Queen Elizabeth Park is a personal favorite of mine to show anyone visiting Vancouver. It's also one of my favorite parks to go and enjoy the flowers, plants, and city views. This is partially because of the great vantage point it has sitting on a hill, overlooking the downtown core, and also because there is an amazing gardening staff there cultivating a large variety of beautiful plants.
I frequently like to adapt an old Russian Helios 44-2 lens to my Fujifilm camera and play with macro lenses and the flowers here. My particular lens is from the Valdai factory and would have been made some time around the 1969, being one of the first produced here. It has some unique quirks as a result.
Namely its strange and unique bokeh. Its what this lens has become famous for. Though it was originally despised by many photographers because of the swirl it creates it has become a cult lens for videographers and creative photographers alike. The poor optic formula created bad field curvature, mixed with poor craftsmanship no two lenses are alike making this lens the gem that it is today.
With the addition of a macro tube (I usually use only a 10mm tube) this lens becomes a macro dream machine. Buttery smooth backgrounds with pin-sharp centers makes photographs of flowers and other small things a joy.
I personally have grown fond of shooting small insects with it. I can focus fast and capture them in their element looking like monstrous creatures in a small world.
Unfortunately, this lens is pretty crap at most other things, so I use it sparingly. But it's still a great lens to use for its purposes!
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