Lincoln Park, Chicago
July 2021

Coneflower by Paul Sager, on Flickr


The "new" version of the Canon FD 500mm f/4.5L used for these images was released by Canon in December 1981. Canon continued to manufacture FD lenses until the early 1990s, unlike the company's current transition to mirrorless EOS technology.

Bumblebee and coneflower


The lens is mounted to a Sony a7II, an older 24MP full-frame digital mirrorless camera, captured in RAW, and processed in Adobe Lightroom v6 with Topaz DeNoise 6.

Coneflower and sweat bee


The lens has a minimum focal distance of 5-meters (16 feet). I stacked together FD 12mm and 25mm extension tubes to bring the close focus distance to about 12 feet. The flower is literally within an inch of the minimum distance.

Monarch


All images are captured in manual focus as the lens is pre-electronics with no communication to the digital mirrorless camera. The lens has a fixed lens collar and was mounted to a tripod.

The aperture is set via the aperture control ring on the lens, but there is no report of the aperture value to the camera. The camera is set to Shutter Priority with AUTO-ISO. The camera simply meters the light as reaching the sensor where I'm manually controlling the aperture and shutter speed.

Monarch


Canon's FD mount was introduced in March 1971, alongside the Canon F-1 camera. The FD mount was the interchangeable lens mounting system for Canon's SLR cameras until 1987, when Canon completely changed to the EOS series of cameras and lenses. During the 21-year production, Canon made 134 different lenses for the FD mount, ranging from 7.5mm to 1200mm focal lengths.

Monarch


I did eventually move to a cluster of coneflowers with a butterfly busy on most every bloom.

Swallowtail


The FD 500mm f/4.5L is a high performance super telephoto lens utilizing artificial crystal fluorite and UD glass lens elements in the optical system (UD - Ultra-Low Dispersion). Despite the large aperture, the lens has sharp image quality throughout the entire frame even when the aperture is at its maximum. The lens features a rear focusing system that does not change the overall length of the lens, and a vari-pitch focusing system that makes focusing easier at long distances.

Monarch


Details on the exposure and lenses are provided in the EXIF data from Flickr, just use the image titles as URL links to Flickr.

Lincoln Park, Chicago
July 2021

Coneflower by Paul Sager, on Flickr


The "new" version of the Canon FD 500mm f/4.5L used for these images was released by Canon in December 1981. Canon continued to manufacture FD lenses until the early 1990s, unlike the company's current transition to mirrorless EOS technology.

Bumblebee and coneflower


The lens is mounted to a Sony a7II, an older 24MP full-frame digital mirrorless camera, captured in RAW, and processed in Adobe Lightroom v6 with Topaz DeNoise 6.

Coneflower and sweat bee


The lens has a minimum focal distance of 5-meters (16 feet). I stacked together FD 12mm and 25mm extension tubes to bring the close focus distance to about 12 feet. The flower is literally within an inch of the minimum distance.

Monarch


All images are captured in manual focus as the lens is pre-electronics with no communication to the digital mirrorless camera. The lens has a fixed lens collar and was mounted to a tripod.

The aperture is set via the aperture control ring on the lens, but there is no report of the aperture value to the camera. The camera is set to Shutter Priority with AUTO-ISO. The camera simply meters the light as reaching the sensor where I'm manually controlling the aperture and shutter speed.

Monarch


Canon's FD mount was introduced in March 1971, alongside the Canon F-1 camera. The FD mount was the interchangeable lens mounting system for Canon's SLR cameras until 1987, when Canon completely changed to the EOS series of cameras and lenses. During the 21-year production, Canon made 134 different lenses for the FD mount, ranging from 7.5mm to 1200mm focal lengths.

Monarch


I did eventually move to a cluster of coneflowers with a butterfly busy on most every bloom.

Swallowtail


The FD 500mm f/4.5L is a high performance super telephoto lens utilizing artificial crystal fluorite and UD glass lens elements in the optical system (UD - Ultra-Low Dispersion). Despite the large aperture, the lens has sharp image quality throughout the entire frame even when the aperture is at its maximum. The lens features a rear focusing system that does not change the overall length of the lens, and a vari-pitch focusing system that makes focusing easier at long distances.

Monarch


Details on the exposure and lenses are provided in the EXIF data from Flickr, just use the image titles as URL links to Flickr.