The Minolta 50mm F1.4 Lens

This is my 3rd lens after I bought the A100 twin kit package. This is a great lens ! Minolta lenses are good in quality, and they were made from Japan, not China made as some of the current Sony lenses.

However, Minolta lenses are extremely difficult to find nowadays, and the prices are getting higher and higher. We are like vulture scouting for any A-mounter who wish to jump ship and grab his/her gears before it gets away! Quite sad actually because we are chasing to get these old minolta lenses in the market. If I am lucky, I get a good copy and vice versa.

Anyway, I wish to share here is the thought behind shooting this Minolta lens. A tupperware cover was used as diffuser to diffuse the light so to bring out the coating colour of the lens. What happen if no tupperware cover is used ? I got this photo:


I can't see the deflection of the coating of the lens. Same as this photo:

I got the inner aperture blades, but I lost the beautiful lens coating colour.

Be careful when holding the tupperware cover. Mind the reflection on the lens as well. See the following photo:

Instead of the reflection of the diffuse cover, my hand is captured on the lens front element as well.

This is how my set up is. Forgive me of the mess in my "studio". White cardboard is used as reflector. Although my DIY aluminium foil paper reflector reflects better than this white cardboard, but it does cast quite ugly reflection on the lens surface. This is because of the unevenness of the aluminium foil paper surface.

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