The Newtown Pentacle

Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi

pierced stone

with one comment

Scuttling, always scuttling.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Last week, after finishing up the Greenpoint walking tour I conducted for NYC H2O, a humble narrator shuffled along the old mortal coil in pursuance of getting back home. Along the way, NYC was doing its thing and showing off. She does that during the summer. These shots were gotten with a recent addition to my lens kit, a bargain basement Canon 24mm pancake lens that’s little more than a body cap with a tiny piece of autofocusing glass in it. The “itty bitty” nature of this particular lens allows me to give the camera a fairly good look through chain link fencing, even the tight meshed sort that you’ll find on the Pulaski Bridge.

DOT likes the fine mesh stuff. The “diamonds” created by the overlapping wires can’t be more than 3/4 of an inch on the fine mesh variant of chain link fence, which is a ruinous thing when you’re using more traditional glass with front elements in the neighborhood of 77-100mm in diameter. Bother.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’m continually surprised at the pancake lens, as a note. It’s got few of the optical formula sorts of issues you’d expect to find in a “cheap” lens, and is f2.8 on the wide end which… as mentioned, is not what you’d expect to find on such an inexpensive device. In bright sunlight, the thing is tack sharp at f4 and above.

This isn’t meant to sound like a “sell” for the thing, I just really like it. Finally managed to get a shot of the Queens Midtown Tunnel, which I’ve been desirous of for awhile, with it – as seen above.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

All of these turbulent storms, and high atmospheric humidity, has really made for some incredible sunsets of late – don’t you think?

Got the shot above on Broadway in Astoria sometime last week, and I’m fond of it.


“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle


Buy a book!

In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.

Written by Mitch Waxman

July 29, 2019 at 1:00 pm

One Response

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  1. The expense our great blogmeister goes to for these shots! Beautiful sky.

    Tommy Efreeti

    August 9, 2019 at 2:10 pm


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