400TX

Sigma 50 f 1.4

2010-11-15T15:46:00.000-08:00

Ever since I first saw them in the 1970's, Sigma lenses always seemed like just another Vivitar or Soligor budget lens. But the independent lens makers like Sigma and Tamron are getting more serious with their optical quality, at least in some of their offerings. I was sort of surprised to read the reviews of the current Sigma 50 1.4 lens for dSLR and full frame SLR cameras. Some reviews have it neck and neck or even better than the current Canon or Nikon 50 1.4 primes. An admitted 50 mm focal length fanatic, I managed to hold off for about a year before finally caving in.
This weekend was an overcast, cool day in New Orleans, and we had a field trip to the Audubon Zoo for some of our biology students. Good opportunity to try out the glass. The frame below is an uncropped shot at f 2.0, ISO 200. The point of focus was the lizard's eye. I like the lens' bokeh at this aperture, particularly of the girl's face.

Below is a cropped area of the lizard's eye from the same frame, again without any sharpening or PS enhancements.

No complaint about the sharpness at nearly full aperture.

The frame below is an uncropped, unedited shot at f 5.6, ISO 200.

A cropped area of same photo, no PS tweaking.

Shot of gorilla below is at f 5.0, full frame and unedited.

A crop of same photo, unedited.

I have to say that I'm liking this Sigma lens. It IS rather big and heavy, with a huge front element. But I'm not apt to walk out the door with a Domke bag full of lenses, so carrying this one 50 around all day is not a problem. I think it is going to work out well as a street/documentary photography lens. I'm happy with the center sharpness and the bokeh. Sigma is not particularly famous for its durability over the long haul, so it will be interesting to see how this lens holds up over time.

Tamron SP AF 28-75 f/2.8 Macro Zoom Lens

2010-10-17T10:25:00.001-07:00

I've always favored single focal length lenses because of their superior optical performance. Back when zoom lenses were first introduced, they usually didn't match the performance of a prime. Zoom have gotten better in the past 40 years, but getting a fast one meant getting a heavy one. When I recently pored over reviews of the Tamron SP AF 28-75 f/2.8 Macro Zoom, I was surprised that it was so light compared to my Tokina zoom of the same focal lengths and aperture. The price was right, so I ordered one.
Unlike many zooms from the recent dSLR years, the Tamron covers a full frame rather than an APS size frame. Its weight balances nicely with a full frame dSLR (whereas my earlier Tokina is very front-heavy).
I have had a chance to shoot about four hundred frames with it at a recent pet fair at my college. The sun was blazing bright on the first day of fall, so I shot mostly in the shadows. My impressions so far are good.
The picture above is not technically perfect since the pooch was in a state of perpetual motion and, at 1/200 second, is a bit blurred. The aperture is f/3.5 shot at an ISO of 200. My reasons for choosing this frame is to show the sharpness at f/3.5, and the pleasing (IMO) bokeh when the lens is nearly wide open. Click on the image to see it enlarged.
The photo below is at the far end of the zoom range (75mm) and at f/4.0 at ISO 200, 1/160.

No sharpening in PS, direct from RAW with some color adjustments to remove the bluish tint from being in the shade. A crop from the dog's eye looks pretty good to me considering I wasn't using a tripod.

Virtually everything I shoot is with focal lengths from 28 to 75, so this lens can be the only one I tote around. I look forward to putting it through its paces in the coming weeks.

Deactivating the comments feature

2010-02-16T06:35:00.000-08:00

This blog seems to have turned into a public bulletin board for posting the addresses of web sites featuring Japanese child pornography. As a result, I have had to disable the comments feature. I regret having to do that since the comments were helpful and interesting, but I found myself having to scan the blog several times a day to removing the objectionable (and illegal) pornography URLs.

Finding Time for Photography

2007-06-09T08:14:00.001-07:00

I’ve become a very poor example. The hackneyed phrase not practicing what I preach comes to mind. I’m the administrator of the PAW forum, one dedicated to encouraging people to post a picture a week (one taken that week mind you). We are nearly at week 26 and my PAW is at week 13. And I haven’t posted to my own blog in a month. Too damn many things going on. There were photo opportunities, but I didn’t have my camera with me. I have tried time management systems such as the Franklin Day Planner (I even attended their seminar). I tried the Stephen Covey Seven Habits system as well. But those systems encourage making to do lists and prioritizing them. How does one prioritize the task of “have a camera with you when a photo opportunity arises”? Worse yet, they always seem to focus on the big picture, requiring you to decide what matters most. You children, your religion, your prosperity, your health, your wife (not in that order). Where does “pick up the dry cleaning” fit in there? Well, last week I decided to switch from a PC to a Mac, and things began to change. Read on.
I have always been a huge fan of PIM software, all the way back to the 1980’s with Lotus Agenda and Instant Recall. I have probably tested 50 PIMs over the past two decades, switching from PackRat to Lotus Organizer to Day Timer to Ecco to Time and Chaos to Outlook to Ascend back to Ecco. You get the picture. Well, none of those run on a Mac (although Entourage, Outlook’s cousin on the Mac comes close). So I started googling for a good PIM for the Mac. All of a sudden GTD started popping all over the place. GTD is the abbreviation for Getting Things Done, a different time management system created by David Allen. I had seen the letters before, nested in the manuals for information managers such as Ultra Recall and Achieve Planner for the PC. But these Mac programs seemed to be far more dedicated to the Getting Things Done system. I went and bought David Allen’s book. By chapter one, I figured that I was hooked. You don’t try to tangle with big projects directly. You break them down into little subprojects, in order. If the subprojects are too big, you break them down, in order. And you tag each task with where it will occur. Each task has a “place” or a “context”. Thus, I tag each task with a category such at “at my desk”, “on the road”, “at home”, or “west bank campus”. All of this is headed toward one major goal of the system…to empty your head of the minutia that run through your mind during your waking hours. By breaking up big tasks into smaller tasks in a specific order, and by encouraging you to write down all commitments, no matter how important to you, you can clear your mind. And by attaching a place or context to each task, you can focus on only those tasks that are germane to where you are. What is most unlike the Franklin and Covey systems is the lack of prioritization. GTD encourages you to take care of the little things, things that might be a “C” priority on your to do list but that take only a few minutes to complete. Many of these minor “C”-priority tasks are commitments you have made to others, commitments that take only a few minutes, but that you never get to because you never complete your “A” and “B” commitments.

This system, to me, almost requires software to facilitate it. I cannot maintain separate to do lists for every place or context, and I cannot be rewriting the lists every time a new commitment pops up that belongs at the top of the list. Fortunately, there are numerous GTD software solutions out there, and some are free. Some are even web based, so you have access to your tasks as long as you are attached to the web. I did a lot of searching, and the best one appears to be futureware (a program that hasn’t been released yet). OmniFocus (from the makers of other killer software for the Mac) promises to be the tool to have, but it is still in beta. I can’t get a beta copy of it from them. When I tried to post a question on their OmniFocus forum, it was rejected (the OmniFocus forum is a read-only forum…a forum where you can listen but can’t talk). And there is no estimate of when it will be released. Well, people out there are using something that’s available, so I googled some more.

Life Balance is a program that sort of turned me off at first, primarily because of its name. Too touchy-feely, too much like the “What Matters Most” solutions of Franklin Covey. But there are versions for the Mac and for the PC, and the data files are interchangeable between these systems. Nearly all Mac software has a functioning “trial” version that will work for 2-4 weeks. I downloaded and installed about 15 of them, and ultimately settled on Life Balance. If it is supposed to balance my life, I’ll give it an easier task…just give me enough time each week to take some photos and post them. And let me get back to posting on this blog. In the week that I’ve been using it, I do feel much more productive and I do fret less about the tasks that need to be done. They are all posted, in order and in context, in the Life Balance program. Now my only challenge is those folks who have commitments to me who don’t use the GTD system.

Agfa APX 100 in Prescysol

2007-04-23T17:26:00.000-07:00

When I shot this roll of APX 100, I was hoping that it would develop nicely in Prescysol. PMK Pyro and Prescysol are the two most consistent developers on my shelf, and I like using both. Both are liquids, both have a good shelf life, and both are economical and easy to use. I have had good results with Rodinal and APX 100, but APX 100 is the only reason I still bother to keep Rodinal around. I'd would rather that it worked well in Prescysol too.
I will be taking about 20 rolls of APX 100 to Santa Fe this week. Now was a good time to shoot a test roll. The lens was a 50/1.4 Summilux pre-asph. The aperture was probably around f/2.8. Shutter speed was 1/1000.

The test shots were very contrasty, which is what I expect from APX 100. That's one of the things I like about APX 100. Maximum black is just that. There are some blown-out highlights, but that is to be expected when shooting a subject in the shade while leaving the unshaded parts in the frame. What concerned me more was grain and resolution. The grain of APX 100 seems less apparent than when developed in Rodinal. The resolution is fairly good as well.

To be fair to Rodinal, I should probably shoot some APX 100 under similar conditions and try Rodinal. But that's low on my priority scale. I like the APX100 + Prescysol combination. I am hoping to get some feedback from others who have tried it.

Freestyle Photo claims that their Arista 100 is APX 100. If that's so, that's great. It's dirt cheap. I have a case of APX100 that I bought when Agfa went belly up two years ago. But I'd like to think it was still available after that case is gone.

Bags for the Rangefinder User - 5 Good Choices

2007-03-31T16:18:00.000-07:00

My first camera bag was a leather Samsonite bag that I bought at a department store for about $8 in the late 60’s. It had no special compartments, so I tore an old towel into squares and put the squares in the bag to keep my Soligor 35/2.8 and 135/3.5 from clacking together. My next bag was a black plastic atrocity from Spiratone. It was cheap, felt kind of sticky like it was made of licorice candy, and smelled like chemicals. None of the zippers seemed to work. I was a graduate student back then, so $10 was pretty much my food allowance for a week. A nice bag was out of the question.

Things are far different decades later. Eveready cases for cameras are unheard of, and there are some high-end bags that look good and work well for the serious photographer. Single lens reflexes still dominate for the professional and enthusiast photographer, but I still prefer the smaller rangefinders. Is there a perfect bag for a kit consisting of a rangefinder + lens and two additional lenses? Five choices come to mind. All five comfortably hold a rangefinder with three lenses (one attached). How much more you can get into the bag varies from bag to bag.

Billingham Hadley
Crumpler 5-Million Dollar Home
Domke 803
Domke F5XB
M-Classic Bag

The Billingham Hadley is the most expensive of the lot and one of the most attractive bags. The padding surrounding the equipment is the thickest and presumably affords the best protection. Repositionable partitions allow you to vary the size of the inner slots. Two generous expandable pockets in the front will accommodate film, lens paper, and batteries. With its leather accents, it won’t embarrass the well-dressed shooter. Securing the top of the bag are two leather straps with eyes. I find these a bit awkward to use in the field. On the positive side, opening the bag doesn’t produce the grating ripping noise of Velcro, making it a bit more discrete than some of the others. I find the strap attachments to the sides of the bag to be a bit too low for my taste. It sometimes gives me the feeling that the bag is top-heavy.

The Crumpler 5-Million Dollar Home is slightly more pouch-like in appearance. The internal dimensions are smaller than most of the bags, so the camera and lenses fit a bit more snugly, a win-win situation in my view. Like the Billingham Hadley, you can reposition the partitions inside of the bag, making a larger slot in the middle for the camera. The bag itself appears to be a synthetic canvas, and the padded inside also appears to be made of a synthetic compound. This might be a plus, making the material water resistant, and less likely to produce dust or support mold. Unlike the Hadley, there aren’t fat pouches for film, so a jacket with big pockets might be necessary when carrying this bag fully loaded. There are two levels of security for holding the top flap in place. A large piece of Velcro will hold the flap securely in place. If you need more security than that, a black plastic pinch clasp (yeah, I made that name up, but you know what I’m talking about) adds to the security. On the negative side, every time you open the flap, the peace is shattered with a deafening ripping noise. If you want to access the inside flat pocket, another deafening velcroesque ripping sound will put the pigeons to flight. If James Nachtwey had used the Crumpler 5-Million Dollar Home, he’d have been taken out by friendly fire years ago. The Crumpler strap appears to be similar to seat belt material. This is a sturdy bag. If you haven’t looked at the Crumpler web sites, be prepared for even more noise. Singing with unintelligible words, oinking, flushing, flatulence, resophonic guitar, horses whinnying. There are four versions of the site (USA, Australia, Singapore, and Canada), with different noises. At one point, I couldn’t click on a menu choice because an animated arm would reach out and block it from my mouse arrow. If you hate the site, you are probably a Billingham Hadley kind of guy. NOTE: The day after this blog was posted, a reader suggested dealing with the Velcro noise issue by putting some Velcro (or even tape) on the Velco. Excellent suggestion. I had thought of meticulously trimming the Velcro off with a razor blade, but his idea is better.

The Domke 803 is probably the popular choice among rangefinder users for several reasons. It looks more like an army surplus bag than a camera bag, it can be made to look even crappier by throwing it in the washing machine, it can be waterproofed with various canvas waterproofing sprays, and it is easy to access from the top. A three-slot insert provides sufficient room for a camera + two additional lenses. Zippered sleeves and two flapped (with Velcro) pockets can carry your film, batteries, lens paper, etc. Padding is not as luxurious as the Hadley. The partitioned sleeves are made of nylon cloth reinforced with flexible plastic foam. The top flap is held security in place by a steel hook clasp like you would see on a dog leash. This bag is reasonably priced, has the least frills, and is the most blue-collar-looking bag described here.

The Domke F5XB is considerably smaller than the Domke 803, but it can still accommodate a rangefinder plus two additional lenses. But there isn’t much room for anything else other than lens hoods, lens paper, and batteries. I actually like it better than the 803 for several reasons. The F5XB can be tethered securely to your body via a long tunnel on the back through which you snake your trouser belt. This, along with the shoulder strap, securely fastens the bag to you and eliminates the problem of the bag swinging around while you are walking, climbing, etc. Like the Crumpler, there are two levels of security. Velcro hold the top flap securely in place, and a heavy-duty zipper runs along the top lengthwise. Two movable nylon partitions allow you to change the size of the internal compartments. A spongy fabric protects the contents from bumps.

The M-Classic Bag is the least well known of the five rangefinder bags here. The manufacturer is one Seth Levine who sells the bags from a Spartan web site. Like the Billingham bags, the M-Classic is handsome, made from canvas with generous leather trim. Of the bags described here, it affords the least padding. The compartments inside the bag are large canvas pockets that can carry a lot of equipment. This might be the best bag for a dressy event if you are not expecting anything violent or traumatic to happen. The pockets are particularly huge. Like my Samsonite bag of 40 years ago, I might want to shove a few hand towels in the bag to add protection.

Any of these five bags will serve the rangefinder shooter well. For users of digital rangefinders, the Crumpler 5-Million Dollar Home and the Domke F5XB might be the best choices, based on their snugness and their lack of room for film.

The Leica M8 - First Impressions

2007-03-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

It took me months to finally decide to get one of these cameras. I’m not that fond of digital, but the dearth of processing labs down here post-Katrina made shooting anything other than B&W silver halide impossible. What is there to say that hasn’t been said about the M8? Not much, so I’ll make it short.

It feels very much like a 35mm rangefinder – If you love to shoot with a rangefinder, you’ll warm up to this camera very quickly. It can probably best be described as a digital M7. You even take the bottom plate off to change the SD card. It is a bit deeper than a film rangefinder, but nothing noticeable.
It has a wonderful viewfinder, like all Leica M cameras.
It lacks most of the confusing razzle dazzle of digital cameras. No scene modes, no program modes, no irritating flashes popping up when you’re trying to be unnoticed in subdued light. It does have a histogram if you like that sort of thing. And it does have white balance settings. But I shoot everything in RAW mode and ignore that in-the-camera stuff.
You don’t have to find a comfortable easy chair somewhere to make changes in settings. There is a menu with some settings that I don’t fool with. And there is a “set” button that allows you to change ISO settings fairly quickly.
The sensor is fairly big, so the noise levels are similar to those with a good dSLR.
It writes to the SD card fairly quickly.
The noise of the motor cocking the shutter is relatively quiet. No sharp metallic sounds.

Are there problems?

It is fussy about the SD cards it uses. Unless you know one will work correctly in it, don’t buy one without consulting the PDF file of acceptable cards. I spent the first day and a half fiddling with all of my SD cards until I found one that worked. And don’t format the card on the computer. Format it only in the camera.
The spring under the battery is a bit springy. The first time I released a battery, it shot out and hit me in the lip.
The LCD is prone to scratching. I haven’t observed this but heard it from another M8 user.
The Leica strap is apparently not as secure as previous straps. Again, this was reported by another user who said the plastic locking cover broke off and his M8 disengaged from the split ring, falling to the ground.
There are lenses you absolutely should not use with it. Collapsible lenses are iffy, depending how deeply they collapse. Lenses with elements that project into the body are iffy. There are conflicting opinions of which you should and should not use. Yikes, even the 50/2 Summicron is on the hit list. Which version of 50/2 Summicron? I don’t know.
It’s hard to decide which lens to use. What?

Leica made a new and very expensive Tri-Elmar lens especially for the M8. However, I bought the M8 only because I already had a lot of M and LTM glass. With a relatively large but not 24x36mm sensor, all lens focal length have to be multiplied by 1.33 to get the equivalent focal length on the M8. Thus, a 28mm lens acts like a 37mm lens, a 35mm lens acts like a 47mm lens, and so on. Theoretically, that should be easy to adjust to, but part of my brain is telling me to put a 28mm lens on it, and part of my brain wants to put a 50mm lens on it. As a result, I almost have to carry just one lens, the one on the camera. If I carry more lenses, I keep futzing with them. A 28 is actually a pretty good choice. But you still get the distortion inherent in wide angle lenses and, unlike an SLR, this distortion doesn’t show up in the viewfinder.

Am I glad that I bought it? I probably won’t until the last payment has been made on my MasterCard. Until then, it just feels like a liability rather than an asset. And I still like film.

Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr.

2007-02-27T18:11:00.000-08:00

This book is a mixed bag and I come away from it with mixed feelings. If Sammy Davis, Jr. shot as many frames as the book seems to imply, he perhaps wasn't much of a photographer as many of the images in the book are of dubious quality. However, I cannot make the mistake of comparing him to contemporaries such as HCB. He was a singer, an actor, a dancer, a muscian, and a consumate live entertainer. He seemed to take everything he did very seriously. Some of his images in this collection are rather good. Others were very badly exposed and, unfortunately, printed anyway. I think he wasn't much of an editor and, to be fair again, he didn't assemble these images. Some of the frames are delightful.

One thing that makes this collection interesting is the subject matter. He had access to, of course, the Rat Pack, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Burton, Liz Taylor, Jerry Lewis, Nat King Cole, and so on. Most of the images are candid. Those are pretty good, and some are actually very good. Other shots are posed with big smiling faces blasted flat with a flash bulb, harsh shadows on the wall. Some are blurred, and some are slightly out of focus. If you weed out everything that a proper editor would weed out, the book would be half its size. But some folks want to see the bad stuff because they want to see the people in the bad shots. The book isn't expensive ($50, 2/3 of that from amazon.com). For $32 books, a big book would sell better than a thin book.

Was Sammy a good photographer? I think he was a good amateur photographer. He used good equipment. Some of his shots are inspiring. The snapshots are awful, especially those with flash. I preferred the blurred motion, slightly out of focus, natural lighting shots. Probably because I shun the flash altogether, use a Rolleiflex and Nikon RF, and a lot of my shots are blurred and slightly out of focus. But I have the sense to bury the really bad ones never to be seen by others.

The narrative by author Burt Boyar is interesting and welcomed. He has spent a lot of time studying and writing about Sammy Davis, Jr., and I'm glad that he was responsible for assembling this collection. Should you buy it? Go to Barnes and Noble, get a cup of coffee, and look at it. Ultimately, it is probably a book that a serious photographer might want to check out of the local library. But I was pleasantly surprised by some of Sammy's shots here. He never did anything without trying to do it well. He was a lot better photographer than was Patton, but photography wasn't Patton's strongest suit either. I came away from this book with even fonder feelings toward Sammy than I had before. I've always liked him as a man.

Classic 200 in Prescysol

2007-02-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

What has the grain of push-processed Delta 3200 from a Minox yet is slower than TRI-X? Why would anyone want to know?

The European 200 ISO films all seem to have one thing in common: grain. The highly touted and expensive Bergger 200 is grainier than TRI-X, I found the Paterson 200 to be overly grainy, and the Classic 200 discussed here is grainiest of all. Classic 200 is touted as having a nostalgic, retro look. That might be the case if shooting 8x10 film, but with 35mm, it is grainier than anything I’ve ever seen short of Robert Capa’s botched Normandy shot. But, to be fair, it is the least expensive of the European 200 ISO films.

There is speculation that these 200 ISO black and white films are all from the same factory. At last count, we have:

Bergger 200
Classic 200
Foma 200
Forte 200 [I think Forte just folded]
Paterson 200

There may be more, but these have been commercially-available in the United States. I’m pretty sure that the Foma 200 is unlike the others. It develops beautifully in PMK Pyro and is one of my favorite films. The others? Any one of them would have been perfect for documenting the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Or just about any sandstorm. Or the Marlboro man’s lips. Other than that, it is just way too grainy. I have a few rolls left, but am not interested enough in this film to go out and purchase and grain-dissolving developer like Microdol-X. Inside me lurks the fear that I will run into a Pulitzer prize-winning photo opportunity only to dash my chances because my Leica was loaded with a roll of $1.99 film.

