How to Make a Picture Frame Look Antique | Home Guides | SF Gate

I have a lens obsession. My relationship with glass goes beyond a mere appreciation for focal length. I have a deep fascination with vintage lenses. Each shiny little bauble has the ability to take an framr image and infuse it with something unique.

The right lens can change more than the field of view — it can change the overall tone of the image. Vintage l enses can give a memorable patina to your moving image or photograph — something that takes the edge off an over-sharp, antiseptic digital image and lends it some character. I was 12 years old when I got my first 35mm camera. An Olympus OM My dad took me down to a local camera store one Saturday afternoon and we explored that musty old camera shop.

I took in the smells and the imagery of overstuffed shelves and cabinets filled with peculiar equipment. The lure was intoxicating. I found the environment enchanting.

There was an air of alchemy about the place. I knew that the excitement I was feeling signaled the beginning of something that would shape me for the rest of my life. Now in my 50s, I have been trying hard to return to that place, so many years ago, to reconnect with those feelings of mystery and magic that drew me to photography at such an early age.

Decades later, after years of making ro, the process has become mechanical. Prestidigitation has been replaced by digitalization. We have entered a new computerized world of photography that is how to make a frame look vintage 86 based —calculable and raw.

Images are no longer the result of trial and error, or faith mixed with chemistry. Instead, images are the product of plug-ins from a pull-down menu in some piece of video editing software. It is for this reason that, in recent years, cinematographers in Hollywood have been driven into backrooms and basements at their local rental houses, looking for a way back in time, for some forgotten pathway — perhaps a set of vuntage lenses that might restore their innocent vision.

They adriven by a belief that, by looking at the world through ancient glass, we will see things clearer — with a touch of nostalgia. I collect vintage lenses for the same reason. With the plethora how to make a frame look vintage 86 new gear that floods the market every year, there is an ever-growing supply of cast-off equipment. Treasures sit in closets, collect dust on shelves in some camera store or sit unnoticed in an unmarked bin at any of a number of anonymous estate sales.

These items are ubiquitous on eBay or Amazon, for sale to the curious or the cost-conscious. Yes, many of the classic lenses of yesteryear can be had for a trifle — a fraction how to make a frame look vintage 86 the price demanded by the fast and furious marketplace for newer photo and video gear.

Like the proverbial island of misfit toys, they wait for a new life. So for those of you who want to infuse your images with a little panache, I have gathered a list of some of the legendary lenses from the past 60 years. However, I have selected a nice cross-section of legends from my own experience, along with a critique of the individual lenses for those who share how to make a frame look vintage 86 passion or wish to experiment with bintage tools for making great images.

Photographic lenses have shorter focus throws than video lenses, typically a quarter to one-third turn. This will make focal points how to make a frame look vintage 86 quickly in and out focus when shooting video. To extend the duration of a focus throw, one may employ a follow focus attachment. Once applied, a finer degree of control is possible with a vintage lens.

It is maks for vintage photographic lenses to have witness marks and distance scales on the top portion of the lens barrel. Typically these same markings appear on the left side of a How To Make A Frame Look Vintage On Mac cinema lens barrel, where the camera assistant can see them clearly while pulling focus. In addition, the distance markings for a photo lens will indicate fewer focus stops between minimum focus and infinity. Again, use of a follow focus may extend the rate of transition through each of these focus stops and will provide a dry-erase ring to transcribe your distance markings.

The majority of vintage lenses are manual focus. This new skill set will evolve how to make a frame look vintage 86 practice. Manual focus is preferred for video because it offers a greater level of creative control. For photography, manual focus may help to improve your shot selection by requiring patience and more deliberate framing choices. Modern digital cameras employ higher native ISOs.

Typically, or more. As a result lenses with minimum f-stops of f1. Another added benefit of vintage lenses is that their color rendition is often more natural looking over a greater range of tones than that of modern lenses. This is because they were constructed to work with film stocks, which have a greater dynamic range than most modern digital capture devices.

Only in recent years has that gap narrowed. This brings us to the matter of sharpness. The resolution of most vintage lenses is quite good. However, they may appear softer than their digital contemporaries. This is often due to a lower overall contrast resulting from fewer low-dispersion optics in lens construction, fewer anti-reflective coating layers, or the exclusive use of spherical elements in lens construction.

Since the incorporation of low-dispersion glass and aspherical lens designs, digital lenses now possess finer resolution. Lastly, manual vintage optics are non-electronic lenses. However, no lens data will be included, such as f-stop, or focal vimtage.

