 of them! The one I have here is falling apart, so I might do a post about tightening it up, but not while all our cats roam around...
They can be picked up at flea markets and such for next to nothing, or bought for a lot more in second hand camera shops. Why? Well you gotta know the quality and what it can do in order to appreciate it!
It didn't take long, less than ten seconds before the first one of them jumped up on that table!
So I realized that this will be more about them, than camera gear haha...
Oh well, it seems to be a popular mix! 😁
I might have pulled the edit too far in this image, but I'll post it anyway, maybe others like that cartoon-ish look?
She is certainly the main attraction now! Its hard to get their fur and blue eyes right without getting into deeper editing, but it works.
I think I ended up with a permanent fascination with cats whiskers yesterday... The depth of field here is in millimeters, so gotta get it just right!
This one, and a few others, work well because one the eyes is in the same plane, its random by nature, but I could see myself getting used to working with focus that way, even with kittens moving constantly...
I still cannot tell them apart! The weird thing is that they are not twins, their mothers Tiger & Charcoal are sisters, that is all...
The only real difference is that their blue eyes differ, one is lighter and one is deeper. Its clear when they're together, but not when I see one at a time, even in real life!
Actually they're developing into less annoying cats now. They've learnt that if they abstain from biting me then I'll pet them, and let them stay close, and thaaaat is something they enjoy more and more.
Now Zimba is very different! I don't think he has ever bit me for no reason, of course sometimes he has done it as a test, its their way of checking if I'm a loyal cat too I think.
I hope Zimba won't be too gullible and tame forever, ultimately it puts him in danger... But how to train him to defend himself against predators, I just cannot figure out a way to do that...
He put up this expression when I got started! Clearly he is really wondering what I'm doing, poking the camera up into their faces super close up...
I focused on the whiskers above his eye in this one, along with the reflections in the eyes its sharp, then the nose and mouth is not, which makes it even funnier I feel.
Now this cat portrait just hits me every time I see it! When going through the images I get this scare, a flash reaction of fear every time it pops up haha!
I've known Charcoal since she was tiny, I took care of her after she got lost for some days, I spent weeks or longer to make her trust us, she is living in the closet next to me, she jumps happily across me several days, she comes purring to me most mornings, she even tolerates all the others now, but still I often get this reaction!
Her personality is really something, complex and very cat like I guess. And there is always that steel like, underlying strength that most bipeds lack these days 😁
I really respect her for these reasons, same goes for Tiger, but she has not got this in her...
I guess this is going deeper into being a story about our cats! Tiger had half her right paw bitten off by our dog when she was a tiny kitten, fortunately I managed to split them off in time.
Then followed a few months of me taking care of her wound, so of course we have a special relationship.
She has never let that stop her, and her remaining 2 claws are now of course stronger than normal. This image could have been sharper, but I want the world to know about her resilience for sure 🙂
Should I get back to the camera stuff? Well at least I'll add this too, although Minolta does not exist any longer there are thousands of cheap, really good lenses out there, probably hundreds of thousands.
But what would be the point of cameras without anything interesting to aim them at?
Our cats have been really good models, to such a degree that I wonder what I'll do once I have to leave for a while!
Maybe I'll try doing some street dog close-ups, although that sounds risky... Gotta hope that all the ones I left in Kathmandu still remember me, I kinda think so!
And that is all about Minolta & cat personalities for now 😁