You'll have to excuse me for the subject matter in the pictures posted here. To add insult to injury, those guys were calling me a fornicator and a Catholic. The closeup of them reminds me of the shooter on the grassy knoll.

By the way, I developed it in Prescysol.

Kodak TRI-X in Prescysol

2007-02-18T09:39:00.000-08:00

TRI-X and D76 might be thought of as standard bearers in the black and white world. If a film doesn’t develop well in D76, its chances of being accepted are reduced. Likewise, if a developer doesn’t work well with TRI-X, it generally ends up being marketed as having some other feature (good with zone system, ultra fine grain, high acutance, etc.). The developers that sell best are those that emulate D76 (HC 110, XTOL, and ID11).

Recently, I’ve been using an obscure developer named Prescysol. Previous blog entries have praised its performance with Fuji Neopan Acros, Bergger 200, and Agfa APX400. The acid test would ultimately boil down to how it worked with TRI-X.

I developed this roll of TRI-X exactly like I have developed everything in Prescysol. No matter what film you are using, it seems to work best at the film’s nominal ISO rating, and developed at 75F for 10.5 minutes with only three periods of agitation. The subject (photographer Bill Nelsch) was photographed with a 75/1.4 Summilux wide open in a restaurant. As I expected, the grain was well controlled, the grays are all there, and the areas in focus are as sharp as one is going to get with TRI-X. An enlargement of Bill’s eye shows the subdued characteristics of the grain with this developer.

Agfa APX 400 in Prescysol

2007-02-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

I was disappointed when news of Agfa’s demise surfaced. I expected some of the smaller companies to go under, but not the German film manufacturer that represented a cornerstone in the market. This isn’t like Oldsmobile going under. It is more like GM going under. So when the news broke, I bought two cases of APX 400 film and one case of APX 100 film. I liked Agfa black and white film and paper back in my wet darkroom days, and if I didn’t pick up a few hundred rolls, I’d have been kicking myself. Then I shot some and scanned it.

Prints from scanned film aren’t quite the same as prints from conventional printing, especially considering that I have always used a diffusion head enlarger. The Nikon Coolscan picks up every grain of silver in sharp focus. So I’ll try divided D76. Still too grainy. PMK Pyro should do the job well. It not only develops the silver in the negative, it also softens the image by applying a layer of stain in the exposed areas. At least it does with Ilford FP4. But not with Agfa APX 400. There is almost no staining on the negatives. How about the old photojournalist favorite 777 developer? Better, but when you get close, it is very gritty. Someone suggested Rodinal. Although that flew in the face of logic, I gave it a shot. As I expected, the grainiest prints yet.

So the APX 400 stayed in a bag on my bedroom floor for 6 months, with another case unopened. I used TRI-X and Neopan 400 instead, and played with Foma 200 Creative. Maybe I could unload the Agfa film on eBay.

A month or so ago, I was rooting through some of my stored developers and ran across Prescysol. It had to be about 2-3 years old, and is in concentrated liquid form. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I decided to try it. TRI-X + Prescysol was a very nice combination [reviewed earlier]. Acros in Prescysol is also a very nice combination [reviewed earlier]. Bergger 200 in Prescysol was, as I expected, gritty. But in a sort of good way. So why not push my luck and try APX 400.

What bad conditions for a test roll. Early afternoon on a clear, haze-free day in blinding sunlight with lots of dark shadows. Why bother? But this was a once-a-year event, the Mystic Krewe of Barkus Parade in the French Quarter. I cringed with every shot, expecting chalk, soot, and abundant grit. No turning back.

The developed negatives looked good, at least to the unaided eye. Scanning them yielded a surprise. This notoriously sooty, gritty, grainy film yielded some nice grays and very subdued grain when developed in Prescysol. I followed the directions down to the letter, agitating only three times, letting the tank stand untouched for 3-3.5 minutes at a time. The test shots here are enlarged but not manipulated in any way. Just to convince you that the grain is well-controlled, I am including a close-up of a close-up.

I cannot imagine using any other developer with this film. I am anxious to see how this developer works with APX 100.

Recovering a Vintage Camera

2007-02-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

I like using the high quality post-WWII cameras. Rolleiflex, Nikon, Contax, and Leica made some very durable professional cameras that have proven their excellent build quality by continuing to be excellent shooters today. And there are still some expert repairmen (and repairwomen) who can keep them running like they were made yesterday. But cameras are not built only of brass, aluminum, and steel. Other more perishable materials were used in making these instruments. And the synthetic materials of that era are no match for today’s polymers.

A few years ago, I bought a very well-cared-for Leica M4-2. Not a scratch, dent, or bright mark anywhere on the body. Last December, I pulled it out with the intention of testing some film and developer when I felt the crunch of old vulcanite, Leica’s hard rubber covering of their 35mm cameras during the mid-20^th century. The brittle black rubber was on the camera’s back plate, under my thumb. The back plate is the only flexible part of an M4-2 body, and the miniscule flexing was enough to separate the rubber from the metal below it. What to do?

Cameraleather.com is web-based operation that offers durable leather and leatherette coverings for an amazing variety of cameras. The coverings are cut to fit the camera exactly. They have an adhesive backing that adheres to the metal after you remove the previous covering material. Colors and styles vary from the utilitarian black pebble look to the swanky reptile skin look. I wanted a color that would bridge the gap between black and chrome so that chrome lenses could be used on the M4-2 without looking goofy. I went with walnut brown in kid leather. Be advised that the kid leather doesn’t feel like soft glove leather. It is firm and
polished.

Although Morgan Sparks, the owner of Cameraleather, gives instructions on how to prepare the camera and apply the leather kits, working with adhesive sheets has never been my strong suit. I don’t like wallpapering or applying contact paper. I have difficulty wrapping up a package without long wrinkles in the tape. For an additional charge, you can have them strip off the old leather/vulcanite and apply the covering for you. That was fine with me; I didn’t need the grief of screwing it up.

The results were, in my opinion, very nice. The leather fits the camera body perfectly, with the holes perfectly lined up with the tiny screws on the body. Now I am impatiently waiting for vulcanite to fall off of my Leica IIIf or Leica M3 so I can give them a face lift as well. But my next project will probably be to have Morgan recover a Rolleiflex TLR whose leather is curling a bit at the edges. I think I’ll go with BR Green or Sequoia Green embossed leather.

Nikon S3 Year 2000 Limited Edition

2007-02-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

The past 7 years have witnessed a rangefinder renaissance. Cosina acquired the Voigtländer name and started producing a variety of cute, relatively inexpensive, retro rangefinder cameras that can use Leica, Voigtländer, Contax, and Nikon RF lenses. Konica released a rangefinder in the Leica M mount. Rollei marketed a new rangefinder (very similar to the Voigtländer). Zeiss Ikon released a very impressive rangefinder in two versions. Epson and Leica both released digital rangefinder cameras. Bronica released a medium format rangefinder camera. And Leica released perhaps their finest rangefinder of them all, the Leica MP. But during the past 7 years, most of these rangefinder cameras were quickly discontinued, along with some other rangefinder cameras that existed before the rangefinder renaissance (Hasselblad, Fuji, Mamiya).

The rangefinder camera I haven’t mentioned is the Nikon S3. This camera seemed to make the least sense, at least to me. It is a close reproduction of a meterless rangefinder camera released back in 1958. The S3 wasn’t the most popular Nikon rangefinders, nor was it what many felt was Nikon’s best rangefinder. Producing it obviously required all new tooling at Nikon. And with this new S3 came a revised 50/1.4 Nikkor lens. Dubbed the Nikon S3 Year 2000 Limited Edition, it retailed for a bundle and nobody thought one of them would actually be used to take photos. The idea was apparently that the Japanese market would buy it as a collector’s item and that it would never see action. Early reports said that, even at the large price, Nikon lost money on every camera sold. Worse yet, nobody seemed interested in buying them. Why would a collector with a pristine Nikon S3 from 1958 buy a replica made over 40 years later? The lure of collecting is to be able to show off a 50-year-old camera that looks brand new, not a brand new camera that resembles one made 50 years ago. The rangefinder world ignored the new, meterless Nikon S3 and they sat on dealer shelves for several years.

Today, I found one on the Internet with a $5,183.84 price tag on it. Other stores on the web are offering it for $3,999. One Ebay seller just dropped his asking price from $3,000 to $2,500. No nibbles so far. And they continue to gather dust. Two really big stores in New York, Adorama and B&H, apparently decided to cut their losses and dropped their prices apparently below what dealers would pay for the cameras wholesale. When Nikon is losing money on them and the two powerhouse camera stores are losing money on them, it’s hard to convince me that buying one isn’t a bargain, but I wouldn’t want to make that pitch to my wife. I wanted to know if it was eye candy or a good camera. Nowhere could I find a soul who had one and could tell me. The silence was deafening.

Then Leica did something that really tipped the balance. They raised their prices for an MP and an M7 astronomically. Now one would have to shell out nearly $3,500 for just a body. And then they released the 50/1.4 Summilux aspheric lens for an earth-shattering $2,800. Squeak!!! That's $6,300 for a camera and fast 50mm lens. Suddenly Nikon’s original asking price for the Nikon S3 was getting palatable. I found one that Adorama was unloading for less than $3,000 on Ebay. That did it. I buckled and got it. It even came with a leather ever-ready case (does anyone really use those’).

I have a couple of old Nikon S2 cameras that I like very much. Had I not had good experiences with the 50-year-old S2s, I wouldn’t have plunged into an S3. Okay, what are my impressions of the S3?’

Plusses

It’s a very handsome camera, like the original Nikon rangefinders. Although it is barely larger than a Contax IIa, it feels larger.
It’s much easier to load than a Leica of any vintage. But then what’s harder to load than a Leica’
The lens is exceptional. Why make a lens this good for a collector? Why not make thousands of them in M mount for Leica users? My 50/1.4 Nikkor from the 1950’s in LTM mount makes my knees buckle. Everyone should be so fortunate to have one.
It’s lighter than Leica’s MP.
With a cloth shutter, it’s relatively quiet, quieter than either of my S2 bodies (but perhaps not as quiet as a Leica M).
It isn’t a cheap-feeling reproduction. It really does look and feel like a 1950’s vintage Nikon rangefinder.
It’s a pleasure to use.

Minuses

No meter. But we’re used to that. Anyone who uses a pre-M5 Leica or a medium to large format camera is accustomed to using a handheld light meter.
Vague rangefinder patch. Anyone who has used a Leica M3, Zeiss Ikon, or modern Voigtländer is spoiled by a bright rangefinder patch. The Nikon patch is not as easy to see.
Build quality is good, but it does look stamped instead of milled. My Leica MP body looks and feels like it was machined from a massive billet of solid brass. You could beat someone to death with a Leica MP, but only maim them with a Nikon S3.
The entire lens rotates when you focus it. It also rotates (unintentionally) when you try to change the aperture. If Nikon decided to come out with a new-millennium rangefinder, they hope they would fix this design shortcoming.
It has an infinity lock. What the hell is with the infinity lock’! Early Leicas had them too. I think this comes from a manual transmission mentality. Nobody in the 1940’s would leave their car out of gear when parking. You have to put the car in gear so it won’t roll. So let’s put an infinity lock on lenses so they won’t move from infinity. I hate them.

Very few lenses available. The only modern lenses for Nikon RF mount are the 50/1.4 Nikkor, a [now discontinued] set of fine optics from Voigtländer, and a 35mm lens that ships with yet another Nikon commemorative rangefinder, the SP.

Fortunately, I use a 50mm lens most of the time and the 50/1.4 Nikkor is a wonderful lens. Do I recommend the reissue of the Nikon S3? If you can get one at a reasonable price, by all means yes. And you had best snap up the remaining Nikon mount rangefinder lenses from www.cameraquest.com before they are gone.

Street Photog: A Photographic Survival Manual

2007-01-28T13:57:00.000-08:00

From time to time someone at work approaches me and mentions being interested (or having a son or daughter interested) in photography. Invariably someone has a point-and-shoot film or digital camera and wants to explore getting a bit more serious. When I ask “Which genre?” or “Black and white?” or “Film or digital?” the response is usually something like "You tell me." I could suggest that they go to Barnes and Noble, pick up an introductory photography book, and read it. But that's overkill that could turn them off instead of on. There seems to be a cottage industry in introductory photography books, and there is a lot about photography that isn’t covered in those books. It would be cheaper and more useful to go to Barnes and Noble, buy me a few cups of coffee, and we can talk about photography for a few hours. Not about aperture, not about field depth, and not about stop bath. About what separates a snapshot from an interesting photograph, about why he/she should use film instead of digital, and about how to go about choosing your genre of photography. Better yet, they could buy Peter Nebergall’s Street Photog: a Photographic Survival Manual (2005). This can be thought of as a written substitute for about 30 brief, topical conversations with a professional photographer. I think that they reflect very much the kinds of questions the fledgling or self-taught photographer would be likely to ask. The title is a bit of a misnomer as it covers many issues germane to photography in general, not just street photography. When reading it, I thought of it more as Introductory Photography: the Missing Manual. Nebergall keeps his chapters short and to the point. In an age when it is difficult to keep someone’s attention span focused for more than 5 minutes, the terseness of his writing is welcomed. Anyone who wonders about getting into the sometimes expensive hobby /career of photography should plunk down their money on this little book first. It could either save them a fortune or guide them into a hobby that can easily become an obsession. And the book costs about as much as two cups of coffee at Barnes and Noble.

Bergger 200 in Prescysol

2007-01-15T08:36:00.000-08:00

One has to have a compelling need to use Bergger 200 as it is one of the most expensive silver halide black and white films around. The last time I checked B&H in New York, Bergger 200 was $5.50 a roll. For some reason, if you buy it in the 10-pack, it costs just under $5.70 a roll. That's pretty expensive cellophane holding the film boxes together.
I have heard good things about Bergger 200. Someone told me that it had more silver than most modern emulsions. I heard that it was similar to Kodak Super XX, a very popular black and white film dating back to before I was born. I also heard some not so good things, namely that it was simply rebranded eastern European film that can be purchased for half the asking price of Bergger, and that it was very grainy. So I bought a 10-pack (I wanted to see that cellophane wrapper). I shot a roll in and developed it in my newly-discovered wonder developer, Prescysol. And the results are grainy, but it's kind of a good grainy if you want your images to be richly gritty. If you're looking for a good developer to use with Bergger for that look, Prescysol is a winner here.
This is a thick layer of old mud from a Katrina-ravaged house in the lower 9th ward. The subject is gritty and depressing, and so is the film. Like Agfa APX 400 in PMK Pyro, if I were going to film a day in the life of a coal miner, this might be my film. I'll probably shoot the rest of the film in Holt Cemetery.
Am I going to buy more of it? Not unless someone pays me for the finished images. Nearly six bucks a roll for this much grit and only 200 ISO doesn't make much sense.

Fuji Neopan Acros in Prescysol

2007-01-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

I shot a test roll of Acros yesterday, not to be testing how it fares with Prescysol. I was testing an old 50/1.4 Nikkor LTM lens I bought off ebay. In a word, the lens' performance is magnificent, better than my pristine 50/1.5 Leica Summarit and better than my recently recoated 50/1.5 Sonnar from the mid-20th century. So the test was for the lens and this blog piece is about the film and developer. There is no need to rave about Fuji's Neopan Acros. In my opinion, it is faster and better than all of the other slow films past and present (Agfa 25, Panatomic X, Pan F, and Rollei 25). Tom Abrahamson likes to develop Acros in a home-mixed Beutler developer. Before resorting to making my own developer, I have been trying some commercial developers. Prescysol appears to be a good mate for Acros.
To test the Nikkor 50/1.4, I shot at the nominal ISO of 100 and used an f-stop of 2.8. I had no tripod and wanted to eliminate all camera shake. The negatives looked fine coming out of the tank. Looking at the scanned TIFF files left me a bit stunned. Very sharp, very fine grain. When dealing with slow films, those two parameters are generally mutually exclusive. Rodinal produces very sharp negatives with very noticeable grain. Microdol-X produces very mushy negatives with negligible grain. The image of the freight car looks unspectacular at normal viewing size. An enlargement of the detail at the top of the white portion of the middle car shows the fine detail that this film/developer combination can yield. Neither of the images is altered in Photoshop other than resizing to 750 pixels and exported to jpg. I have some Acros in 120 that I'm going to load into a Rolleiflex tomorrow. The results just might bring me to my knees.

Prescysol

2007-01-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

In my previous entry, I bemoaned a debris problem on my film developed in Prescysol. After looking at the cost and grief associated with installing a filter in my home's water supply, I went back to the negatives for a close look. Enlarged greatly in Photoshop, the spots appeared less like dirt/debris and more like tiny areas of emulsion with no silver. This made no sense as TRI-X has always been consistently smooth and even for me. It occurred to me that the development of Prescysol involves long (3 min) periods of no agitation. Perhaps the white spots were areas of undeveloped emulsion adjacent to air bubbles.
I ran two more test rolls of film (Bergger 200 and TRI-X, simultaneously) through the same partial stand Prescysol development routine, but this time I really pounded the tank against the stainless steel sink to dislodge any air bubbles. While my zeal resulted in a piece of my Paterson tank breaking off, the resulting negatives were pristine...no areas that even suggested dirt or debris.
So, today I order some stainless steel developing tanks. I'll also get a piece of rubber so I don't damage my wife's sink. By the way, I'm really liking this Prescysol. Development looked fine on both rolls of film despite using the exact same 10.5 minute development time in the same tank. The acid test will be how APX 100 and APX 400 look using this developer.

At a Crossroads with Black and White Film

2007-01-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

When chromogenic (C-41 process) black and white films were released some years back, I thought that my fretting over which film to use was over. These films were fast (ISO 400) and extremely fine grained. They had very smooth, rich grays. They had excellent latitude. They scanned beautifully and allowed me to use digital ICE^tm(software that removes dust and small scratches). And I could get them processed at a thousand different places in town in just 1-2 hours. Why use anything else? The only real drawback of these films is that, like color negative films, they are not as stable as silver halide films. But what the hell, my work is not going to be carried on to the 22^nd century. And once I’ve bitten the dust, my wife will put all of my negatives out by the curbside.

Things have changed in just a few years. Digital has overwhelmed the photographic community right down to the occasional snap shooter. Less film is being processed at the corner drugstore, so their C-41 chemicals might be a week old. The technicians now have machines that are better at eliminating dirt and scratches, so they treat the film like crap. Even the worst abuse won't show up on 3x5 snapshots. No problem, I’ll take the film to a camera store and get it processed there. That worked for a few years, but with the preponderance of digital, some labs closed (including a very nice one about 8 blocks from my house). Hurricane Katrina flooded the rest. Now those lab owners had to decide whether they wanted to reinvest in 20^th century machinery when digital was the sine qua non of photography today. Today, getting a roll of Ilford XP2 processed at a reputable lab in New Orleans takes 5-7 days. Or I can drive out to the suburbs. I don’t have that much patience.

So I decided at the end of 2005 that I would go back to developing my own B&W negatives. I bought a bunch of reels, about 5 tanks, and then set out to find a really good developer/film combination that would scan well and print well on an inkjet printer. I found two that I liked. PMK Pyro and Ilford FP4+ are a great combination in the 125 ISO domain. Panthermic 777 and TRI-X are a great combination in the 400 ISO domain. I could have left well enough alone at that, but there is a bit of alchemist in me. Being restricted to just two films is too confining. I love PMK Pyro, but it works poorly on films that don’t stain well. I have about 700 rolls of black and white film in the house that don’t work well with PMK Pyro or 777. I decided to snoop around at some other staining/tanning developers.

I bought some Prescysol^tm a few years ago and never used it. It makes some pretty impressive claims, such as “unsurpassed in its ability to provide superb negatives with extremely fine grain, remarkably high sharpness, smoothly gradated tones and delicate and translucent highlights” [from Photographers’ Formulary, Inc.]. I had some TRI-X in a point-and-shoot, so I went out and shot a fast roll.

The procedure is similar to PMK Pyro but without most of the fussiness. Not only do you not have to invert the tank every 15 seconds, you actually leave the tank sitting motionless for 3 minutes at a time. You also don’t have to dump the used developer back into the tank after fixing. Everything seems to require about the same developing time (10.5 minutes at 75F) so different films can be developed together. I do prefer to inverting the tank 3 times instead of 40. And Prescysol uses the same quick-fixing archival alkaline fixer that rinses out in just minutes and doesn’t require hypo clearing agent.

The instructions caution you to use filtered water. I now know why. The negatives were the dirtiest I have ever had. Perhaps this developer makes the film attractive to junk in the water. I’ll filter the rinse water next time. After an hour of spotting the negative in Photoshop CS2, I have to say that I like this developer. I can’t say that Prescysol is “unsurpassed in its ability to provide superb negatives with extremely fine grain, remarkably high sharpness, smoothly gradated tones and delicate and translucent highlights”, but the negatives looked pretty good, and the results were pleasant. The subjects were my two favorite therapy dogs at work, the lighting was vintage state office building fluorescent, and the lens was a 40mm Summarit wide open. Grain is well controlled, sharpness is good considering the lens was wide open, and the grays are sort of “smoothly gradated”.

I’m sort of excited by this developer, and have about 20 different kinds of film to try with it. If it works well with many of them, I may have found a panacea. I especially hope that it works well with APX 100 and APX 400. I have 600 rolls of them.