This information must be entered manually, through your editing or color correction software. Likewise, no auto-focus is possible, and vintage lenses do not possess optical image stabilization. I chose samples, ranging from 40—50mm, designed to work with full-sized image sensors or film stocks. Loik the sensor in my camera is smaller than a full frame sensor, there is a crop factor of approximately twice the original focal length.

So, these lenses are essentially like mm telephotos. This is fine with me, as I prefer longer focal lengths for most shooting. I like the lens compression a telephoto demonstrates and the nice bokeh that results from wider apertures. This keeps my backgrounds simple and softly out of focus. With all of this in mind, here look some of the qualities you can expect to encounter when shopping for a vintage lens:.

Adapting these lenses was simple. Each vintage lens has a thread or bayonet mount that is proprietary to its particular maks. Mount how to make a frame look vintage 86 are chosen based on the style of the vintagr flange. An adapter consists of the branded lens flange at one end, and a mirrorless flange on the other.

However, it is wise to test a variety of adapters, as some are higher quality than others. I usually purchase my adapters from Amazon or eBay. These days you can couple virtually any vintage lens to any other branded camera body, regardless of the age of either component — with a few exceptions. In the past, the FFD of different cameras varied from one manufacturer to another, making cross-compatibility impossible.

This means we can adapt lenses meant to serve 35mm film cameras, or full-frame digital devices, to mirrorless camera bodies because liok have a shallower seating for vinage lens. Flange distances differ between full frame cameras and mirrorless.

When you take into account the original flange depth of my camera approx. This makes the two pieces compatible. However, the reverse scenario is not possible. MFT lenses are not adaptable to full frame cameras because the image how to make a frame look vintage 86 will not cover the bigger sensor at its native depth. Traditional full frame lenses project an image that will cover a sensor measuring 24mm x how to make a frame look vintage 86 full frameat their respective depth based on brand.

Micro Four Thirds lenses project an image meant to cover a sensor measuring approximately The reproduction ratio, or crop factor, of the full frame lens to the MFT sensor is the product of the diagonal of the 24 x 36 format Thereby making the appearance of your 50mm full frame Nikon lens equivalent to a mm lens makf the Panasonic GH4.

After an exhaustive search of the internet, I was able to flesh out my collection of vintage glass to a suitable list of performers. I was eager to get out and give each of them a modest field test. The owner there was kind enough to give me free rein over the store one afternoon so I could shoot some tests.

I also put the lenses through their paces at magic hour near Lake Baldwin in Orlando, Maie, before settling in at my favorite pub how to make a frame look vintage 86 compile my notes and enjoy a frosty Guinness with my old friend Scott — the bartender at the Bull and Bush. This lens is a classic, with a design that first arrived on the scene at the turn of the twentieth century.

Oook its feature set, this standard only uses a 6-bladed diaphragm, framf some of its contemporaries. Diaphragms with 5 or 6 blades display out of focus highlights with polygonal sides, where lenses with more blades in their diaphragm show rounder bokeh.

These coatings give still images and video footage beautiful contrast and sharpness. The Jena lenses were made in the original Zeiss factory, in Jena Germany. During the frqme occupation of Germany, soon after WW2, the Western powers divided the Zeiss company — moving half of the operation to Oberkochen under allied control, while the Soviets absorbed the remainder into the Kiev Camera Works, in Jena and Dresden, in part for war reparations.

In the years that followed the Jena factory sustained itself by supplying lenses for the Zenit company. The fit and finish of the Jena lens is crude, no doubt due to the limitations of the early Soviet era manufacturing.

The glass itself is very sharp. Therefore, I am of the belief that this lens may be pre-war and how to make a frame look vintage 86 only MC coated. Instead, this lens is of the DSB variety — a single coated design that has a medium contrast and a softly refracted quality to the backgrounds.

The absence of super multi-coating creates a distinctive bokeh that is a nice departure from the typical twinkle of MC lenses.

These Yashica lenses How To Make A Frame Look Vintage Guitar have excellent build quality.

Spray the frame with a single coat of white or light-colored spray paint, holding the can at least 8 inches away and moving quickly over the surface. Choose a color that mimics the appearance of. Where to frame: Group items into similar collections, whether you group items that are the same material like a set of old postcards or by a theme that works with the room style. You can create a gallery wall using similar frames to create unity or add one unique piece of framed vintage art to a room to personalize your space. Feb 17, - A distressed frame is so easy to make! You can turn any new picture frame into something that looks like an anique or like it came out of a boutique. Feb 17, - A distressed frame is so easy to make! DIY Distressed Frame - How to Make a New Frame Look Old Estimated Reading Time: 9 mins.

Precision Woodworking Square Uk Number Quick Release Vise Clamp 3d