Prescysol is available at Photographers' Formulary Inc. and, in the UK, at Monochrome Photography.com. My impression is that it originated in England and was later picked up here in the states. I would be interested in hearing from others who may have used this developer.

The Car as Camera Bag

2007-01-02T18:54:00.000-08:00

New Orleans is known for its debauchery, although we use nicer terms than that. Drinking is almost a social requirement. Having been raised in California, I was not accustomed to having a drink handed to me every place I went. The first place I taught in New Orleans, St. Mary’s Dominican College, had beer in the snack bar. I’m already getting off the subject. The point is that, in New Orleans, there are a lot of happy, tipsy people and a lot of pedestrians. Do the math:

(tipsy people) x (pedestrians) = (tipsy pedestrians)

We have another rule in New Orleans. Red lights are for cars. Pedestrians can ignore them. “Don’t Walk” signs? Those are just suggestions. Add to this cell phones, distractions that cause cars to drive through stop signs and red lights, and make some drive the wrong way down one-way streets.
After losing a Nikon SLR and Canon rangefinder in separate slamming-brake-related incidents, I learned that leaving camera gear on the car seat was not a good idea, not in this city. I slam on the brakes at least twice a week when someone walks out in front of me, a car runs a stop sign, or a bicyclist going the wrong way down a one-way street rides right in front of me. Putting the camera in a gadget bag was no solution. It just meant that all cameras and lenses flew onto the floor simultaneously. I tried hanging a Timbuk2® courier bag from the back of the passenger seat, but then it was too difficult to access from the front seat. Then I found Duluth Trading, a web-based store for the working man and woman. They make rugged, comfortable work clothes (and a lot of other things) out of the same kind of canvas used to make fire hoses. What I found most importantly was The Mobile Desk. Not a desk at all, it is more like a reinforced square canvas box with pockets, adjustable partitions, and a lid to keep your stuff out of sight.
Closed, it looks like something that would be housing the tape measure, box cutter, and work orders of a contractor. There is a Velcro® flap in the back that allows you to secure the box to the clasped front seat belt. Inside, with partitions strategically placed, there is enough room for two rangefinders or SLRs, twenty rolls of film, three more lenses, lens tissue and fluid, a light meter, and a handful of music CDs. On the outside, there is a clipboard-style clasp for a pad of graph paper and some pockets for chewed up carpenter’s pencils and an old ballpoint pen. All of that is camouflage. We want this thing to look like something important only to a glazier or furnace repairman. There are also convenient outside pouches for a cell phone and my Sirius® remote.

Duluth Trading also makes an organizer to hang in front of (or in back of) the passenger seat. Called the Cab Commander, it can hold a lot of non-photographic stuff that you routinely need while driving (maps, a Thermos® bottle, a collapsible umbrella, etc.). I find that I can put a lot of stuff within an arm’s reach while traveling without running off the side of the freeway.

Duluth Trading also makes clothes, and I have a lot of them. They like to put pockets in and on jackets, so you can get a decent looking comfortable jacket with plenty of roomy pockets for film, a P&S digital, a light meter, etc. And for the photographer who is a plumber by trade, they actually make a shirt with an extra-long back tail to cover plumber’s cleavage. I highly recommend looking at their whole site. Lots of items you didn’t know you needed until you saw them.

The Latest Photographic Casualty

2006-11-19T10:03:00.000-08:00

No, it’s not a famous photographer. They seem fine lately. It is the single focal length lens. I have a bunch of 50mm lenses for 35mm cameras. I like 50mm lenses because they don't produce distortion, they are relatively compact, their optics are generally superb, and because they are readily available for a low price. For decades, if you bought a 35mm SLR, it came with a 50/1.8 to 50/2 normal lens.

The television and movie industry wasted no time embracing the zoom lens. No longer did they have to lug enormous turrets with single focal length lenses swinging into place. Designing a zoom lens was a challenge as the lens had to not only change focal lengths but also remain in focus at all focal lengths. This meant much more complex designs, many elements, and many air-to-glass interfaces. This convenience was at the expense of resolution and contrast. The first zoom lens I purchased for 35mm was something of a revolutionary product back in the 1970’s. One of the commercial photo magazines reviewed a Komuranon zoom lens that was reportedly on an optical par with prime lenses. Its capabilities were modest (I think it was a 35-70mm or thereabouts). Finally one could purchase a zoom lens without sacrificing optical quality. Since then, modern coatings, computer-designing, aspheric elements, and special forms of glass have produced zoom lenses that are much better than the earlier models. I still find them to be too big (if their largest aperture is f/2.8 throughout the zoom length, they are enormous), and their optical quality is never what it should be at the extremes of their focal length. But that isn’t my objection. What bothers me is that, with the exception of macro lenses, single focal length lenses are absent from the new product lines of Canon, Nikon, and Pentax. There appears to be very little R&D on prime lenses for SLRs, and cheap zooms are replacing 50mm lenses on SLRs. I recently bought a Pentax film SLR (after searching for days on the Internet). I have three Limited Edition silver Pentax lenses and I wanted a silver body for them. Adorama, B&H, and even some of the Brooklyn stores that I would never normally frequent had none. I finally found a kit at Freestyle and ordered it. It came with a Pentax 28-80 3.5-5.6 Taiwanese zoom lens sans lens hood. The front element is, for lack of a better term, wobbly. I googled a search for it and found that it is available separately for anywhere from $39 to $59. Okay, you get what you pay for, but I would have rather paid nothing for it. A 50/2 autofocus Pentax lens would have served me much better.

So, is anyone making single focal length lenses for 35mm SLRs these days? No, because virtually nobody is making 35mm SLRs these days. Sigma surprised us with a 30/1.4 for dSLRs. Most R&D is going into zooms for digital SLRs, and few of them seem to be as good optically as my Komuranon from the 1970’s. After all, they are being produced for the general public who know nothing and care little about purple fringing, chromatic aberration, and flare. So, I dug in my heels, went to www.keh.com, and stockpiled a set of prime lenses for my Contax manual focus SLRs. They are small, fast, optically marvelous, and will last me a lifetime.

What Now for Cosina/Voigtländer?

2006-10-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

I have been assessing the Cosina/Voigtländer line of rangefinder cameras, which now includes the following:

Bessa L
Bessa R
Bessa T
Bessa R2
Bessa R2S
Bessa R2C
Bessa R2A
Bessa R3A
Bessa R2M
Bessa R3M
Bessa R4M
Bessa R4A

Rather than being a diverse group of twelve complementary bodies, this might be more of an evolution of rangefinder bodies, each an improvement over the previous models while adding a few features (and sometimes dropping a few). Of course, some do have unique capabilities, such as the T, the Nikon-mount bodies, the Contax-mount bodies, and the upcoming ultra wide viewfinder model. This evolutionary sequence leaves me wondering what is next for Cosina/Voigtländer. They do seem to be committed to filling a niche in the classic style camera market. But those niches are running out. There is little doubt that these Voigtländer body offerings are, in part, a sort of hobby/labor of love for Mr. Kobayashi. I’m glad to see that he is concerned about filling the needs of fledgling photographers by creating the low end VSL43 manual SLR at 1970’s prices. And with a Pentax K mount (and an additional adaptor), a college student has access to a plethora of used lenses by Pentax, Zeiss, and a dozen other manufacturers (not to mention the Russian imported lenses). Which niches has he not filled?

Twin Lens Reflex – true, the original Voigtländer made twin lens reflexes many years ago. But the Japanese market today does not seem interested in such large, unwieldy cameras. It is a shame, as a twin lens reflex with a 50/3.5 Heliar taking lens would give us the functional equivalent of a Rolleiflex FW that costs around $4,000. But that would require developing a new camera and new lens from the ground up. Not likely. There are the Chinese-made Seagull TLR cameras, but those do not have a particularly good reputation for mechanical or optical quality.
Medium Format Rangefinder Camera – This might appeal more to the Japanese market. With the demise of the Fujifilm medium format cameras, the Mamiya 7 II, and the Bronica 645 RF, there are no current medium format rangefinder cameras. Would a “Texas Bessa” appeal to photographers? Maybe, but now that things are insanely digital, I don’t know if Cosina could make a profit. A medium format folder seems even less likely.
Digital Rangefinder Cameras – Epson used a Cosina-made body for their groundbreaking digital rangefinder but did the genre a disservice by letting them out of the factory in less that stellar condition. Horror stories of rangefinder alignment problems and focusing errors made this camera far less desirable than it should have been. Leica’s recent M8 prototype shown at Photokina in Cologne has convinced the world that this camera will actually be manufactured and sold. Will Cosina attempt to sell a cheaper rangefinder in M mount to compete with it? I have my doubts. They seem to like to coexist peacefully with Leica.
Compact Fixed Lens Rangefinder Camera – This seems to be the only niche that Cosina/Voigtländer has not occupied. I have seen photos of a Cosina autofocus camera, possibly from around 1980, and have seen a homely Cosina P&S that appeared to be a zone-focus camera. There are plenty of used Canon and Olympus fixed lens rangefinders out there on ebay, but most will have to be serviced and be recalibrated for mercury-free button batteries. I bought my Konica Auto S3 in about 1978 for $169. Using one of the inflation tables on the Internet, that calculates to $515 in today’s currency. Could Cosina make a fixed lens rangefinder and sell it for $515? I think not, unless of course it is really a Bessa R with a 35/2.5 P Skopar permanently glued to it. I think the best tactic would be to make one that sells for $900 that has a truly outstanding lens, a very sturdy, durable body, and a switchable spot meter and averaging meter. If rangefinder aficionados did not buy it for their own use, they might buy it for their spouse or children.
Decent, Sturdy, Small Handheld Exposure Meter - How about one with a photocell that doesn’t crap out over time? These are getting to be hard to find and hard to afford. Gossen and Sekonic have dropped all but their higher-end light meters. The lower end Pilot, Scout, etc., are gone. Minolta no longer appears to be making meters. Gossen does make a small plastic meter for under $200, but it tries to do too much (timer, alarm, thermometer, etc.). Just setting the ISO is a hassle. And it is shaped more like an egg than a deck of cards.

The Cosina/Voigtländer line of cameras, lenses, and photo accessories is fledgling by most standards, having been introduced in January of 1999. But Cosina has been making photographic equipment under various labels for many years. Their seven-year run has been appreciated and exciting. I hope that Mr. Kobayashi continues to dabble in producing what might be thought 21st century vintage-style cameras and lenses. He seems to enjoy surprising people like me with new innovations. I hope he continues to enjoy doing so.

Improving the Ricoh GR digital camera

2006-10-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

After the age of 40, most folks suffer from a progressive condition called presbyopia. This is basically the inability to see close objects due to the lenses in the eyes losing their elasticity. Of course, the answer is to wear bifocals or reading glasses, or to simply hold anything one wishes to read at arm’s length while squinting. Combine this affliction with a pocket-sized digital camera, and you have a middle-aged photographer holding a tiny camera at arm’s length trying to view the LCD screen in the mid-day glare. When I ordered the new digital equivalent to the legendary Ricoh GR1s 35mm camera, I assumed that the small window along the top front of the camera was an optical viewfinder. Wrong. There is no optical viewfinder. For those who prefer an optical viewfinder, Ricoh offered the 21/28 GV-1 External Viewfinder for an additional $199. I almost never shoot with a 21mm lens, so a 21/28 viewfinder had limited appeal. Also, that particular viewfinder is massive compared to the GR Digital camera body, appearing to be about the same size as a standard Voigtländer external viewfinder. Bottom line? I stopped using the Ricoh GR Digital.

A few weeks ago, I was perusing the www.cameraquest.com site and happened upon a new, very small 28/35 accessory viewfinder. That had more appeal as it was $30 cheaper, had two focal length views that I often use, and was very small. And it turned out to be just the ticket for that tiny Ricoh.

With this diminutive viewfinder, the Ricoh is now both pocketable and usable. It is just about the same depth as the widest part of the Ricoh body, and looks like it was made for that camera. Highly recommended for those over 40 using the GR Digital.

50/1.5 Zeiss Ikon Sonnar – Second Look

2006-10-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

My initial impressions of the newly-released Zeiss Ikon 50/1.5 Sonnar were based on images taken under dim light on fast film. While it was possible to glean some information on the signature of the lens when used wide open, it showed little about the lens’ sharpness at smaller apertures. In this test, I tried to kill two birds with one stone. Scientifically-speaking, that’s never a good idea. It wasn’t here either. To test the resolving capabilities of the Sonnar, I used Rollei 25 film (good idea). Then I developed it in Rodinal to see how it fares with Rollei 25 (bad idea). Rodinal was formulated in the 1800’s and has been in production continuously until about a year ago. It was developed when photographers used negatives that were the size of prints. While it is a great developer for 8”x10” negatives, it unabashedly doesn't reduce grain. So, when the negative is 24mm x 36mm, expect grain, even from Rollei 25.

Today was very bright and very humid. Instead of hassling with highlights and shadows of buildings, I drove out to a swamp. It was bright enough to shoot at f/5.6 at 1/60, so that’s what I did. This image is of some run down fishing camps off Airline Highway. The full frame doesn’t reveal much as I am too far from the camps. But enlarging a small area of the negative gives a good impression of what to expect from this lens (and film + developer).

For me, this lens is plenty sharp enough for my use. I tend to use 200 to 400 ISO films, and I think the weak link in the chain will be the resolving capabilities of the film, not this lens. I find Rollei 25 to be insufferably slow, to the point that I would not consider it for anything except landscape photography (with a tripod). I do think that the Voigtländer Heliar 50/3.5 is a much sharper lens, but it, too, is slow.

As much as I like high definition, I don't expect it when shooting 35mm. If I want large prints, I'll use a camera with large negatives.

First Look: Zeiss Ikon 50/1.5 Sonnar M lens

2006-10-08T14:06:00.000-07:00

Well, this is groundbreaking. Not the 50/1.5 Zeiss Sonnar lens. Zeiss had 50/1.5 lenses before I was born. I’m referring to the fact that I’m giving it a “First Look” review ahead of just about everyone else. A while back, Zeiss Ikon decided to close down their gray market outlets in the United States. And I have yet to see the lens appear on the web sites of the big distributors like B&H and Adorama. I didn’t see them for sale anywhere until some popped up on ebay from a store in Japan. Then Mehrdad Sadat, a fellow on the Leica Users Group, pointed out that www.popflash.com had them for sale in Los Angeles. As far as I know, that is the only place in the United States selling them as this writing.

I assume that, like the previous Zeiss Ikon lenses in the M mount, this lens was designed by Carl Zeiss in Germany and is being manufactured by Cosina in Japan (That is not true of the Zeiss Ikon extreme ultra wide M lenses which are apparently designed and manufactured in Germany. These German lenses can be identified by their extreme price.). Physically, the 50/1.5 Sonnar is pleasingly small. When I opened the packaging, my first thought was that they erred and sent me the 50/2 Planar. It may not be as small as the original Contax mount 50/1.5 Sonnar (I cannot find mine in the plethora of bags piled in the corner). I also cannot find my calipers under the plethora of junk on my desk. I’m glad this is a first look at the lens. Let’s just say that it is very close in size to the Leica 50/2 Summicron, only shorter. Both lenses are about 17.5mm in circumference at their widest point, and the Sonnar is a few mm shorter. In practice, I know of very few photographers who use cases, so lens length differences here are moot. Of course, the front element on the Zeiss lens is much larger. There is no pull-out hood on the Zeiss, so the vented bayonet mount lens hood is recommended. Like the recent Zeiss and Voigtländer lenses, this hood can stay in place while removing and replacing the lens cap. Unlike the most recent Summicron, there is a protuberance on the bottom of the focusing ring. In practice, I’m not sure I could accurately tell if I were using the 50/2 Summicron, 50/1.5 Sonnar, or the 50/1.5 pre-asph Summilux based on size alone. The fit and finish of the new Sonnar are first rate, very similar to the Leica lenses but perhaps with slightly sharper edges.
The aperture ring has a half-click stop between f/1.5 and f/2, and 1/3 click stops from f/2 to f/16.

My first roll of film using this lens was TRI-X shot at the nominal ISO and developed in Harvey's Panthermic 777 developer. This is not a fine grain film, so conclusions regarding the lens' resolution wide open are not very conclusive. To me, the resolution seems adequate and the contrast very good, not surprising for Zeiss glass. But in a fast lens, bokeh becomes a big issue for me. Some fast lenses such as theVoigtländer 50/1.5 Nokton have bokeh that some photographers do not like. The bokeh of the Sonnar 50/1.5 seems very pleasing to me, at least in the initial shots I have viewed.

The edges of out of focus objects are smooth, and hard sources of bright light do not produce discoid platters with hard edges. Very nice.

I will try to get some additional shots this week using slower film with greater resolution. For now, I could not be happier with this lens, particularly at 1/3 the price of the comparable Leica 50/1.4 Summilux.

An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson

2006-10-05T17:43:00.000-07:00

I admit to being overly partial to some people. Andrés Segovia is one. He invented a genre of music, that of the classical guitar. This was classical (baroque might be more accurate) music played on a Spanish guitar. He did it first, he did it extremely well, and all others who follow are compared to him. He wasn’t perfect. John Williams might be a better technician. Segovia’s hardened fingertips screeched on the strings, he slowed down and sped up in a way that was sometimes jazz-like, not baroque-like. It wasn’t perfect, but if he did it, it was right.

Henri Cartier-Bresson affects me the same way. It is difficult to find a photographer who will berate HCB’s printed legacy. He invented and mastered the genre of well-mannered street photography. He left us a large volume of work which, like Segovia’s work, is often imitated but not matched. And, like Segovia’s recorded legacy, it is hard to acquire all of the works nowadays without getting an enormous amount of duplication. Maybe duplication is the wrong word. It sounds like “two of”. Maybe multiplication is more like it. I have about 20 CDs of Andrés Segovia’s music. Among these CDs, I probably have Bach’s Chaconne 10 times. And I must have Granados’ Spanish Dance No. five 15 times. Collections of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work are published, then out of print, then others are published, then out of print. If you buy 20 volumes of his photographs, you can expect to see some of the same photos 20 times.

It was with this sense of foreboding that I ordered “In Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson.” I have many copies of HCB’s portraits of Truman Capote, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, and Jean-Paul Sartre. And now I have another copy of each as they are included in this collection. But my pleasant surprise was that there are many portraits here than I had not seen. And I can find something to like in all of them. They aren’t perfect; he didn’t shoot them in a studio, and he used a 35mm camera. The very first portrait, that of French painter Georges Rouault, is not perfect. The fabric of his coat is in sharper focus than are the reflections in his eyes. The fingers of his right hand are chopped off by the bottom edge of the frame. A cross and lamp shade are situated awkwardly behind and to the right of him. But these blemishes are not fatal to the portrait. The lighting is gentle, the reflections are soft, the tonality is rich, and the subject is not reacting to camera or photographer. Other portraits have even more prominent distractions. Henri Cartier-Bresson was not averse to allowing the sprocket holes of his 35mm film to appear on his prints. Some portraits are grainy and soft. Some have overexposed highlights. But despite these quibbles, the portraits work well and not simply because most of the subjects are renowned. They work because he framed his subjects well and pulled the trigger at the right time. And sometimes timing is everything. Some of the portraits are of average or even underprivileged people who didn’t know HCB but allowed him to shoot without returning a guarded expression. That was perhaps what made him the photographer he was. He could approach a subject, frame it, and know just when the pull the trigger while not alarming or annoying the person he was shooting. That’s something I aspire to but will never really master.

Patton's Photographs:War As He Saw It

2006-09-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's not belabor this review. This is a collection of photographs taken by General George S. Patton. While the author who collected this minimizes Patton's camera as being "simple", the fact is that it was a Leica camera and presumably a Leica lens that was used. So we can't blame the camera for the picture quality. This book is not for photographers. The paper used in publishing is not what you would see in a fine art photography book. This book should be aimed at the Patton aficionado, someone who in interested in the man, not his photographic ability. Military historians may find the book very interesting. The pictures are very poor quality, artistically and technically. If you want a book of war photographs, buy Capa or Nachtwey.

The Rollei 35 Celebrates Its 40th Birthday

2006-09-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is a birthday of sorts. It was forty years ago that the Rollei 35 was introduced at Photokina. This camera’s history reminds me just how different things are now compared to when I first started photography in the 1960's. Today, a new compact digital camera is announced, several months later it shows up on shelves and six months later it is replaced by a newer model. The construction of current compact digital and film cameras is overwhelmingly plastic. But that’s okay; you’re expected to buy a newer model within a year, so an enduring build quality is not so important. But a vintage camera is like upscale clocks, watches, and fountain pens. The owner uses a finely-made camera as a tool, and also admires its design, durability, and build quality. In 2006, it is difficult to find anything under $8,000 that is built well to last as long as the owner.

The Rollei 35, like the Rolleiflex TLR, did not have sweeping changes made to it during its 16-year run. There were several different (but same focal length) lenses, the Tessar, the Sonnar, and the Triotar. Changes were made to "modernize" the metering system, ultimately with the use of modern LEDs instead of needles. One model had no meter. And, like Leica and Rolleiflex TLRs, there were the usual pricey commemorative models that are perhaps too garish for actual use. While I haven’t been able to get an authoritative figure, it appears that over two million Rollei 35’s were manufactured. Many are still in circulation. Why was this camera a popular classic?

First, let’s look at what it had going for it.

The build quality, particularly the earlier models, was good enough to allow decades of trouble-free use.
Forty years later, you can still get them repaired by some of the independent Rollei repairers like Harry Fleenor.
When it made its debut, it was the smallest full frame 35mm film camera ever made.
The lenses are extremely sharp. All perform well at medium apertures (which is all but necessary, for reasons explained below).
The pressure plate may keep the film flatter than any camera except the Contax RTS (which flattened its film with a vacuum).
It is excruciatingly cute.

Does all of this come with a price? Of course. Stacking the deck against the Rollei 35 are:

It has no rangefinder, so you have to estimate the distance to your subject.
The metering is not TTL (the reading is taken from a small port on the front of the camera) so you cannot use filters without changing the ASA setting each time you change a filter.
Against all conventions, the film is advanced with your left thumb.
Against all conventions, the flash shoe is on the bottom. This did solve the problem of shadows below the nose, though.
Although it is nice and small, it isn’t ergonomically-designed. It is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and is just as square as one. Add to this that its excellent build quality makes it a bit heavy, and it is particularly prone to be dropped. Rollei tried to help by attaching a wrist strap on one side. Still, when you read descriptions of Rollei 35’s on sale on the Internet or through Ebay, they invariably include a tally of the number and locations of dents on the body.
The collapsible lens has to be manually extended for use (though pros were already accustomed to this as collapsible Elmars dotted the 35mm Leica landscape for years).
To change the battery, you have to remove the back and unscrew the metal battery cover with a coin. If you had film in the camera when the battery died, you have to go with a handheld meter, use the sunny 16 rule, or sacrifice the roll.

At first blush, the placement of the meter window and the dials for shutter speed and aperture seem bizarre. Unless you are a Rolleiflex TLR user. To set shutter speed and aperture on a Rolleiflex TLR, you look down at two needles and line them up using two flat dials on the front of the camera, one for film speed and one for aperture. That’s also the way to read the meter and set shutter speed and aperture on the earlier models of the Rollei 35.

The later models of the Rollei 35 replaced the antiquated match-needle meter with more modern LEDs. The battery compartment was transferred to a more convenient location on the top of the camera. To the chagrin of many Rollei loyalists, manufacture of the camera moved from Germany to a plant in Singapore in late 1973. All Rollei 35's were built there until the Singapore plant was closed in 1982. Build quality did not appear to suffer as a result of the move, but collectors still cherish the early German specimens.

Of all the Rollei 35’s peccadilloes, the one that appears to be the most off-putting is the scale focusing. Some people (I include myself) are not particularly good at judging distances in feet or, worse yet, in meters. The best solution to this for me has been to not even try. Instead, using hyperfocal distance makes the camera quite usable.

Hyperfocal distance for a lens is the closest focusing distance at which infinity will still be in focus. The hyperfocal distance differs from focal length to focal length, and it decreases with a decrease in aperture. By decreases, that is to say the hyperfocal distance is fewer feet from the lens with decreasing aperture. Thus, the shorter the hyperfocal length, the more that will be in focus. Lenses with shorter focal length also have a decreased hyperfocal distance. Why is this relevant? If the lens is set at an appropriate hyperfocal setting, you will get the maximum amount of a scene in focus while still keeping distant subjects (i.e., infinity) in focus. This will get you far more near subjects in focus than simply setting your lens at infinity. The Rollei 35 has a 40mm lens. With the aperture set at f/8 and the lens focused at infinity, objects between 22 feet and infinity will be in focus. However, if you focus the lens at the hyperfocal distance, the same scene at the same aperture of f/8 will be in focus from 11 feet to infinity. If you are particularly bad at judging distance, you can set your aperture at f/11 and the focus at hyperfocal distance. That will give you an in-focus field of just under 7.8 feet to infinity. What if you want to photography something about 10 feet away and feel that you can judge that distance halfway correctly? Setting your scale focus on the lens at a guesstimate of 10 feet on the scale at f/11 will give a buffer zone from 6 feet to 27 feet in focus.

As I said, I’m not adept at estimating distances. With a Rollei 35 and 400 ISO film outdoors, I don’t need to be that good. And one does not have to carry around a printed table of hyperfocal distances. It is as easy as setting an aperture of f/8 or f/11 followed by placing the infinity mark (∞) on the lens barrel adjacent to the same aperture value on the base of the lens. There’s no question that the Rollei 35 was not designed to be used as a portrait camera with slow films. If you can live with those limitations, the camera will serve you well as a carry-around or travel companion.

For those interested in playing with hyperfocal distance and field depths for different lenses and apertures, there is an excellent shareware calculator called the DOFMaster that you can download from the web. And it does allow you to print charts for use in the field should you so desire.

For those of you wishing to celebrate Rollei 35’s 40^th birthday by buying yourself a gift, used Rollei 35’s are not difficult to find. I favor the early models with the top-mounted meter window instead of LEDs. They may also be easier to repair than the later models, particularly with respect to the meters. While I generally try to find and use the later models of Rolleiflex TLRs, the Rollei 35 apparently started using plastic gears toward the end of their run in Singapore. Some of the folks on the Rollei Users Group like the SE models featuring the faster (f/2.8) Sonnar lenses. But who is going to shoot wide open without a tape measure handy?

Pentax K100D and Sigma 30/1.4 DC EX

2006-09-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

I was slow to embrace digital photography. The first digicams out were more like novelty items, fine for taking pictures of the grandkids and attaching to emails. I have to admit that I was impressed with the Polaroid-like speed with which you saw your results and the ability to quickly screen snapshots for the occasional keeper. But the prints from inkjet printers were mediocre at best. Over the course of the next ten years, digital photography got serious, to the point of professionals liquidating their medium format assets for Nikon and Canon dSLRs. And inkjet printers produce results to rival darkroom quality. Even crazier was the reach of digital zooms. While film shooters had to be content with 3x and 4x zooms, the tiny digital zooms are routinely 10x. So why have I stayed away from digital for so long?

I like the look of film images.
Digital has not performed well in dim available light.
Fast normal lenses on a dSLR become fast short telephoto lenses when you consider the crop factor.

What I was having difficulty replicating in the digital world was what I can do with a Leica M6 and 50/1.4 Summilux or 40/1.4 Nokton on TRI-X film. I like shooting wide open with a normal lens in dim light on medium speed black and white film. The lenses of digicams are so very short in focal length, it is hard not to get everything in focus. And under dim light, the noise produced is appalling. I hoped for a digital rangefinder that would accept my lenses at their nominal focal length, but that doesn’t seem to be possible from an engineering standpoint; the angle of the light is too acute at the edges, and a 24x36 sensor is beyond my means anyway. At least these were my excuses for the past few years.

Enter the Pentax K100D. This marvel has a sensor that moves to compensate for camera shake. Thus, one doesn’t have to shoot at a noisy ISO 800 or 1600 when in dim light. The anti-shake allows handheld shooting at 1/16 second. Well, that changes things. Now if I only had a fast 40-50mm lens, something around f/1.4. Enter the Sigma 30/1.4. With the 1.5 crop factor of the Pentax, have a focal length emulating a 45mm lens in the film world. A fast one.

I have to tell you that I’m impressed with both camera and lens. The Pentax is compact and light compared to the Canons and Nikons I have seen, and I would be very impressed even without the anti-shake feature. But that anti-shake feature is enough to make me a digital convert. For me, camera shake in dim light, in macro work, or with long lenses is the number one factor in reducing a potentially great shot to an unusable shot. My initial results from the kit have been satisfying. Just blasting away in program mode yields very nice results. At f/1.4, the Sigma is not going to rival a 50/1.4 Summilux Asph., but neither is anything else at f/1.4.

The image here of my faithful dog Shaggy (a wire-haired fox terrier who passed in 1963 or so and resurfaced near where my father had buried her) was taken under a covered patio in light that would have discouraged me with a film camera.

How about the bokeh of the Sigma 30/1.4? Here I’m not totally pleased. It seems that modern lenses designed with the help of computers and containing aspherical surfaces do very well for subjects in focus at the expense of the out of focus areas of the image. I don’t know if the Sigma has aspherical lens elements, but I do find the bokeh to be a bit dizzying. Closeups of flowers are not my favorite subjects. I’m hoping it is less idiosyncratic in black and white and indoors.

How does this lens fare wide open in dim light? My subject this afternoon was not particularly cooperative, so we’ll have to do with what we’ve got. Wide open at 1.4 and 1/90 second, the image is slightly soft but better than I expected from this relatively inexpensive lens. I’ve gotten worse from rangefinder lenses costing more.

In all, this is a very nice kit for everyday stuff where a normal lens (with macro capability) would be used. I do plan to put the new Pentax and its anti-shake to a greater test. An ex-president is supposed to be visiting the college tomorrow. I’ll see how the Pentax performs using a long lens in poor lighting.

Voigtländer 50/2 Collapsible Heliar - Part 3

2006-08-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

I doubt that anyone expected the new Voigtländer 50/2 collapsible Heliar to be the same optical quality of its 50/3.5 sibling. When you design a faster lens, the optical problems encountered increase geometrically rather than linearly. And how reasonable is it to expect them to match the 50/3.5 Heliar when the latter as been touted as one of the best lenses ever tested? With that clearly in mind, how does the new Heliar fare?

Last week, I took a few test shots using Ilford FP4+. My initial impression was that the lens seemed a bit soft wide open, and that the bokeh was pleasant and not distracting. To me, it looked a bit like a Zeiss or Jupiter lens from the 1950’s wide open, not unpleasant, but not the best candidate for shooting wide open unless you want a soft, flattering image of a face. This week, I tried the slowest film I have right now, Rollei 25. This is the same film I used for my earlier test of the 50//3.5 Heliar, and I found a similar subject, i.e., a train sitting on the track in City Park.

Using a monopod for stability, I shot wide open but didn’t record the shutter speed (in these days of heightened suspicion, taking a photograph of a train is grounds for being beaten silly by anybody badged and officious). Wide open, there is some noticeable vignetting apparently, particularly at the lower right edge. An enlarged central area of detail shows softness. The numbers on the side of the car are obvious, but the same numbers on the front of the car are illegible.

Closed down to f/4.5, vignetting is negligible at the right edge. An enlarged area from the center of the image shows increased contrast and sharpness. The hitherto illegible numbers on the front of the car are now clearly readable (double-click on the image to see a larger version of the print).

While these initial images have convinced me that this is a lens best used stopped down a few stops, none of the images so far give me a good feel for the signature of this lens. I need to start burning some Agfa APX 400 soon. Inasmuch as the Bessa R3M that came with the Heliar has finder lines for 40mm, my 40/1.5 Nokton SC will take the place of my 50/2 Heliar, the latter going onto the front of a Zeiss-Ikon body. A half dozen rolls should give me a better impression of the fingerprint of this new Heliar.

Voigtländer 50/2 Collapsible Heliar - Part 2

2006-08-20T07:24:00.000-07:00

My colleagues rib me about having too many 50mm lenses. Thirty years ago, I would have been among them doing the ribbing. I shot with a 35/2 Nikkor almost exclusively for decades. But with my almost exclusive reliance on rangefinder cameras, 50mm has been my staple. Why? Because there are so many variations of 50mm lenses.

To draw an analogy, Mahler’s 5^th symphony has been recorded at least 100 different times, and all 100 performances are a bit different, but they are, for the most part, positive contributions to a Mahler aficionado. Some are reserved, some are over the top, but I like listening to them all as I like their nuances. There are also 100 different recordings of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, but some are done right and some are done wrong. It seems that there is only one right way to do the Nutcracker Suite, so there’s no reason to have more than one recording as long as it’s one of the right ones. There are many different ways to design 50mm lenses, the results vary, and are all can be important contributions to the genre depending on the situation. I don’t feel the same way about other focal lengths. My 35/2.8 Summaron will probably always be my best 35, but its results are hard to distinguish from those of my 35/2 Hexanon, my 35/2 Summicron, and my 35/2 Zeiss Biogon. Truth be told, I feel the same way about my 50/2 Summicron, 50/2 Hexanon, and 50/2 Planar. If I grabbed any of these, sight unseen, and shot with it for a day, I would not know that it was what it was based on the results. They all appear to have been engineered with the same end result in mind.

My other 50’s are different, in large part because there are so many different 50’s out there. I don’t have a 50/1 Noctilux (considered the Grand Marshall of all 50’s), but I do have a 50/1.2 Hexanon, a 50/1.2 Canon, and a 50/1.2 Nikkor. They all produce different results. My 50/1.5 Nokton is nothing like my 50/1.5 Summarit or my 50/1.4 Nikkor, and so on. With all the variations, there are different niches. Where does the 50/2 collapsible Heliar fit? Not where I expected it to fit.

My 50/3.5 Heliar is the lens I will be buried with, attached to a Leica MP. It fits what I want in a 50mm lens as long as I have enough available light to use it. When Cosina announced the 50/2 collapsible Heliar last year, I couldn’t possibly not have one, but I did not expect it to be anything like the 50/3.5 Heliar. Even the early talk about this lens gave reason for skepticism. The 50/2 formula would have to be radically different and would be a challenge given the increased speed. There was some question as to whether Cosina’s engineers could pull it off satisfactorily. What they did produce was one of the best built rangefinder lenses to come out of their factory. This was no surprise. Every successive lens and body that has come out of the Cosina factory bested all of its predecessors in build quality. The new 50/2 Heliar is not quite up to Leica standards, but it is a far cry from the 50/1.5 Nokton and 35/1.5 Skopars of several years ago. I don’t expect Cosina to ever match Leica in build quality. They aren’t trying to do so. They are trying to stay in the black while providing rangefinder aficionados with superior quality optics at a mid-range price.
So where does this lens fit optically? The immediate impulse is to compare it with a 50/2 collapsible Summicron or a 50/2.8 collapsible Elmar. I didn’t find it to be similar to either. Wide open, its initial performance seems surprisingly good. I shot my first test roll on FP4+ under horrific lighting (fluorescent lighting that was about as harsh as a state building can make it). It is a bit soft, but the contrast is very good. Outdoors, in shade and at f/4, it still seems a bit soft with nice, even contrast. In both situations, the bokeh is (in my opinion) better than average for a modern lens (N.B., I think the biggest liability among computer-designed, aspherical element lenses is the degradation of bokeh). In both indoor and outdoor tests with just one roll of film, I get the impression that the 50/2 Heliar is a good people lens, and a good street photography lens.

Now, which niche does it fill? Surprisingly, it seems to fill one that I have been trying to fill for the past two years. I’ve been trying to get a good specimen of a Russian-made Zeiss Sonnar lens (the 50/2 Jupiter 8). I have bought four of them, and all four had some sort of problem (the Russian lenses have abysmal quality control, with lens threads not matching camera threads, bubbles in the glass, etc.). I got tired of playing Russian roulette, buying numerous Russian lenses from Moscow on eBay in hopes of getting that occasional good one. I finally bought a true Zeiss 50/1.5 Sonnar in LTM mount and sent it off to be cleaned and polished. Six months later, it has yet to be returned, the problem being badly corroded metal lens barrel components that won’t release the lens elements for polishing. The 50/2 Heliar looks like what I wanted in an early Zeiss or Jupiter normal lens…lower but even contrast and a slight touch of softness to produce flattering people pictures. A bonus is the excellent build quality that I would not have gotten in a circa 40’s Zeiss or post-war Jupiter.

I still plan to shoot some Rollei 25 film with a tripod to really test the resolving capacity of this lens. But that isn’t so vital to me. If I want resolving power that equals my film, I’ll take the 50/3.5 Heliar or 50/2 Summicron. But for black and white street photography at f/5.6 using TRI-X and 777, I’ll likely take the 50/2 Heliar.

Voigtländer 50/2 Collapsible Heliar - Part 1

2006-08-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

This has been, for me, my most highly anticipated lens. This is due in no small part to the fact that I ordered it knowing virtually nothing about it. From an earlier post, one can see that I'm very big on the Voigtländer 50/3.5 Heliar lens. The only two downsides to that lens were (1) that f/3.5 is very slow, and (2) that, in the collapsible LTM design, it felt far less substantial in build quality than collapsible Leica lenses. These concerns were tempered by the resulting lightness of the lens (due to the small lens elements and light build quality).

After a long wait, my 50/2 Heliar arrived today, attached to a Bessa-R3M 250 Jahre body. To digress a moment, the packaging of the kit was very nice, with the camera and the bayonet mount lens hood in a presentation-style box complete with crimson satin. This package would make a very nice gift for a fledgling street photographer. And with bayonet-mount hoods costing ludicrous amounts these days, it was nice to have this included as part of the kit.

Photographs of the 50/2 Heliar and Bessa-R3M can be seen on Stephen Gandy's Cameraquest Web site (Stephen Gandy is one of the few distributors for Voigtländer cameras and lenses in the United States). What the photos cannot tell you is the build quality of the lens. Voigtländer lenses have steadily improved in build quality over the past 5 years. The build quality of this lens is on a par with the recent Zeiss lenses. My immediate impression of the lens was that the diameter and general appearance are similar to a 50/2 collapsible Summicron. The diameter seems larger than the current 50/2.8 collapsible Elmar lens, but it is actually a few mm smaller (at the base). The end of the Elmar is narrower in diameter. The collapsible tube of the 50/2 Heliar, while not quite the precision periscope-like feel of the Elmar, is more stable than the earlier 50/3.5 collapsible Heliar. While the length of the lens full extended (with lens hood in place) is 56mm, the collapsed length is 46.5, a difference of only about 1 cm. Removing the lens hood gives you a more compact 30mm length. The focusing ring at the base of the lens rotates smoothly throughout its range. The aperture ring is knurled from 10:30 to 1:30, but is smooth where the apertures are printed. Unlike the earlier 50/3.5 Heliar, the lens hood does not rotate with the aperture ring. F-stops are at 1/2 stop clicks for all but the f/11-f/16 stop.
While Frances Schultz has complained about the design of lens caps on recent Voigtländer lenses, I like them. The cap fits on the end of the lens without projecting outside of the filter ring. This allows one to cap the lens and then attach the lens hood. Removing the cap with the lens hood in place requires only one finger and a little manual dexterity. Getting the cap back on the lens with the hood in place is more challenging, but I prefer going out with the cap and hood in place. Once shooting commences, the cap goes in my pocket until the end of the day.
No test pictures yet. It is starting to rain as it always does around noon in the New Orleans summer months. I hope to shoot a roll of FP4+ some time tomorrow.

Domke Protective Wraps

2006-07-31T15:45:00.000-07:00

With the post-9/11 heightened need for security at airports, I had all but given up on taking a camera with me on trips. Immediately post-9/11, I attempted to board a plane in Seattle with a Leica CL loaded with exposed slide film. I asked a paramilitary-looking lady to hand-inspect it (along with all of my exposed film) rather than x-raying it. Bad idea. Not only did they run the camera and film back and forth through the X-ray machine half a dozen times, I had to remove all of my clothes short of my slacks and dress shirt. Have you had your tie X-rayed? In short, what I endured was a “Let this be a lesson to you for asking us to compromise our security.” One roll of slides that was in my carry-on bag was X-rayed only once and was usable. All of the others were fogged and greenish. I rarely carry a film camera with me on a plane since then.

Tomorrow, I leave for San Diego and then to San Francisco to visit family. I do want to take a camera to get some pictures of the family. Instead of the easy answer, a digital camera, I’m taking an old Rolleiflex. With no metal cassettes covering the film, I can stash it in my pockets without setting off any metal detectors. I’m hoping to be able to carry it in my pockets on four legs of this trip. However, I am a bit concerned about my Rolleiflex being mauled by baggage guys. I don’t protect my Rolleis with a genuine leather Rolleiflex case. At $350 and by special order only, I’m not sure if anyone uses a genuine Rolleiflex leather case. But I do want to protect my 50-year-old 2.8F Planar.
I have found Domke protective wraps to be an effective way to protect cameras, lenses, meters, and anything else you want to give a bit of padding and resistance to scuffs. They remind me a little of very small versions of the pads used by movers to protect furniture. They are square with soft fabric outside and nylon inside. Each inside corner has Velcro™ on it, which sticks tenaciously to the soft fabric outside. Covering a camera or lens is a bit like diapering a baby (or making one of many different food items with a flour tortilla at Taco Bell™). One Domke Wrap didn’t seem like quite enough padding to me, so I double-wrapped the Rolleiflex with two.

Domke Protective Wraps come in 3 sizes (11”, 15”, or 19”, all square) and four colors. If you use collectible cameras and lenses that cannot easily be replaced, these lightweight wraps come in handy when taking treks, protecting your precious cargo from road dust, spilled soft drinks, cigarette smoke, and blinding sun.

Afga APX 400 in Panthermic 777

2006-07-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Whenever I have wanted to shoot something dark, wet, and gritty, Agfa films and papers always came to mind. When I had a real darkroom for printing, I considered Agfa paper to be darkest, blackest, shiniest semi-matte paper available in town. I didn’t use it for faces as it seemed to make every pore on the nose stand out. Fred Picker often spoke disparagingly of chalk and soot prints. In my older years, I guess I have to agree with him that the effect is often not flattering. I shouldn't even have any Agfa films as they are discontinued and only a few places still have any. Before Hurricane Katrina, I got impulsive and bought about 300 rolls of APX 400 and APX 100, stored them in my office, and forgot about them in all of the turmoil. Six months after the hurricane, I returned to my office in the now moldy and rotting administration building and found four boxes that were falling apart. There stood the Agfa film I bought over a year ago and was storing at work. Too funky to sell on Ebay, so I might as well start using it.

I tested Agfa APX 400 with some PMK Pyro a few weeks ago. The results were awful unless you are looking for salt and pepper grain or wanted to document the appearance of workers shoveling coal into the boiler of a ship. PMK Pyro usually masks grain fairly well, but with Agfa 400 it met its match. Since my other favorite developer is Panthermic (or Harvey’s) 777, I decided to give it a try with Agfa 400. TRI-X and 777 work extremely well together, giving rich tonality under what I consider to be rather bland shooting conditions. I was hoping that Agfa 400 and 777 might produce something spectacular.

Panthermic 777 is one of the least-documented developers I have ever used. I didn’t have a starting time for Agfa 400, so I guessed at about 10 minutes at 75F. The density of the resulting negatives was good, so 10 minutes at room temperature is a good ballpark developing time. This was the first time I have used 777 without first pouring it through a Melitta coffee filter. I won’t try that again. The negatives were covered with small flecks of crud, presumably the junk that floats around in 777 in the bottle. I recommend always giving the solution a quick filtering.

After scanning the negatives, I will have to admit that they are grainier than I expected, nearly as grainy as Agfa 400 in PMK Pyro. In a match between TRI-X and Agfa 400 in 777, TRI-X wins. I will probably have the local B&W lab develop my Agfa 400 from now on. They can make just about anything look good with XTOL.

Fuji Neopan 400 in PMK Pyro

2006-07-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

While the move from 35mm photography to digital photography has not lost any speed, the move away from medium format film photography seems to be accelerating. As I mentioned in a previous post, Contax, Pentax, Fuji, Mamiya, and Bronica have abandoned the medium format market, many years after Graflex, Kowa, Yashica, Minolta, and Koni Omega disappeared from the shelves. The demise of film cameras is naturally having an impact on the film manufacturers. I bought up 100 rolls of Verichrome pan when Kodak discontinued it. In retrospect, I should have accepted its fate and looked for a replacement. Not Agfa APX 100 (or 25, or 400), though, as Agfa film is now gone. And Ilford has been showing signs of sputtering out as well. Not to worry just yet, though. There are still film manufacturers in Europe that may be around a bit longer. And fortunately for me these films seem to do well in my two favorite developers (at least at the moment), Panthermic 777 and PMK Pyro. I can still make do quite well with Ilford FP4+ in Verichrome pan’s place, and Rollei 25 in Agfa APX 25’s place. TRI-X should be around a bit longer, based solely on its popularity. But are there other 400 ISO choices? The most promising one to me is Neopan 400.

I decided to try some Neopan 400 in PMK Pyro this week. PMK Pyro seems to work better with the older, more silver-rich films. But you can never predict results with pyro developers; sometimes it works beautifully with a 35mm film but doesn’t seem suited well at all for the 120 version of the same film. Fuji Neopan Acros 100 gave me very nice results with PMK Pyro, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume that the faster Neopan would give good results.

I shot a roll of Neopan 400 in medium format. I suppose I decided to give it every chance to succeed in the wake of having gotten pretty awful results with Agfa APX 400 in pyro. I developed it in the standard 1:2:100 dilution for 12 minutes at 68^oF. That represents a good starting point for most films in PMK Pyro. The resulting negatives were thinner than I was expecting, giving me the impression that an E.I. of 200 might have been closer to the mark. The negatives were usable with some playing with curves, brightness, and contrast controls in Photoshop. Grain was very well suppressed.

This test shot in City Park responded well to the Photoshop tweaking, but I would rather have a negative that didn’t need so much tweaking. The first step would be to decrease the E.I. by a stop. Here’s the rub. I already get very nice results from Fomapan 200 Creative in PMK Pyro at the nominal 200 ISO, and Fomapan is cheaper. I don’t need another 200 film. So, this week, I’ll be trying Neopan 400 in 777. I think that will be a better match and may fill the 400 ISO film niche for me in medium format.

Photoshop can do some pretty amazing things with marginal negatives. Sometimes I worry that it will influence my technique. These negatives were marginal but salvagable. I can certainly do better.

Renewing the look of your Vintage Rolleiflex

2006-07-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

I don’t think of myself as a camera fondler although others may beg to differ. I prefer to think if it as taking care of my investment so it will last as long as I do, much like a Marine takes care of his M16. I have about 10 cameras that are at least 50 years old. When I get a vintage camera, I trust an expert technician to keep the insides running perfectly. For lenses, I use John Van Stelten at Focal Point. For Leicas, I use Don Goldberg at DAG or Ken Ruth at Bald Mountain . For Rolleiflexes, the man is Harry Fleenor at Oceanside Camera Repair. All of these master technicians are backlogged with work, and it isn’t unusual to have your camera in their care for months instead of weeks. For Leica repair, I have also heard very good reports about Sherry Krauter.

The exteriors of the cameras are a different matter. You can get your vintage rangefinder painted by a Japanese fellow named Shintaro. I try not to buy cameras or lenses classified as “Bargain” or “Ugly” (the very frank descriptors used by KEH Camera Brokers). Instead, I try to find a camera that looks just used enough to not appeal to collectors. I don’t care if it has its original box or lens cap. It just has to be functional and not obviously abused.

I have picked up four used Rolleiflexes over the past few years, the result of a lot of low-balling on Ebay and sometimes getting lucky. Twin lens reflexes have a lot more surface area on them than do rangefinders, and cleaning up their outsides is a bit more of a chore. I have to admit that I didn’t know the first thing about restoring the external leather of a Rolleiflex TLR, so I relied on the collective wisdom of the Rollei Users Group (or RUG), an international forum dedicated to Rolleiflex photography. When I posed the question of how to get the leather on the TLR looking new, I got a variety of answers and finally settled on two different leather care products.

The first product suggested was a cleaner called Lexol. I had never seen the stuff in the store and it took some looking to locate a bottle of it (in Pep Boys, an automotive supplies store).

I wanted not only to clean the leather but also to restore it to its original black, gleaming state. One important consideration was to avoid all use of petroleum products as they are apparently a bit harsh on 50-year-old leather. I also wanted to avoid any sort of solvent that might unglue the thin leather from the metal. I lucked out. Jeff Kelley, one of the RUG members, recommended some leather treatment products designed for antique leather. The company, Pecard Leather Care, had a nice kit especially for antique leather at a reasonable price (with enough actual material for many Rolleiflexes). I ordered the kit, and it arrived in a few days ago. One of the kit's components is a large plastic tub of “leather dressing”, a greasy-feeling paste that looks like petroleum jelly but feels more like butch wax. Also in the kit are two flat tins of weatherproof dressing, one brown and one black. Perfect, in that my Rolleiflex FX 2.8 is brown and everything else I have is black. The tins look like shoe polish cans, but the stuff inside is much, much softer and somewhat translucent. I cannot think of a way to describe it other than “goop”. Not viscous enough to be slime, it is more like the lemon part of lemon meringue pie.

Using the Lexol and Pecard products can be a bit messy. I first cleaned the leather with cotton swabs dabbed in a 35mm film canister half-filled with Lexol. I bought the Lexol enriched with pH-balanced glycerol. Glycerol is a thick alcohol that very hydroscopic, i.e., it attracts water from the air. The Lexol is clear and a bit thick despite being in a spray bottle. I dabbed it on the leather with cotton swabs and let it set for about 10 minutes. I then removed it (and a lot of yellowish-brown grime) with cotton cosmetic pads.

The next step was the Pecard Leather Dressing. It is pretty hard to apply the greasy leather dressing to the camera without getting it all over the metal parts unless you decide to work in many small areas, one at a time. I chose to get it over with in a hurry and slathered a coating of the stuff all over the leather, getting it on the edges of the metal, my hands, and two terrycloth towels. The instructions suggest leaving it on for several days to let the dressing be absorbed. I didn’t want kid glove leather on the camera, so I let it set for an hour. Getting the leather dressing off of the camera was a little like competing in a greased pig contest. Eventually, I went over the entire camera with several clean terrycloth towels until nothing felt greasy (on the camera or me).

The following day, I applied the black weatherproof dressing. I was a bit less aggressive here, applying it slowly and methodically with cotton swabs. I let it sit for an hour, and then gently rubbed it off with clean terrycloth towels.

I have to say that the results were very nice, better than my old standard of Kiwi shoe polish. The luster left by the Pecard products is semi-glossy, leaving the leather with a very black matte appearance.

The Pecard Antique Leather Care Kit looks like just the right ticket to keeping your vintage Rolleiflex or Rolleicord looking new. That it comes with both brown and black leather weatherproof dressing is fortuitous. You can protect the leather on black and brown cameras as well as the brown cases and straps. The kit costs a mere $15 and should be enough to last you for years.

TRI-X in Panthermic 777

2006-07-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

We all knew that there would be no surprises here. When the favorite developer of many past photojournalists used on the favorite film of most past photojournalists, would we expect bad results? Still, TRI-X has been reformulated in recent years, so why not shoot a test roll?

I shot this at the nominal ISO 400 under marginal lighting conditions (fluorescent lighting in a coffee shop at 7:00 A.M.). I souped in Panthermic 777 at 75^oF. The results were nice grays and well-controlled grain. If the highlights in Glenda’s face are not sharp, I was shooting at f/2.0 and 1/60. The important thing is that this combination looks good, and I’m going to continue using it with TRI-X until something else looks better.

Getting Back Into TLR Photography

2006-07-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

I have heard several film photographers say that they just can’t get used to digital, at least not without having to think a lot. I found the transition easy but unsatisfying. I simply put the digital in program mode and forgot about it. No fiddling with buttons or menus or histograms. My eyes don’t focus close enough to compose and adjust using an LCD screen. If you want to make an awkward transition, go from using a 35mm for 30 years to shooting with a twin lens reflex.

When I was 18, a TLR seemed much less difficult. I had just gotten into photography with a camera that wasn’t plastic, and I took to 35mm SLRs, 35mm rangefinders, and a medium format TLR with equal aplomb. But I eventually sold my Yashica D in 1972 and sold my Mamiya C330 in 1975. I did pick up a Yashica-Mat 124G when they were discontinued around 1980 but never used it much. In my youth, a new Honeywell Rolleiflex TLR cost about $400, roughly ten times as much as I spent on my Yashica D. I hungered for a Rolleiflex when I saw them in camera magazines but they were a wedding camera and I had no interest in weddings. Then came the Internet and E-Bay. You no longer had to rummage through pawn shops to find a good, cheap, used Rolleiflex. With my house paid off, I got hungry for a camera that I had lusted after 35 years ago but couldn’t afford. My first Rolleiflex was an E-Bay 3.5E Xenotar with fungus on the mirror and screen. I shipped it off to Bill Maxwell for a CLA and new Maxwell screen. After waiting a month, I bought an E-Bay Rolleicord. It had fungus on the screen, fungus on the mirror, and fungus in the lenses. I shipped that off to Essex Camera for a CLA. I picked up another 3.5E Xenotar on E-Bay. Like the others, it needed a cleaning. Keep in mind that these cameras are nearly as old as I am. Relatively speaking, they look better that I do. I finally got my first 3.5E Xenotar back from Bill Maxwell and took it out for a shoot.

It is ironic that these are called reflex cameras. My 56-year-old reflexes are what make them a challenge to shoot. Although it didn’t bother me in my younger years, getting used to a mirror image that moves the opposite direction of the camera is like one’s first attempt to back a boat trailer into a garage. Then using the grid on the screen to frame the image has you swaying back and forth, tilting forward and backward, and from side to side. Unless your subject is very patient or a vegetable of some kind, there are no real snapshots here. No doubt about it. You need to take slow aim at an immovable object with all of the time in the world if you want usable frames on your first roll.

Why bother? Well, despite their unwieldiness, they are capable of some astonishingly good results. With the right film, developer, and technique, I have seen good Rolleiflex photographers make a mundane subject like a dandelion look like something that anyone would want on his living room wall. They also have the mystique of Leica and Zeiss cameras: excellent craftsmanship, sturdy build, phenomenal optics, and a design that is good enough to transcend decades of production with only very minor improvements. When you buy a digital camera today, it may be out of production by the time you first press the shutter release. The many thousands of durable Rolleiflexes still operational ensure that there will always be parts available somewhere. The only thing we have too few of are master repair technicians such as Harry Fleenor who can get a neglected E-Bay Rolleiflex back into excellent shooting condition. He just received my second 3.5E Xenotar for a CLA and new Maxwell screen. He is backed up enough that I won’t see the camera again for about three months. Not to worry. I still have a couple of good specimens to use in the meantime. I hope to try some black and white films in my other 3.5E Xenotar, develop them in 777 or PMK Pyro, and display the results here.

Agfa APX 400 in PMK Pyro

2006-07-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

My recent discovery of PMK Pyro developer has turned my way of thinking about film and developer 180^o . In years past, I might try a different film, find the results pleasing, buy a brick of it, and then look for a developer that seemed to work well with it. Ultimately that developer would be HC110, D-76, or XTOL. Why does every film seem to develop well in these developers? One hypothesis is that film manufacturers deliberately design their films to work well in D-76 et al. because of the immense popularity of these developers. Other developers seem to work well on some films but not others. Rodinal comes to mind as a developer that works very well on slower, fine-grained films but doesn’t fare as well with faster films due to the obvious grain. PMK Pyro doesn’t seem to follow these rules. The most common way to gauge the suitability of PMK Pyro for a film is by characterizing the film’s tendency to pick up stain from the developer. Part of the appeal of pyro developer is that it stains the exposed areas (a rather bilious green), the degree of staining being proportional to the amount of exposed silver halide in the emulsion. The green stain seems to suppress the granular appears of some films. Some films pick up the stain well and others don’t. Even more specifically, some 120 films pick up the stain well but their 35mm counterparts don’t, and vice versa. Where this leaves me is with a developer I like very much and the task of finding films that develops well with it. My initial tests seemed to indicate that PMK Pyro's staining action masks grain very well. Well, that isn’t always the case.

This past week, I shot a roll of Agfa APX 400 and developed it in PMK Pyro. I didn’t have much to go on regarding the exposure index or developing times to use. The Massive Dev Chart has no data for APX 400 developed in PMK Pyro. That means one of two things...either nobody has ever tried this combination, or the combination is not recommended. The latter is certainly true.

PMK Pyro does an excellent job on medium speed films, particularly Ilford FP4+. With APX 400, the negatives were quite thin. There are four ways to address thin (poorly stained) negatives.

Reduce the E.I. and over-expose the film.
Over-develop the film a bit by increasing the developing time (most of my PMK times are around 10-13 minutes, but some films require 18 minutes) and/or the temperature of the developer.
Decrease the dilution of the PMK Pyro from 1+2+100 to 1+2+50.
Use another film.

I used the nominal ISO of 400 and the nominal dilution of 1+2+100. To ensure that there was enough developer in the tank, I used 600 ml developer for one roll of 35mm film (twice what I usually use). It wasn’t enough to increase staining to an acceptable level.

What is the result of scanning underexposed/underdeveloped APX in PMK Pyro? Too much grain. The kind of grain one would expect if shooting pushed TRI-X in a Minox subminiature spy camera.

This image is of my neighbor’s dog (an extremely intelligent and faithful beast who sat on my porch with me during the 3 days after Katrina left town). The lighting was fairly good, and this frame is the best of the lot.

The next image is of a nail boutique/pager store on Magazine Street. At low magnification, the grain seems acceptable. An enlarged area of the negative shows the gritty result of using this combination.

Will I try other developing times for APX 400 in PMK Pyro? No. I might revisit the two together again if I ever decide to produce a photo essay of coal miners. APX 400 does well in other developers, so I’ll give it a try next in 777 or Divided D-76. There are other films that I would like to try in PMK Pyro. To date, the films that work best with it have been Ilford FP4+ (ISO 125) and Fomapan 200 Creative (ISO 200). I would like to find a good 400 ISO film for use with PMK Pyro. There are a lot out there, and I’ve just eliminated one of them.

The Mind's Eye - Writings on Photography and Photographers

2006-07-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

Finding a copy of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment is easy now that the Internet does the searching for you. Paying for it once you have found it is less easy. Private sellers through Amazon.com currently have three copies for sale, the cheapest of which is $950. A more collectible specimen is $2,475. I really would like to read what HCB has to say, but I could buy a mint Rolleiflex Planar 2.8 for $2,475.

The recent DVD The Impassioned Eye (reviewed earlier) gives the view some insights into the master photographer’s way of thinking and way of viewing the world. The Mind’s Eye ($20 list, $13 street) does some of the same, with a bit more to say than the DVD. It is a small hardcover of just over 100 pages, 1.5-spaced, with rather big margins and quite of bit of white space. Don’t take a long train trip with just it to read. That said, it is a relatively inexpensive way to read some writings excerpted from other HCB books as well as some of his essays on photography and travel.

I won’t go on and on here about the book for fear of over-hyping it. If you are a devotee of Henri Cartier-Bresson, I think you’ll find the book worth the cost of a lunch. Though he was a very gifted photographer and artist, he was reticent. When you can find his writings inexpensively, get them. In thirty years, maybe you can sell it for $2,475.

Ilford Delta 3200 in PMK Pyro

2006-07-09T16:16:00.000-07:00

It is not enough for a film and developer combination to be good, or even excellent. It has to fill a niche, a need. If one already has that niche filled, it has to be better in some way (add a new dimension, be cheaper, be more readily available, etc.). I know some street photographers who use TRI-X with D-76 or HC110 and nothing else. The combination they settled on works as good as they want it to work. Why go elsewhere unless you are attempting to displace what already fills your needs?

With D-76, XTOL, and HC110 so popular, I was surprised to find that PMK Pyro gave me such good results. It is an old style developer that has a reputation of being loved by a few and hated by everyone else. I have pontificated on the virtues of PMK Pyro elsewhere. Here, I just need to point out that PMK Pyro works very well with some slow films, some medium-speed films, some fast films, and some very fast films, making it an excellent all-around developer for me as long as I use the films that react well to it.

I have always avoided very fast films because I don’t like coarse grain and because I don’t like shooting at f/22 and 1/1000 outdoors. But when I read that PMK Pyro worked well with Ilford Delta 3200 I thought I might as well give it a try, at least in subdued light. Maybe it could fill a niche. To combat the inevitable grain, I decided to go with medium format for this test.

The recommended E.I. of Delta 3200 in PMK Pyro is 1600. Well, I just lost one stop of film speed. Developing films with pyro usually takes about 12 minutes at 68^oF. With Delta 3200, the recommended time on the Massive Dev Chart is a whopping 18 minutes at 75^oF. Developing the film that long and at that temperature suggests to me that a more appropriate exposure index might be 800, not 1600.

I loaded a roll of Delta 3200 in a Mamiya 7II and set the ISO at 1600. I was more interested in how it performed under subdued light, so I took it to breakfast last week. The setting was a very brightly-lit café with large picture windows. With the Mamiya 80/4 lens wide open, I had to shoot at 1/60.

Ernie Fitzgerald is a septuagenarian ex-marine who still runs 3 miles every morning before dawn. In the diffuse light of the café and with the lens wide open, the results were actually sharper than I expected. The grain was well controlled by the staining action of the pyro.

Now, does this film (in medium format) and developer fill a niche? Not really, at least not with the equipment I currently use and the latitude where I do most of my shooting. The problem is that, even at the slower E.I. of 1600, the film is too fast to use outdoors. I couldn’t get an outdoor shot with the Mamiya at anything other than f/22 and 1/500 unless I went into the shade. I’m just too close to the equator to use Delta 3200 outdoors under most conditions. Indoors, I was at the other extreme. Even with a relatively bright indoor environment, I was shooting wide open at 1/60. It is too fast to use outdoors, and too slow to use indoors. If I had been shooting 35mm and a fast lens, it would have been good indoors. But then there’s that grain with small negatives. Before I write off Ilford Delta 3200, I’m going to try some 35mm indoors with a 50/1.4 Summilux. If the pyro stain can reduce the appearance of grain, then Delta 3200 in PMK Pyro would be filling a niche. That said, if I lived in Sweden and wanted to shoot medium format outdoors, this might be a fabulous film/developer combination.

Rollei Pan 25 Film

2006-07-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

Since getting into photography nearly 40 years ago, I have seen slower-speed films slowly disappear from the catalogs. In the 1960’s, Kodak Panatomic-X was a staple in my film bag. By the time I entered graduate school in the 1970’s, there seemed to be slow black and white films from virtually every major film manufacturer here and abroad. I particularly liked the specialty B&W films that had virtually NO grain. Kodak had a Photomicrography B&W film (later named Kodak Technical Pan film), and I really liked an offbeat H&W Control Pan film developed in Ethol TEC. True, both of these films required a steady hand or tripod, but the results really put a person’s lens quality to the test. Both are gone now.
Last year, we seemed to be down to one readily-available slow B&W film, namely, Ilford Pan F+. The old Adox KB14 (ISO 25) has been re-released under different names, but that was not an easy film to use. I found several reasons to steer away from it. It was too tightly-coiled to easily feed into a reel, the wet emulsion seemed overly soft and easily damaged, and the film base was dark purple.

In recent years, we have seen the demise of the slow Kodak Panatomic-X and more recently, Agfa APX 25. Ilford Pan F + (ISO 50) is so close grain-wise to the recently released Fujifilm Acros 100, I usually use the latter to get that additional f/stop of speed. Specialty films that can be developed for full tonal scale (such as Bluefire Police film) are still available for extremely fine grain and high resolution, but finding a readily-available suitable developer for them is difficult.

Enter Rollei Pan 25, a newly released film that nobody really seems to know very well. I have read that it is a relabeled specialty film, but others have said that it is an entirely new film. I tend to believe the former rather than the latter, especially after reading this on the Massive Dev Chart.

Rollei films are the same as Maco films. The published times are identical (subject to revision), so simply refer to the relevant Maco chart for the development information you require. We are awaiting further clarification on this product line, but the type/speed of the Maco films should indicate which Rollei film is the equivalent product. More information will be published as it becomes available. (www.digitaltruth.com)

Whatever it is, the packaging is a bit bizarre. When you buy the film, it arrives in a fancy varnished wooden box that reminds me of a chess set (only smaller). This film is expensive ($56.90 for 10 rolls), and my first thought was that they could cut a little on the film price by not packaging it in a gift box. Inside the box are ten rolls of film in black canisters. Things are not quite as fancy inside the box. The labels on the canisters have print with jaggy edges reminiscent of the output of my first Epson dot matrix printer. But I cannot complain. Most canisters have no label, so the funky one here is a plus. On the film cassette is pretty much the same label as on the canister. There is no DX code on the cassette, so you'll have to set the camera's ISO manually.

So much for the idiosyncratic packaging. How good is the film? Slow black and white films are notorious for narrow latitude, which is one reason why they fell out of favor. I don’t know many people (me included) who do much routine bracketing these days. I don’t have many subjects that will sit still that long. But to be fair to the film, I committed myself to trying to make the exposures as accurate as possible. And I decided to use the Cosina Voigtländer 50/3.5 Heliar lens, a reputably great performer. And to tame the high contrast I expected to get (the midday sun was very bright with no clouds), I went with D-23 developer. I had to estimate the developing times. The Massive Dev chart had no development times for Rollei Pan 25 or Maco 25. I had read that Rollei Pan 25 had an antihalation backing that had to be removed, so I used a 1-minute water presoak
The results were good but not spectacular. A full frame, unadulterated scan shows decent sharpness and tonal scale when printed. An unadulterated enlargement of a small portion from the center of the picture retains good detail with some apparent grain. I’m not sure that D-23 was the best developer to use on this film. PMK Pyro may be a better choice in that it tends to minimize the appearance of grain. Still, I don’t think I would have any trouble enlarging something to 16x20.

The question that faces me is would I want to make Rollei Pan 25 a regular item in my bag? Twenty years ago (given the choices of slow film available), I would probably say no. It is just too slow. Today? Probably no. If I want very fine grain, I would opt for one of the chromogenic 400 ISO black and white films. Although I would have to wait a week to get the film back from the lab, Kodak BW400CN (1) is cheaper, (2) is faster by a whopping four f-stops, (3) has much nicer scale, and (4) allows me to use digital ICE technology to remove dust spots.

The Impassioned Eye (2003)

2006-07-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

“You really don’t have to know too much in order to be a photographer. What you need to do is simply to look.” Magnum Photographer Elliot Erwitt

The quote does not come from Henri Cartier Bresson, the subject of this documentary. It is just one of many sound bites made by the participants in this 2003 film by director Heinz Bütler “The Impassioned Eye”. The title is an appropriate one. The recurring theme here is that photographers must use their eyes to recognize geometry, texture, shape, and patterns. Not that we didn’t know this, but it does serve to focus our attention on just how important careful observation and a trained eye are to the photographer.

Over the past five years or so, I had gotten the impression that Henri Cartier Bresson was no longer interested in photography, that he didn’t like to talk about photography, and that he didn’t like interviews, especially about photography. He does mention in the film that he found drawing to have more possibilities. But after seeing one photograph taken in 1926 followed by another taken in 1966, it is entirely possible that, after at least four decades of photography, he simply tired of the medium. This film does not contradict my impressions. At no time in the 70 minutes does he appear to be interviewed. Nor is there an interviewer’s voice or a question asked. Cartier Bresson smiles and displays photograph after photograph, speaking to the camera in snippets (in French, translated by voiceover). There is no dialogue, no long discourse. The format reminds me of the book “Hemingway on Writing”, which is little more than isolated statements by Hemingway (from letters and fiction) about the writing craft. Perhaps Hemingway’s single most important advice to writers was

“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” (The Moveable Feast, 1964)

Cartier Bresson and other artists expound similar truisms throughout the film, and most contain a simple idea that should become second nature to the photographer. They hold more credibility here because of their source. Cartier Bresson makes point after point about photography, none too deep or too long, and none breaking any new ground. But worth listening to. I don’t believe I ever heard him say the words “The decisive moment”, but he does implore the listener at one point to “Seize the moment.”

At my first sitting, I came away from the film assuming that the parts with HCB were filmed in one or two afternoons, totally unrehearsed and unscripted. By the third sitting, I realized that he was wearing half a dozen different sets of clothes, and that this may have been filmed over a considerably longer time. It also becomes apparent that snippets were rearranged to make film flow better. The filming was obviously done near the end of HCB’s life. He appears to be in his mid-nineties but still spry. Oddly, Arthur Miller (who was only seven years younger than Cartier Bresson) appears to be closer to 65 in this film. The photographer died a year after the film was produced, the playwright a year later.

Unlike James Nachtwey's War Photographer, there are no depressing scenes of famine with emotionally wrenching music by Arvo Pärt. Rather, the film is upbeat with some lively Bach keyboard pieces. During the latter part of the film, piano music by Ravel creates a slightly more somber mood (all piano works are played by Angela Hewitt, one of my favorites). One interesting observation made was that Cartier Bresson’s impression of America was that of planned obsolescence, a country that found much of itself to be disposable. And his photographs of America reflect that sort of decadence.

Who should buy this DVD? Any photographer who is interested in this sort of non-studio photography. Any photographer who is not convinced that he/she knows all there is to know about photography. The statements are not as profound as they are logical and practical. Like an HCB book of photographs, the film is to be enjoyed over and over.

Two-Bath Developers for Black and White Film

2006-07-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

Divided or two-bath developers are not a new innovation, and I’m surprised that they are not more popular today. They are less likely to over-develop or under-develop film, they work well under less than ideal conditions, and they tend to be less polluting than conventional developers (for reasons I’ll explain later). Pollution of ground water is less of a concern now that ascorbic acid developers have gained popularity. Still, there are other advantages divided developers have over the more popular single-solution developers.

What is a two-bath developer? Let’s take the most common example, that of Divided D-76. Plain D-76 (single solution) consists of a mixture of developing agents (metol and hydroquinone), sodium sulfite, and an alkaline activator or accelerator (usually borax). Mix the four together in water and you have an active developer. If you divide these chemicals into two solutions, one with metol, hydroquinone, and sulfite in water and one with borax in water, neither solution can do much to film by itself. Bath A has inactive developers and sulfite, and Bath B has an activator with nothing to activate. Thus, immersing film in either bath by itself will not accomplish much.

To develop the film, one must first immerse the exposed film in Bath A (inactive developers + sulfite) and let the inactive solution saturate the gelatin emulsion. Time and temperature are not critical, as this is a physical reaction (simple diffusion into the emulsion), not a chemical reaction. Three minutes is usually all it takes to saturate the film’s emulsion. Now Bath A is decanted back into the stock Bath A bottle. It is essentially unchanged and doesn’t have to be replenished. No chemical reaction occurred in the tank. There is just a bit less of Bath A's volume returned to the bottle. Next, without rinsing the film, Bath B is poured into the developing tank. This alkaline solution, the accelerator, soaks into the film’s emulsion and activates the developing agents. Development takes place in another 3 minutes or so. Bath B is then discarded and the film is fixed and washed as usual.

Having to use two different solutions during development is one more step in the process, so it is a bit more of a hassle. What are the benefits of using a divided developer?

Less developer is “used” and less developer goes down the drain. By allowing a very small amount of the developing agent soak into the emulsion, most of Bath A is returned to the stock bottle. Only the few milliliters that soaked into the emulsion enter the sewer system. All of the borax solution is discarded after use, but it is not considered to be toxic (it is the same borax that has been sold as a clothes washing aid for decades).
Developing many rolls of film leaves the developing solution unaffected. Since no chemical reaction takes place when soaking the film in Bath A, no replenishment is necessary and no adjustment of developing time is necessary due to breakdown of the developer.
Developing temperatures are not critical. Living in the subtropics, trying to keep one's solutions at the optimum 68^oF is daunting. Doing everything at a much more reasonable 75^oF (the temperature of everything in my house) is far simpler.
Developing times are not critical. By having the developing agent exhaust itself during development, the times and temperatures are less critical than those involving a large surplus of active developer in the tank.
No blown highlights. It is nearly impossible to overdevelop the film. Having the small volume of developer exhaust itself in areas of high film exposure is a safeguard against blown highlights.
Underdevelopment is nearly impossible. Developer remains active longer in the underexposed areas because the developing agents are not depleted quickly here.
You can develop TRI-X, PLUS-X, APX 400, and Pan F+ in the same tank. With all films requiring the same non-critical times and temperatures, you can simultaneously develop a mixed bag of films together in one developing tank.
It is dirt cheap. If you decide to use Divided D-76, you can easily mix your own fresh reagents yourself from four stock dry chemicals (Photographer's Formulary also uses a small amount of potassium bromide as a restrainer). I have found that Bath B is a pretty much a saturated solution of borax. When I have warmed up the distilled water to get all of the carefully-measured borax to dissolve completely, crystals rematerialize in the bottom of the bottle when it returns to room temperature. That means the solution is saturated (i.e., you cannot get any more of the borax to dissolve). From a practical standpoint, you just have to keep enough borax in the bottom of the bottle to keep that solution saturated. I use 350ml of solution B when developing a roll of 35mm film. To restore my stock solution B, I just pour 350 ml of water into the Bath B bottle, shake it up good, and let it sit. When the borax crystals in the bottom layer start getting too shallow, I add more borax with a spoon. The Film Developing Cookbook (Anchell and Troop, 1998) states that Bath B can be used for up to 10 rolls of film. To keep things consistent, I discard mine after the first use.

What is the downside of using a divided developer? I suppose that it is, like most common developers, a collection of compromises. What works very well for TRI-X may not bring out the best in Acros. And I don’t really trust the ISO ratings of most films these days. When the Massive Development Chart states that Ilford HP5+ (ISO 400) requires 10 minutes of development in a certain developer but that Kodak TRI-X (ISO 400) requires only 6.5 minutes of development in that same developer, I start to think that they shouldn’t really both be rated at ISO 400. If I were to decide that all of my films would hereafter be developed only in Divided D-76, I would probably shoot a few test rolls of each film and adjust the exposure index for optimum negative density with my chosen developing times.

Divided developers are not ideal for low contrast images. Their strength is primarily in higher contrast subjects like one might encounter in street photography or photojournalism (before it became digital).

There are several recipes for Two-Bath D-76 on the web and in The Film Developing Cookbook. Ansel Adams reportedly used a divided D-23 developer in his work. This appears not to be a conventional two-bath developer, but rather a typical D-23 developer with a second alkaline bath. Some photographers have expressed concern over film swelling in the second bath. This can be reduced by using a second bath with alkaline accelerator plus sodium sulfite. Vestal’s Divided D-76 uses 50g/l sodium sulfite in each of the two baths.

The M Strap

2006-07-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

Discussions on photography forums regularly have threads on the best camera bag, the best rangefinder camera bag, and (less frequently) the best camera strap. While none of these threads are headline news, people who have more than one camera (particularly vintage cameras that no longer have the original strap) soon find themselves with multiple kinds of straps and a favorite or two among them. I have decided that three kinds are absolutely not my favorites.

Wide straps with “Nikon” written all over them. Wide straps with company logos were more popular in the 1970’s, but they reminded me of guitar straps with “Fender” written all over them from the 1960’s. A poor fashion statement regardless of attire. And it is hard to blend in the crowd with a “Hey, I have a Nikon camera” strap.
Elastic camera straps. These are narrow nylon camera straps with a large, elastic (black sponge rubber) shoulder piece. The shoulder piece can stretch, acting like a shock absorber. I suppose these are more comfortable to use if you are carrying a cinder block on a strap, but not really necessary or desirable for a small camera.
Shoulder straps with two big plastic quick-release clasps. These must be for people who want to release the camera from the strap and leave the remainder of the strap sitting on their shoulder or around their neck. I want a strap to securely attach me to the camera, so two opportunities for a quick release don’t give me much security.

To be honest, I don’t really like any over the shoulder or neck camera straps. If I wear it across my chest (diagonally from left to right), the camera is secure but not available for use (and I look like a nerd). If I wear it around my neck, my camera bounces on my ample stomach and I look like a tourist. If I wear it over one shoulder, it repeatedly slides off my shoulder if I reach down even a small distance. Worse yet, two of my cameras have been seriously damaged (and many more banged around but not badly damaged) due to a strap slipping or catching on something, or the camera swinging against a hard object. My Nikon EL2 dropped about 4 feet from the seat of a Suburban to a concrete curb when my camera strap snagged when someone else was exiting the vehicle. My Canon VT Deluxe was flung about 6 feet onto the pavement (destroying the lens) when the camera strap tangled in my seat belt and gear shift while I was exiting my SUV. Clearly, I have some issues with straps.
I have tried to emulate photographer friend Sonny Carter's practice of carrying a camera just about everywhere. Most of my photography is what is loosely defined as Street Photography (photographs of people and things unplanned in natural surroundings), and most of it is in New Orleans, a city who existence relies on tourists. Wear a camera with a strap around your neck and you look just a tourist, a most muggable kind of victim. So I recently started using something far less conspicuous, the M Strap. This is not a shoulder strap. It is a small wrist strap that attaches to one side of the camera.
These are not produced by Leica, and are perhaps the least advertised camera straps in existence. Seth Levine, the producer of the M Classics Bag (the subject of a later blog entry), produces and distributes these from his austere web site.
The wrist strap seen on his home page is attached to the right side of a camera. This allows one to walk with the camera unobtrusively but securely in the hand until a decisive moment nears. I used one of his straps with a Bessa R for several weeks and found it a big improvement over a shoulder strap. My only concern was that I had to adjust the strap on my wrist from time to time in order to advance the film and/or trip the shutter. Last week, I decided to switch the strap to the left side of the camera, and that is where it will stay.

Yes, I know that my thumb is over the viewfinder window. This is the only way I could photograph myself holding the camera in my left hand.

The tension on the strap attached to my left wrist steadies the camera, leaving my fingers free to focus and my entire left hand free to advance the film and trip the shutter.
Seth Levine's operation appears to be a one-man enterprise, like my other favorite web-based operations CameraQuest and Frugal Photographer. Seth is an amiable chap who is conscientious with his customers. His contact information is here. I'm in no way affiliated with Seth or his store. I think his products deserve a bit more publicity as they have been most useful to me.

Classic 200 in PMK Pyro

2006-06-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

Kodak, Ilford, Fuji, and Agfa never marketed a ISO 200 black and white film that I’m aware of at least not during my generation of photographers. I suppose that it was considered a poor marketing strategy to have a film only one f-stop away from ISO 100-125 and ISO 400. The smaller European film makers don’t seem to feel that way. I have recently purchased ISO 200 black and white films by Foma, Forte, Bergger, Classic, and Paterson, and I have seen ISO 200 B&W film from Arista (although I assume this to be a relabeled film from one of the manufacturers above). Classic 200 is among the least expensive of the ISO 200 films, and it is advertised to have a classic retro look. I decided to try some in a retro developer. Digitaltruth had a starting time of 11 minutes, so I expected a usable roll of negatives.

First the bad news. Classic 200 is grainy; it is very grainy. The grain is what I would expect with ISO 3200 film. One other minor cause for concern with Classic 200 is the film cassette. The cassette of my first roll seemed a bit delicate. The lips of the film opening were slightly agape, and my film was light-struck near the beginning of the roll. As a result, I’m putting the rest of the Classic 200 in black plastic canisters and loading/unloading the film in very subdued light.

Now the good news. It stains very well with PMK Pyro developer (although the staining action of the pyro wasn’t enough to suppress the grain). After a rather shocked reaction to the grain when I opened the first frame in PhotoShop, I began to appreciate other aspects of the film. One thing that impressed me is the smooth consistency of the grain structure over the entire negative. Maybe this is from being relatively silver-rich (as these older films are always touted to be). When I go carefully over an entire TRI-X negative in Photoshop to touch up dust specks, I sometimes see what appear to be gaps with missing silver or less silver. Although they do not affect the appearance of the final print, their presence (or I suppose I should say absence) is puzzling. I saw none of this on any negative in the Classic 200 roll. I suppose I might also add that one of the negatives in a roll of Foma 200 I shot last week had a nice round hole in the emulsion. While it was small enough to patch with the healing tool, it suggested to me that some of the machinery used to make films in Eastern Europe might be dated.
The inevitable question that arises is “Why would someone want to buy ISO 200 black and white film that is as grainy as ISO 3200 film?” That is a legitimate query. One reason might be the price (it is about the cheapest B&W film out there). Another might be the lower speed. I went out shooting one very bright day with Fuji 800 in a Leica CL. Even with the shutter speed set at 1/500^th and aperture at f/22, some shots were overexposed. I don’t fiddle with neutral density filters. For me, ISO 200 is easier to work with than is ISO 3200. I don’t care much for apertures smaller than f/5.6 unless I’m shooting with a 28mm or wider.

As it turned out, one of the subjects I shot with my first roll of Classic 200 worked well with lots of grain. I went to my now gutted church with several Presbyterian visitors from South Carolina. The inside of the church has been stripped of nearly everything except the chandeliers. I thought the soft graininess of Classic 200 worked well when shooting the stark interior of the church.
Another retro developer, 777, seems to tame grain well. I’ll try that combination in the coming weeks.

A Russian Journal

2006-06-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

I loved reading John Steinbeck as a child. He wasn’t too deep for a 12-year-old, he didn’t use a lot of obtuse symbolism, and he relied more on prose than poetry. I liked reading a storyteller’s point of view, and Steinbeck was a gifted storyteller. As a 12-year-old, I had never heard of Robert Capa (he was killed when I was four years old), and never read A Russian Journal by Steinbeck as it was never on a reading list (but should have been). It is an obscure enough book to be absent from your local bookstore, but it is worth reading. No much longer than Of Mice and Men or The Pearl, A Russian Journal is the account of a trip Capa and Steinbeck took together to Russia in the late 1940’s. Both men wanted to know what post-war Russia was really like; Steinbeck wanted to write about it and Capa wanted to photograph it. Only Capa was censored (to a small degree) by the Russian government. I admire both men for what they did, i.e., move to the top of their game without a lot of fanfare preceding them. However, the two were not kindred spirits. The friction experienced between the traveling companions adds a bit of charm to the journal. In fact, Steinbeck even allows Capa to write an entry in the journal detailing his annoyances with Steinbeck. Steinbeck was equally annoyed with Capa. To give any details of the book would be recapitulating what Steinbeck can say far better than I. It’s a nice, short read. Once you get a taste for Robert Capa’s personality in this book, order Blood and Champagne for a more in-depth picture of the man.

Ilford FP4+ in Panthermic 777

2006-06-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

Last week, I shot a roll of Ilford HP5+ and developed it in 777. I wasn’t expecting much. I don’t know of anyone who uses 777 developer, and I cannot even buy it in the USA. It is available at Frugal Photographer in Canada, and I ordered two bags of it on a lark. I wouldn’t have even known that 777 existed had I not mentioned on the Leica Users Group forum that I’m trying to recreate the look of black and white photography from the mid-20^th century. The three suggestions I got were (1) use 50-year-old lenses, (2) use old style film (such as the films still made in Slavic countries using 50-year-old machinery and formulas), and (3) use older formulas of developers that have fallen out of favor. I did delve into pyro developers (with good results) and decided to use 777 based on its popularity with photojournalists back in the mid-20^th century. The results I got from Ilford HP5+ and 777 were pleasant. They were also the best results I have ever gotten from HP5+. These days, it takes a lot to get me excited. Having a developer work much better than I expected does get my attention.

Ilford FP4+ is one of my favorite films for pyro developers, so I decided to see what it would look like developed in 777. I have used fine grain developers with fine grain film in the past, and the results were always mushy. Thus, I didn’t hold much hope for this combination. Panatomic X developed in Microdol X looked like crap when I tried it back in the 70’s. If FP4+ in 777 turned out to be a similar disaster, I could scratch 777 off my list of developers and simplify my life. It didn’t turn out that way.

The screen shots of the images don’t do this combination justice. You really need to see the print to see the excellent scale, the rich grays, and the luminosity. Zones I-X are all there, all in their correct places. I’m afraid that I have to put D-76 away for the moment. I won’t pour it down the sink; I’ll keep it in its completely filled amber bottle, under the sink. Perhaps I’m having a hormonal imbalance here. This 777 developer looks like a chemist's mistake. It has flecks of black garbage suspended in it. It couldn’t care less which temperature you use. It prefers 75F, but you can use it warm or cold and it still works. It lasts forever as long as you remember to replenish it with a jigger or so of unused 777. The look is not as retro as I get with PMK Pyro, but I do like the effect. It is perhaps most similar to Kodak’s D-23 formula, the favorite of Zone System devotees. And it scans well.

And it is supposed to get better and better with age. Well, I guess Foma 200, Forte 200, or Bergger 200 will be my next film for 777. Stay tuned for results.

This is just a grab shot at the zoo of a distant white tiger taking a snooze.

Below it is an enlargement of the tiger portion of the photo to show detail.
FP4+ in 777 yields minimal grain while still retaining good detail. Actual enlargements from these scans look far better than the screen shots.

The Fool Proof Samigon Reel

2006-06-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

Don’t let anybody tell you that loading a stainless steel reel with film is like riding a bicycle. In 1968, I could do both. In 2006, I can barely ride a bike, and you can forget having me load a stainless steel reel in the dark. My first 35mm and 120 negatives were developed in a Kodacraft tank with film aprons. If you're under the age of 40, you don’t remember aprons. They were film-length pieces of clear plastic with corrugated edges. You would tuck the leading edge of the film under a loop at one end of the apron, and then roll the two together into a coil. The corrugated edges of the apron kept it from directly touching the film except at the edges. Those corrugated edges left a narrow gap between the film and apron, allowing developer and fix to reach the film. The rolled up apron and film went into the lightproof Kodacraft tank. Unfortunately, the Kodacraft tank had an open orifice on the lid with no cap. Agitation consisted of moving the tank on a flat surface in a figure-8 motion. Primitive to be sure, but very easy to use. But I wanted to invert the tank during agitation, so I went to the other choice, stainless steel reels and tanks. Loading a stainless steel reel took a lot of practice, and I spent considerable time watching Gunsmoke reruns at 11:00 P.M. while loading and reloading a 35mm stainless steel reel with a roll of old film.

After a hiatus from photography of about 18 years, I washed my old stainless steel reels and gave them another shot. Forget it. All thumbs. Crinkled film. Too aggravating. So I bought some Paterson reels. Very usable, and much easier to load, at least in 35mm. But there was still a bit of a challenge getting the film into the narrow tracks of the reel. With most plastic reels, loading involves shoving the film lengthwise into a spiral track. Unless the conditions were perfect, I could spend 20 minutes in a dark, non-air conditioned bathroom trying to get the film into the small insertion point on the reel. It became much more difficult when I started buying some rather tightly-curled Europeans films. Those were a challenge in 35mm and completely ridiculous in 120 format.

A perusal of the B&H Photo site yielded Samigon plastic reels. According to the description, they are fool proof. These reels look very much like Paterson reels, and they fit perfectly in Paterson tanks and Samigon plastic tanks.

Which is the Paterson and which is the Samigon?

Like Paterson reels, they have a larger diameter than stainless steel reels and will not fit in stainless steel tanks. They also load just like Paterson reels but have a major improvement. At the base of the entry spot on the reel, they have a very large deck that you can place the film end on, guiding it into the narrow entry slot with your index finger. Paterson reels have two short nibs to help you find the entry slot. Samigon gives you a contiguous platform.

The Samigon reel on the right has a contiguous entry ramp to get the film started on the reel.

The fool proof Samigon reels have no instructions, and it took a few minutes for this fool to figure out that the reel has to be taken apart to remove the developed film. Like the Paterson reels, a clockwise turn of the right side unlocks the two sides and allows you to pull them apart. This is also a major plus. Instead of pulling the wet (and fragile) film out of the reel lengthwise, it will easily plop out into the Photo-Flo bath. Fewer chances to scratch the emulsion.

Speaking of Photo-Flo, it is best not to immerse plastic reels into Photo-Flo solution. Residue tends to accumulate on the plastic, causing binding when trying to slide the film in the slot. Also, since you will be pushing about five feet of film into a spiral track, it is vital that the leading edge of the film not have any rough edges or spikes. I generally make a rounded leading edge with scissors before trying to load the film. Also, both Paterson and Samigon reels use a pair of ball bearings to "grab" the film while ratcheting it into the reel (visible in the second photo above). I have gotten several Paterson reels with a ball bearing that didn't jiggle freely in its slot. If both ball bearings don't jiggle freely in their slots, you cannot feed the film into the reel.

777 Developer - II

2006-06-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

I didn’t have a good feeling about how the first roll of HP5+ would fare in a newly-mixed batch of 777 developer. Those familiar with the developer say that the mixture gets better with time and use, and not to expect success with the first few rolls. It fared better than I expected. I decided to try people as subjects. Portraits would really put the film and developer to the test. Two of the test shots were indoors and one was outdoors in the noon brightness. My assessment?

Low contrast, or long scale. I’m not quite sure which descriptor applies, but I like it. HP5+ always seemed too high in contrast and darkly muddy, especially with portraits. In 777, there seems to be better representation of zones III through VII.
Fine grain. This was no surprise. With all of the sulfite in this developer, along with the caveat that the reused developer would be sludgy with silver, I expected a lot of grain solvent activity.
Smoothness. Old-timers refer to a glow in 777-developed film. It looks like a softening of hard edges in these images.
Nostalgic look. This developer was a favorite of photojournalists beginning in the 1940’s, including Life magazine photographers and Magnum photographers, including Henri Cartier Bresson. Not surprisingly, the prints (more so than the screen shots) are reminiscent of black and white photographs of that era.

All of these characteristics bring me to the conclusion that this is a good developer for black and white work, and particularly good for people pictures. The fine grain, low contrast, long scale, and smooth lines remove the harshness of unfavorable lighting, wrinkles, old age spots, and pores.

Portrait number 1 is photographer Chris Williams. This was shot in a restaurant with Chris facing a large window with bright noon light. The highlights in the negative (i.e., Chris’s face) were a bit blown out. Before Photoshop work, his skin was closer to Zone IX than Zone VI. I blame the developer being a bit overactive. Still, the portrait was salvageable.

[Click on the photo for a larger version]

Portrait number 2 is Tom Gruber, a 65-year-old ex-football coach turned teacher and now administrator. Years of standing at the sidelines soaking up sun have taken a toll on his skin, but 777 has smoothed things out a bit.

[Click on the photo for a larger version]

Portrait number 3 is Tom’s cousin, Billy Gruber, the owner and operator of Liuzza’s Restaurant near the New Orleans fairgrounds. He wasn’t too keen on getting his picture taken (which is good…he has some expression). The picture was shot in bright shade at 11:30 AM on a cloudless day.

[Click on the photo for a larger version]

I’ve got a dozen or so rolls of HP5+. Given the encouraging results here, I think I’ll use them all up in the next few weeks and see if I can tame the developer’s activity with a little use.

777 Developer - I

2006-06-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

So, what is 777 developer? It seems to be the same as Harold Harvey’s Panthermic 777 Developer and, consequently, may be identified in one of many ways, all of which have 777 in the title. The bag that I bought was labeled “Panthermic 777 Developer” by BPi Industries, Inc. If they are an actual industry, they might think about upgrading their printed materials (which are dated March of 1980 and look like they were created on a badly functioning mimeograph machine). The instructions appear to have been translated to English (e.g., “Dissolve Part A [by the way, there is no labeling of the parts in the package] in small quantity of hot boiling water, 140^oF.” Okay, what is it? Should the water be 140^oF or 72 degrees hotter at 212^oF? And which packet of chemicals is Part A? Well, reading further, they indicate that it is normal for Part A to be brownish in color. We’re off to a shaky start.

A review of the available documentation on the Internet (minus the forum posts) gleaned this:

It works well at a broad range of temperatures (60^oF to 90^oF), the best temperature being a nice room temperature 75oF. This latitude in developing temperature accounts for the name Panthermic (though you do have to adjust the developing time for any specific temperature). This certainly would have made it useful in tropical and subtropical climates.
You can use it over and over again, with replenishment, using additional 777 developer as the replenisher.
It works best in large tanks (for one roll of 35mm, it is recommended to include an empty reel and use a larger developing tank).
Using fresh 777 on a roll of 35mm film is likely to give unpredictable results. In fact, using fresh 777 on anything seems to be asking for trouble. You have to use it up a bit, with replenishment, before it gives you acceptable, repeatable results. It is best to work the developer a while and then start replenishing it. The new developer added to the old developer then strikes a happy medium.
The developer contains glycin (not to be confused with glycine), and accounts, in part, to the cloudiness of the solution and the “glow” of the resulting prints.
The printing characteristics of the negatives are similar to that yielded by Pyro developers.
The formula for 777 is a closely guarded secret, but Ed Buffaloe feels that it is a fine grain developer of known composition containing 7g metol, 7g, paraphenylene diamine, and 7g glycin, along with 70g sodium sulfite and 700 ml water. That’s a tempting hypothesis, but seems a bit James Bondish to me.
It becomes cloudy to sludgy after repeated use (but can be filtered). Apparently the sludge is, in part, silver from the film’s emulsion. This implies to me that it is a fine-grain developer with a grain solvent that might be best suited for conventional fast (ISO 400) films. It is purported to yield very smooth, fine grain with long scale.

According to one of the sources, this developer was used by Life Magazine and a number of photographic agencies such as Magnum as early as the 1940’s, and that some very prominent names in B&W photojournalism used 777.

The best “discussion” on this developer (although it has some speculative parts in it) is on the unblinkingeye site. They mention that the appearance of the developer doesn’t inspire confidence. That’s putting it mildly. After mixing the stuff up 5 days ago, I decanted (carefully, like an aged port wine) 600 ml of developer into a mason jar. Out with it came a lot of suspended black flakes, an appearance reminiscent of some Japanese soup I had a few years ago. But this didn’t have seaweed in it. I took the liberty of filtering out the black stuff with a Melitta coffee filter. The pros say that you should use some unimportant film for the first few rolls. That would describe any images on HP5+, even if they were of the Loch Ness monster. I’ve never been able to get Ilford HP5+ to look good with any developer. Using 777 on it would either provide me with a miracle or give me a good way to get rid of the rest of that film. Suspecting that the freshly-made developer might be a bit too lively, I went for the minimum developing time of 9 minutes at 73^oF. My results? Tomorrow. The film is still drying and I won’t have the negatives scanned until late this evening.

The 40mm Lens Makes a Comeback

2006-06-20T19:06:00.001-07:00

There are several hypotheses as to why a 50mm lens came to be thought of as the “normal” lens, i.e., the focal length for 35mm film that best approximated how the human eye perceived the view in front of the camera. My best guess is that Leica decided to make a 50mm lens and it became the standard that others followed. But is it the most “normal” view?

I have read from several sources that the length of the diagonal of the 35mm frame would be the focal length that bests approximate a normal view. Given that a 35mm frame is 24mm x 36mm and using the Pythagorean Theorem, 36^{2 +}24^{2 =}43²(approximately). So, 43mm would be the ideal “normal” lens (not the one that fits the norm, but the one that best approximates the aspect seen by the eye. Applying the same hypothesis to medium format film (6cm x 6cm), the ideal normal focal length would be around 85mm. Okay, that seems about right. So why are there so few 40mm lenses out there?

Well, 40mm (+/- 3mm) aren’t that rare in the fixed lens rangefinder world. My Olympus SP has a 42mm lens, and I recall my Konica Auto S3 having a 38mm lens. The ubiquitous Canon G-III QL17 has a 40mm lens. So, 40mm seems normal for a fixed lens rangefinder, but 50mm is more normal for an interchangeable lens rangefinder? Hmm. Perhaps if 40mm had been the normal focal length for interchangeable lens rangefinders, the 35mm focal length would have suffered in sales. Whatever the case, there appears to be a sudden resurgence in 40mm lenses for interchangeable lens cameras. And I like the focal length.

To be fair, Leica sold a 40/2 Summicron on its Leica CL in the early 1970’s, and the follow-up Minolta CLE had a similar 40/2 Rokkor lens. An Elmarit-C 40/2.8 appeared briefly but was quickly pulled from production. But for the next 25 years, fixed-lens rangefinders disappeared from inventories, along with their 40mm lenses. Then, as quickly as they became extinct, we see:

45mm Planar on the Contax G cameras

40/2.8 Sonnar LTM lens on the Rollei RF (a Cosina made body). The 40/2.8 lens on the Rollei 35 was a killer lens, so this was a nice reintroduction to an old favorite.

43/1.9 Pentax was released in two versions, an autofocus model for the Pentax SLR, and an LTM model for Leica mount cameras.

40/1.4 MC Nokton (Voigtländer) for Leica M-mount cameras.

40/1.4 SC Nokton (Voigtländer) for Leica M-mount cameras (a single coating version for those seeking the older, lower contrast qualities for black and white shooting).

40/2.8 Pentax pancake lens for Pentax SLRs.

40/2.8 Nikkor pancake for Nikon SLRs.

45/2.8 Tessar pancake for Contax/Yashica SLRs.

I know I missed one or two, but eight lenses in this focal length range makes me a happy man. For rangefinder users, I think that the new Voigtländer 40s are the best news. This is a very small lens that you won’t mind carrying all day that can shoot in low light. It's the smallest fast “normal” lens I’ve had since the 50/1.5 Zeiss for the old Contax II mount. I wonder if Leica is ever going to design and sell another rangefinder lens. If they do, I hope that it is a 40mm Summicron or Summilux, and that they make it small. Until then, my 40/2 Rokkor and 40/1.4 Nokton will serve me well.

Are Digital Cameras Improving Photography?

2006-06-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

Is the advent of good digital cameras improving photography? On the surface, the majority of people with digital cameras would probably concur. And in some ways, it has. Several years ago, there was a fellow who frequently posted his work on the web and advertised it to the Leica Users Group. The only consistency in this man’s work was that it was always dreadful. Some of the folks on the LUG tried to give him suggestions for improvement (always ignored), and finally he was flamed off the LUG as a troll. I don’t think so. I think he was just a terrible photographer. But something did improve his images. He bought a digital camera, which did his focusing, his exposure control, and whatever else a digital camera does on “Program” mode. My reaction? That’s better…now some of his pictures are in focus. Just about everyone who didn’t know how to compose a decent photo does better with digital than with their old point and shoot film camera. But is their photography (technically speaking) any better? I wonder.

I noticed a similar phenomenon back in the mid-1980’s when the personal computer was in its most rapid growth phase. I recall reading an issue of PC that tested literally dozens of available word processing programs. Everyone was waiting for the next upgrade, the next peripheral, the next printer. Everyone was truly excited about this new tool. I was teaching college during the personal computer boom, and I saw term papers go from being sloppily-typed and covered with liquid paper to being fully justified, perfectly formatted masterpieces. Until you read them, you could get the impression that the term papers written on the computer were better. They were worse, much worse. They looked better. But they were worse. Why? I suspect that they were composed at the computer, printed, and submitted. No rough draft, no note cards, no working at the library. But the printout was really impressive. From a distance, it looked like a fine piece of research. We had a critical paper shortage in the computer labs because students would type one paragraph, print it, admire how good it looked, and move on to the next paragraph. Personal computers didn’t improve anybody’s writing; it just made the finished product look better.

A digital camera gives me the same cynical feeling. You aim it in the direction of a subject, make sure that the setting is on fully automatic, press the shutter release, and wait for the results on the LCD screen two seconds later. When you see that the image wasn’t so good (but that you have sufficient memory for 624 more shots) you start firing at will. Chances are something will in there will look good. In the world of 9mm street shooting (not street photography with a 9mm lens or 9mm film…shooting at people with 9mm pistols), a similar mentality emerged when Beretta and Glock started making staggered magazines with 16-17 bullet capacities. The bad guys and the good guys started pulling the trigger more and hitting their intended targets less, a tactic known as “spray and pray”. Not good marksmanship.

I have to admit that I have a collection of digital cameras, and that they have lots of features that should make photography easier. But I get burned out trying to figure out what each setting means, no less looking at a histogram on the LCD while trying to compose a subject. Sure, the program setting on the digicam is going to take care of ten different things that will impact what this image will look like. But do I have time to look through the viewfinder and think about whether I agree with how the camera is going to handle each of those ten parameters (or if I should go to another setting)? Nobody does, especially if the subject is moving. No, you push the shutter button until the buffer fills up and hope for the best. I want to control about four things, field depth, focus, the amount of light hitting the film, and framing. I can handle those four parameters; they’re almost instinct now. Would I come out on top in a shootout with another photographer if I had a Leica M6 and he had a Nikon dSLR? Maybe not. But I would have more fun and be more satisfied with the effort than if I had a Nikon dSLR. And isn’t that why I picked up this avocation in the first place?

War Photographer (2001)

2006-06-18T12:50:00.000-07:00

Robert Capa (Andre Friedmann) and James Nachtwey are the two most prominent war photographers of record. Capa's biography, Blood and Champagne, is an entertaining book, as is John Steinbeck's A Russian Journal, a brief summary of a trip to Russian taken by Steinbeck and Capa after WWII. Both are recommended reads.
There is no biography of James Nachtwey's life [yet], but the documentary War Photographer is certainly a window into his life's work. While Capa and Nachtwey may be the two greatest war photographers, there couldn't be two more different people. Capa was a smoking, drinking, womanizing free spirit who took photographs for the money (to finance the smoking, drinking, and womanizing) and the fame. Nachtwey was cut from a different bolt of cloth. He is reserved, soft-spoken, and pensive. And he takes photographs in hopes of making a difference.
The 90-minute film (video, actually) begins with Capa's familiar quote "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." You then get a very good feel for just how close Nachtwey gets to his subjects. A micro-video camera mounted on the top of Nachtwey's Canon SLR documents his position and distance while shooting in a variety of situations. He does get close, and is able to do so in no small part due to his appearance. He is tall, thin, and completely innocuous in his demeanor. While Capa might have looked like a swaggering Mediterranean movie star type, Nachtwey looks like a male model for Wall Street business clothing. He looks empathetic, and people let him photograph them during the most terribly tragic moments in their life.
While his primary genre is war photography, there is relatively little emphasis on the dead. A dead soldier might be regarded as a pawn that has been taken out of the game. Once killed, he no longer ceases to exist, at least as a being with feelings. It is difficult to feel sorrow for the dead as they no longer suffer. Nachtwey devotes nearly all of his attention on those who continue to suffer from war, the parents, the spouses, the children, and the siblings of the dead, those still living. And it is easy to grieve for them.
In addition to photographing war, Nachtwey documents destitution caused by poverty and famine. Many of those photographs are far more tragic than the war photographs. And he spends considerable time on deplorable working and living conditions (primarily in Indonesia).
This is not a feel-good movie, and it might not appeal to a non-photographer. I'm not sure I would want to see it twice in the same year. It did garner an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 2001. The primary dialogue is German and English, so there are subtitles. It has been translated (via subtitles) into Spanish, French, German, and Italian.

Fomapan 200 Creative Film in PMK Pyro

2006-06-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

PMK Pyro is known to work well with older film formulations. The newer tabular grain film (Kodak Tmax and Ilford Delta) have less silver in them and, consequently, less staining with Pyro. I have had good luck with Ilford FP4+ in PMK Pyro. I had been looking forward to trying some of the European films such as Fomapan and Fortepan with PMK Pyro.
This week, I took a trip to the Audubon Zoo with some Fomapan 200 Creative, a film manufactured in the Czech Republic. In researching this film, one web site states that it is an advanced T-grain film. Foma does not specify this on their spec sheet. Whatever the case, I was not expecting good results from this film. After developing some test shots, I was pleasantly surprised. The film stains well (N.B. - it is developed with a dilution twice as concentrated as the 1:2:100 generally used for PMK Pyro) and the tonality is quite good without any granularity problems.

The day was fairly bright, so I was expecting blocked up shadows and blown highlights, but the tonal gradation was better than I anticipated. Enlargements from this negative show the granularity to be more than acceptable.

There is grain, but the staining of the pyro appears to keep it in check.
Sharpness is also quite good for a 200 ISO film. At $2.50 a roll, the combination of Fomapan 200 and PMK Pyro should appeal to frugal photographers.

The 50mm Heliar - An Old Design That's Still Superb

2006-06-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

My interest in cameras and photography leans decidedly toward “retro”, so when Cosina licensed the Voigtländer name and commenced production of very retro-looking rangefinder cameras, I was an immediate aficionado of the camera and lens line. What made these cameras particularly attractive was the excellent design and stellar performance of the lenses. However, when the Bessa T Heliar 101^st Anniversary Set was announced in 2001, I had initially decided to pass on buying that kit. It appeared to be a limited edition collector’s item, designed to be placed in a cabinet alongside the Leica commemorative editions. Then a colleague directed me to a photo posted on a Japanese web site. It was a color photo of a softly-lighted, painted wooden toy in front of a toy store at night. Everything about that image seemed right, sharpness, even contrast, smooth bokeh, everything. Despite the $1,000 price tag and the fact that I already had a Bessa T, I ordered the Bessa T Heliar 101^st Anniversary Set that day.

As lens designs go, the Heliar is positively retro. A very simple lens designed in 1900 by Hans Harting of Voigtländer, the first Heliar consisted of five elements with cemented doublets on the front and back. The first few samples had problems with astigmatism and heavy coma. In 1903, Harting changed the sequence such that the three concave elements were surrounded by an outer and an inner convex element, an idea that he may have borrowed from the earlier Tessar. This third design, named the Dynar, is similar to the today’s Voigtländer Heliar.

Voigtländer’s 50/3.5 Heliar has everything that I could possibly wish for in a lens with the exception of speed. But with lens speed comes greater size and weight, and lenses designed primarily for speed generally don’t stack up as well as slower lenses in daylight shooting at medium apertures. What do I like in a lens?

The “normal” focal length of 40-55mm. I am occasionally ribbed on forums for allegedly having more normal lenses than anyone else. Why do I do like normal lenses so much? They are invariably less expensive than longer or shorter focal lengths, they can be relatively fast despite being in a small package, they are less likely to produce the distortion associated with wide angle lenses, and they are easier to focus accurately than are telephoto lenses. And they produce images that look “normal”, i.e., like my eyes perceive the subject. By the way, I have four 50/3.5 Cosina-Voigtländer Heliars in my collection of normal lenses.

Sharpness from center to edge. Most lenses perform best in their center, with resolution falling off at the edges. A well-designed lens should be sharp from center to edge.
Sharpness wide open. Even a very old or crudely-designed lens can perform fairly well when stopped down to f/8. But if you want to keep your subject in focus and the rest of the picture soft, you have to shoot wide open.
Even contrast from center to edge. Like resolution, contrast tends to be higher in the middle, and drops off at the edges.
Even brightness from center to edge. Ultra-wide lenses are notorious for vignetting, and the effect is even worse when you get blue sky in the image at the upper corners. A good lens should not have a hot spot in the center.
Long tonal scale. When color film became the favored medium of professional photographers, lens design was optimized for color. What increased color saturation also increased contrast and decreased tonal scale. I prefer black and white photography, and I try to find films, developers, and lenses that give me a long tonal scale. Sometimes that means buying 50-year-old lenses. Recently, Cosina obliged people like me and released a 40/1.4 Nokton that was single-coated. The raison d'être for that lens is increased tonal scale.
Smooth bokeh. Virtually nobody in the Western World talked about bokeh by name two decades ago, and you will have difficulty finding a definition for it in a modern dictionary or encyclopedia. Bokeh is the rendering of out-of-focus areas of a photograph. While I don’t think that lovely bokeh will make or break a photograph, I do think that ugly, distracting, or idiosyncratic bokeh will ruin an otherwise excellent photograph. Bokeh from mirror lenses is the worst, changing point sources of light into bright circles. Bokeh from modern, aspherical lenses can be distracting, with sources of light showing up as crescents or round, wafer-like objects, some with double-lines. At worst, it can look like an out-of-focus fireworks display in the background. When it is at its best, it is not at all distracting and serves to give the image a three-dimensional feel.
Resistance to flare. I frequently observe posters on forums singing the virtues of a particular lens only to conclude with the regrettable caveat that flare is a problem.

Two versions of the Voigtländer 50/3.5 Heliar have been produced, and both were produced in relatively small numbers in limited-edition sets. The earlier version was a collapsible silver lens in Leica thread mount. A newer version that is still available from some vendors is a rigid lens in Nikon rangefinder mount. Both lenses are very small and very lightweight. They are the same optical design and perform equally well. Like Nikon rangefinder lenses, the aperture scale rotates when the lens is focused. It should take most shooters only a few minutes to adjust to this.

Cosina released the first Bessa R2S Nikon-compatible rangefinder body in 2001, along with a similar Contax-compatible rangefinder body, the R2C. Cosina produced no lens line for the Contax-compatible body, but did release a full complement of modern Voigtländer lenses in Nikon-compatible mounts. This was great news for Nikon users as Nikon rangefinder lenses in excellent condition are in short supply due to being coveted by collectors. At the time Cosina started production of the Nikon-mount lenses, my collection of Nikon-mount lenses consisted of two 50/1.4 lenses in non-collectible condition. Thanks to Cosina, Nikon RF users now had access to very high-performing multicoated lenses, two of them aspherical models. And Cosina appears to have taken special efforts to design these lenses to resemble their Nikon counterparts. I eventually invested in four of the focal lengths I use routinely, from 21 to 50mm. The 21 and 28 are exceptionally compact.

The Voigtländer R2S and 50/3.5 Heliar is my favorite camera/lens combination. My left index finger rests naturally under the aperture ring, steadying the front of the lens, and my right index finger moves naturally to the focusing wheel in front of the shutter release. This allows fine-tuning both aperture and focus without having to move either hand. And with the trigger winder attached below, I can advance the film without having to move either hand or my eye from the back of the camera. Those who are familiar with Nikon rangefinders are aware that the focusing helical is in the camera body, not the lens. This means that the entire lens moves during focusing. Those accustomed to Leica rangefinders invariably find themselves inadvertently changing the focus slightly when changing aperture. I have not had problems with this while shooting with the R2S; the aperture ring does not have click-stops and moves very smoothly and effortlessly when changing aperture. My right index finger resting on the focusing wheel serves as a brake to prevent losing my focus. The Heliar controls flare very well, a must in street shooting where one doesn’t have control over the lighting. The front element is recessed within a deep lens hood. Bright point-sources of light (such as reflections of the sun from a polished automobile) are well-controlled as small, 10-spiked stars of light.

The shot below was taken with a Nikon-mount 50/3.5 Heliar on a Bessa R2S. The lens excels in color and B&W work. It is probably the best all-around lens I have.

The image below was taken on a very bright, dry, cloudless day. The Heliar kept the flare down to small stars. Overall contrast of the image was not compromised by the bright point sources of light from the sun.

Photographers are often asked if they would replace a certain body or lens if it were lost or stolen. That is not an option for the collapsible LTM-mount Heliar as they are no longer available new. And this won’t be an option for long with the NHS R2S Heliar Limited Edition as it was produced in small numbers and relatively few are left. That’s why I have four Heliars…what if something happened to three of them?

Rangefinder Cameras - Why They Have Survived 80 Years

2006-06-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

I very rarely shoot with a single lens reflex these days, but it’s not because I’m in a state of photographic semi-retirement. I’m currently shooting more than I ever have. The advantages of using a single lens reflex are not advantages I need, and the disadvantages of SLRs are enough to make me leave them at home. In fact, people who bought a single lens reflex in the 1970’s and 1980’s and never used a lens other than the 50mm lens that came with the camera should have bought a rangefinder instead. But almost nobody did, and the rangefinder lost its popularity. Enter the autofocus camera, and the rangefinder all but disappeared. So why is there a dedicated following of rangefinder aficionados still around today?

It can be much smaller and lighter than an SLR. A Contax T or a Leica IIIf with a 50/3.5 Elmar can fit comfortably in one’s trouser pocket.
It has a brighter viewfinder. The viewfinder of an SLR gets dimmer as one uses slower lenses. Because the rangefinder viewfinder does not use the light path through the lens mounted on the camera, the viewfinder is always the same brightness regardless of the lens used.
It is (in my opinion) easier to focus. Quickly focusing a rangefinder entails finding a hard edge on the subject and merging two images of that hard edge into one. This advantage is particularly important in dim light. If you can see the reflection in someone’s eye, you can focus on it with a rangefinder.
You can use colored filters with black and white film without having your subject in the viewfinder turn bright yellow or dark red. This is another reason why rangefinders easier to focus.
It has less shutter lag than an SLR. When you trip the shutter of an SLR, several things must happen immediately afterward. The mirror must move out of the way of the light path to the film, the camera body must quickly close the lens aperture to the desired f-stop, the two focal plane shutter curtains must traverse the light path, the aperture must then return to the open setting, and the mirror must return to the downward angled position. A rangefinder exposure involves only the movement of the shutter curtains.
It is quieter than an SLR, for the reasons stated above.
It has less vibration during the exposure than an SLR, for the reasons stated above. When you have all of the activity of an SLR occurring right around the fraction of a second of exposure, hand-held shots are generally limited to 1/60^th of a second or faster. I’ve never gotten a clean SLR shot hand-held at 1/30^th or slower. Mirror flap is the primary culprit.

That mirror box might be the Achilles heel of the SLR. While it allows the SLR photographer to use long telephoto lenses, macro lenses, and close-up bellows/extension tubes, that mirror box is in a very awkward position, right between the lens and the film. This posed a challenge for lens designers. Lenses that once sat closer to the film are now displaced forward due to the mirror box situated in front of the shutter. Major lens redesigns were necessary. The camera body had to be deeper, and SLR lenses were invariably larger and heavier as were their lens elements. And the SLR camera and SLR lens have a shorter mean time between failures due to the mechanisms that must go into play at the time of exposure. Shoot a thousand rolls of film through the SLR and your mirror has flapped up and down very quickly 36,000 times. The mirror flap is damped by thin strips of foam rubber or plastic. These can deform and deteriorate over time, and must be replaced. There is some question of just how accurate critical focusing can be when the mirror may not be resting exactly where it was resting when the camea left the factory years before. A piece of foam doesn't malfunction all at once. The accuracy of the focusing deteriorates slowly over time.

Rangefinder cameras and lenses are legendary for their extremely long lifespan and reliability. It is not uncommon to see rangefinder enthusiasts plunking down money for a 50-year-old rangefinder body and lens with the intention of using it, and using it a lot. And, like the old Volkswagen Beetle, it can see decades of steady service. It might get ugly, but it will still work just fine. Stephen Gandy has a photograph of the late street photographer Garry Winogrand’s Leica M4 on his site. It had seen many years of action, and it still worked just fine. Like all precision instruments, you need to have a rangefinder camera cleaned, lubricated, and serviced every so often, but there is far less to go wrong with them compared to SLR and autofocus cameras and lenses.

The rangefinder was the hands-down favorite of history's street phontographers and photojournalists. The rangefinder is less obtrusive due to the combination of what is written above: small (cameras and lenses), quiet, quick to focus, and easy to frame. And remember that, with an SLR, the subject won’t likely be in clear focus in the viewfinder when you first bring the camera up to your eye. And when you trip the shutter, you lose sight of the subject while the mirror is up. It's very hard to track a moving target when the viewfinder blacks out, and the brief shutter lag doesn't help either. The instant that the subject's image is being recorded on film is the instant you cannot see the subject through the viewfinder.

So why isn’t everyone using rangefinders? There are some downsides to rangefinders.

Parallax problems. Because you are not viewing through the actual taking lens, close focusing leads to some parallax issues in which the framing is not quite what you expected it to be. This is really only a major issue when your subject is closer than 5 feet, but it is an issue.
Limitations on lens length. This is probably what spelled the demise for rangefinders in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Everyone seemed to get long telephoto envy There were lots of oohs and aahs when you were seen with a long telephoto lens. But I have to admit that most of my long telephotos always stayed in the case in my closet. I just don't shoot sporting events or birds.
Macrophotography is not the forte of the rangefinder. There are expensive devices to allow a rangefinder to photograph very small objects, but it makes more sense to use an SLR with a macro lens or with bellows/extension tubes.
No zoom lenses. Need I say more? Forget finding a rangefinder zoom. There aren't any. The Contax G2 had what was called a rangefinder zoom lens available, but a Contax G2 isn't a rangefinder. It is an autofocus camera.
Accessory viewfinders. Rangefinders excel at wide angle and extreme wide angle photography, but you need to use accessory viewfinders to predict the angle of view, and these accessory viewfinders aren't cheap.

These comments above pertain to 35mm photography. If we move to medium format, everything I’ve said above still applies, and to a much greater degree. The flapping mirror is bigger and slower, the body is heavier, the lenses are slower and heavier, the viewfinder is dimmer, and the camera becomes more awkward to handle without a tripod. But you can get a medium format rangefinder such as a Bronica 645 or a Mamiya 7 that is about the same heft as a modern 35mm SLR. And you can get a medium format rangefinder (used) that will give you a 6cm x 9cm negative.

The turn of the century (the one we had six years ago) saw a resurgence of rangefinder popularity. In the past 6 or 7 years, new 35mm rangefinder camera models emerged from Konica, Zeiss-Ikon, Hasselblad, Nikon, Voigtländer, Rollei, and the patriarch of rangefinder cameras, Leica. And for those who want to buy used rangefinder, there are thousands available on ebay and used camera stores such as KEH and Ritz Collectibles (not the Ritz Camera chain).
Who should buy one? Anyone serious about film photography who shoots subjects that can be captured with a lens length between 12mm and 135mm. That probably describes most 35mm photographers. It’s a pity that they thought they needed an SLR for their work and allowed the rangefinder to slip into relative obscurity.

Anyone interested in further reading on classic rangefinders are urged to pay a visit to Stephen Gandy's CameraQuest site. And if you decide to buy a new rangefinder and lens(es), CameraQuest is a good place to start. Mr. Gandy sells new Voigtländer cameras and lenses and is a good guy to buy from.

PMK Pyro and Ilford FP4+

2006-06-13T18:16:00.000-07:00

I'm relatively new to PMK Pyro, so I have only limited examples of its characteristics. Ilford FP4+ is lauded as being a good film to use with this developer. The image below was taken with FP4+ using a Jupiter lens.
Despite my focusing on Eric's eyeglasses, the Jupiter chose his sideburns. Nevertheless, the forehead and bokeh show the very smooth grain rendered with PMK Pyro. An enlargement from this frame gives you an idea of the smoothing effect rendered by the staining.

The image below was taken on Ilford FP4+ developed in PMK Pyro (this time with a Leica Summaron 35/2.8) .

Despite the use of stain versus silver metal in the negative, the image is extremely sharp. The enlargement of the hood ornament below shows grain, but the gradations are much smoother as in chromogenic films.

Pyro Developer - Part II

2006-06-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Why don’t more people use pyro developer? From the posts I’ve read on the Internet over the past six months, it boils down to the following (in decreasing order of importance):

It’s toxic. Well, most photographic chemicals are toxic, but I suppose that pyro is more toxic. Pyro is certainly more hazardous to your health when it is in powder form and can be inhaled. But in water, you can treat it like you treat any other mildly toxic liquid. You avoid getting it into your eyes, nose, and mouth, just like you would chlorine bleach, ammonia, and weed killer. Also, you have to avoid getting it on your skin as it can be absorbed through the skin. If you are careful, it won’t poison you (keep in mind that it used to be used as a hair dye, and that a current hair dye for men is a solution of lead acetate, another thing you don’t want to ingest). I do wear kitchen gloves while developing with pyro, but that is simply because my tanks are more light-tight than fluid-tight. If you buy the pre-mixed developer, you can eliminate the greatest hazard, i.e., inhaling the power while mixing up the stock solution. I use PMK Pyro and haven’t tried the other formulas. So from now on, whenever I mention pyro, I’m referring to PMK Pyro.
It’s fussier than most conventional black and white developers. If you are lazy or try to multitask while developing your film, you won’t like pyro. It has a tendency to streak if you are not rigid in following instructions. You’ll get the idea when I go through the workflow below.
It may not work well with your favorite black and white film. As I mentioned in the previous post, it does well with older style films rather than the new, tabular films, and it doesn’t work well at all with some slow films.
It isn’t made by Kodak, Ilford, Agfa, Paterson, Edwal, or Ethol, so you probably won’t run across it in your camera store. You can get it pre-mixed from Photographer’s Formulary. If you like it, buy The Book of Pyro by the guru of PMK Pyro, large format photographer Gordon Hutchings.
You’ll need to change from your usual fixer, and you can forget the acid stop bath. Pyro is a staining developer, and acid removes the stain. So you should use water instead of a stop bath, and you need to use an alkaline fixer. Photographer’s Formulary TF-4 Archival Rapid Fixer is ideal.

I mentioned that it is fussier than conventional developers. Pyro gives you a usable negative by staining the areas of exposed silver, and it is prone to streaking. You might want to write down the work flow as it is the strangest set of directions I’ve ever had for a black and white developer.

Before you mix up the stock developer, you should mix the fixer (1+3) in distilled water. TF-4 fixer concentrate is a turbid solution with thick layer of fine, white sediment that slowly dissolves in the stock solution. You need to agitate the concentrate to put the sediment into suspension, measure out the appropriate amount of concentrate, and then mix it with 3 parts of distilled water. You have to be sure that it is crystal clear before you use it or you will have thousands of tiny white specks appearing on your prints. Just to be safe, I mix the fixer before even loading the film in the tank.

To make a working stock solution of PMK Pyro, you mix the two concentrates with distilled water in a dilution of 1+2+100 (some lower-staining films require half the amount of water). A mixing syringe works very well for this. Within a few minutes, the solution darkens a bit, to the appearance of apple juice. To be sure that there is enough pyro to completely stain the film, use 5ml + 10ml + 500ml water for each roll of film.

Here is the workflow:

Pour the developer into the tank and cap the tank (I use Paterson).
Invert the tank several times and thump the base of the tank to dislodge bubbles.
Invert the tank twice every 15 seconds.
After each inversion, set the tank down and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise (do one or the other, but be consistent). This will give more uniform staining without streaking.
Continue the inversions for every 15 seconds for the prescribed development time.
Pour the used developer into a jar or beaker (do not discard it). You won't confuse it with your fixer. By now it is probably the color of amber beer.
Instead of a stop bath, use plain water (I use four complete refills of water in the tank).
Pour the crystal clear fixer into the tank, following the fixer’s directions. Do not exceed the recommended fixing time.
Pour out the fixer and pour the used developer back into the tank. Agitate every 30 seconds for two minutes.
Discard the now twice-used developer.
Wash in gently-running water for 20-30 minutes.

Okay, I said it was fussy, and pouring used developer into the tank after fixing does go against your instincts. But fixing the film exposes the silver a bit more to the staining effect of the develop, staining it a bit more deeply. Apparently the water cycle also increases the staining.

Which films work best with PMK Pyro? I’ve just scratched the surface. Ilford FP4+ works well. I recently bought some Fomapan and Fortepan. I’ll report on those results when I get them. Don’t use slow films unless you’ve read somewhere that they stain well with Pyro. I’m hoping that the cheap European films fare well with it.

Pyro Developer - Part I

2006-06-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

I generally minimize disappointments by sticking with the tried and true in photography. My most often used lens is a “normal” lens (40mm to 55mm), I usually use TRI-X rated at the nominal ISO of 400, and I have historically used reliable D-76 in developing. I also like Rodinal, one of the oldest developers still commercially available today. So deciding to fiddle with pyro developer was out of character for me. Why fool with a 19th-century developer originally made from Chinese gall nuts that very few photographers even think of using today?

It seems to work best with “older” emulsions. I wouldn’t recommend it for the newer tabular grain films. But with the conventional black and white films available from Europe and China for half the price of their newer cousins from Kodak and Ilford, I can afford to burn twice as many rolls each week. Ilford FP4+ is my favorite moderate speed film, and it works very well with pyro developers.
It seems to work best with faster films. TRI-X and other 400 ISO films fare much better with pyro than do slower films such as Ilford Pan F+ (ISO 50). I don’t shoot many rock formations, ice sculptures, or bowls of fruit. Everything I shoot seems to be moving, so I need higher speed films. Agfa APX 100 is as slow as I can usually tolerate and still get usable frames.
It stains the negatives. Why would anyone want a developer that stains the negatives a nauseating greenish-yellow? Because the stain goes right where the film was struck with light, and the intensity of the staining is proportional to the amount of light having hit the negative. Even this would not have made pyro developer appealing to me had I not used chromogenic black and white films for the past several years. Chromogenic black and white films are those that must be developed using C-41 processing, the same processing as color negative films. Instead of silver metal grains forming the image on the film, there are “dye fields” that are formed. The result is prints exhibiting very little visible grain. I have produced prints from 400 ISO chromogenic negatives that look like they were shot with 25-50 ISO silver halide film. Finer grain while maintaining high film speed is very appealing. Once you have shot Ilford XP2 or Kodak BW400CN film at ISO 400 with little grain, it is hard to go back to TRI-X; the grain appears gargantuan. The staining produced by pyro developers reduces the perception of grain associated with TRI-X and other fast silver halide films. One can use a grain solvent developer to reduce the grain of TRI-X, but then you reduce the apparently sharpness.
It has a long shelf life. If I shoot with any regularity, my stock pyro solutions will be used up long before they have a chance to poop out. Better yet, pyro solution reportedly looks different when it is losing its potency. Mine hasn’t yet, so I don’t know the look of dead pyro yet. I’m not so trusting of other developers such as D-76 and XTOL. My rule of thumb is to dump down the sink anything older than 60 days even if it was in an amber bottle filled to the top.
It takes up very little space. Like Rodinal, you can get pyro pre-mixed as a liquid. Unlike Rodinal, pyro is in two bottles, a small one with a light brown liquid, and a larger bottle with a clear liquid. My wife has appreciated the gradual disappearance of the 1-gallon amber chemical bottles littering the kitchen and my office.

Why not use pyro? If the above arguments are compelling, why doesn’t everyone use it? Perhaps a better question is why don’t I personally know another human on earth who uses it?

That’s the topic of my next post.

Film Cameras in a Digital Age - A Rapid Extinction

2006-06-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Each month for the past few years, film photographers have lamented the loss of some entity tied to film-based photography. Kodak announced the halting of R&D for black and white developers, Agfa (Germany) discontinued film production, and Ilford (England) briefly halted the manufacture of film. Clearly the digital age is making the film and developer industry a losing enterprise.

The film camera industry is also beginning to unravel. It began with medium format cameras, the tools of professional photographers. Medium format camera makers are abandoning the genre at an alarming rate. Bronica bowed out, most of Fujifilm bowed out, Mamiya bowed out, Pentax bowed out, and Contax bowed out. If you want a medium format camera, Hasselblad and Rolleiflex are still available, if you have deep pockets. If you don't, you might think about something built in the Ukraine. And the 35mm camera makers are beginning to fold up. No more Contax film cameras. Minolta and Konica merged, then dropped out of the camera business. Nikon dispensed with most of its film cameras. And yesterday I read that the Hasselblad XPAN, a panoramic 35mm camera, is being discontinued. The reason? They use solder in their circuits, and lead is not enviro-friendly. It would cost too much to re-engineer the circuits to eliminate lead solder.

Enviro-friendliness and homeland security are making procurement of darkroom chemicals problematic. Local camera stores don't want to get saddled with developer and fixer sitting on the shelves when digital is what is moving. You can buy it from the larger retail stores on the web, that is, if they can ship it to you. Toxic? They won't send it.