Summicron 50 GF-1

Untitled
Originally uploaded by rkolewe

Perfect.

Summicron on GF-1

Untitled
Panasonic GF-1, Summicron 50mm with Voigtlander VM adapter

Like a lot of people, I'm waiting for an M9; in the meantime, playing with a Panasonic GF-1. I can't tell whether the focus is a bit off in these (though at f/8 it shouldn't matter that much), whether it's camera shake (1/60 sec here, others 1/50, but what's that old rule about the shutter speed never being longer than the reciprocal of the focal length for handheld shots, and 50mm on the GF-1 is equivalent to 100mm, so...), noise (iso 800 here, but others are iso 400), or whether the Summicron draws just a bit soft (or is that another way of saying diffraction...) with this sensor.

Positive!

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

The point of the Leica Year exercise was one film, one lens, one year.

I can't do it anymore.

I put colour film in the M6 (Portra NC 400) and I'm in love. This stuff is luscious. I haven't been this excited about colour in a long time.

I did it.

Before they're scattered to the four winds

Sold the D700 today. The lenses are up next. There will now be an interval when the only digital camera I own is the one in my phone. (I even had to borrow back my long ago given away and now venerable CoolPix to take this shot.)

Leica, I hate you

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

Ok. I've been shooting TriX with the M6 since June, almost every day (certainly every day on average) and this is destroying my life. I stopped using the G10, and sold it a few weeks ago. (The long term value of a digicam tends to zero. I sold the G10 just before the G11 became available. Good move.) For a while I was shooting the D700 on weekends, because I love colour, but it's soooo heavy, and I just put colour film in the M6, and now I'm really reluctant to haul D700+24-70+70-300+++, like 4 kilos of camera and lens and shit? And now there's the M9, and I just got a 90mm Elmarit-M 2.8 on eBay. If anybody wants a D700 kit drop me an email. It's only a matter of time before it winds up on craigslist first eBay second, and I order an M9. I've decided that I hate 35mm film (strange since I really like 120 and 4x5) but I love the Leica. Trouble. This is trouble.

Pushing it.

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

Roll 8, pushed two stops to ISO 1600. Love the grain.

In the dark

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

I definitely have a predilection for shooting in the dark. This is why I really like the D700. But it seems that film doesn't do too badly in the dark, either. This is straight Tri-X at ISO 400. The next roll I'm pushing to 1600.

Noir

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

Roll number 6 survived xrays...

That took a while

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2
(some perspective correction)

Not that I haven't been shooting, but that I haven't got film back from the lab, having been away. So a couple of rolls to catch up on. Here's number five.

I've decided that when necessary I will crop and adjust these images (sometimes it's just too painful not to) but I will say more or less what I've done.

Why is this?

Untitled
Nikon D700, 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6

Another set of "colour weekend" shots, from a walk along the CN right of way, and the construction site of the the new underpass at Queen and Dufferin. It seems to me my colour shots are generally much stronger than my black & white. Interesting.

4

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

Here.

I don't know about this one.

Roll number 3

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

Here.

Time to do some high-res scans and a few prints.

Colour weekend

Untitled
Nikon D700, 24-70mm f/2.8.
Photoshop composite of two images.

Just don't look too closely at the timestamps.

Seconds

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

A bit of a gap, since I lost a roll of film. Not loaded properly so the film advance didn't. Sigh. So strictly speaking this is roll number 3, but we'll call it number 2. Now up on flickr, here.

A few observations. Looking at the images I find myself wanting to crop, which is something I almost never do with the D700 or G10 or 4x5. I guess I'm not used to composing in the rangefinder yet.

Another thing: shadow detail seems to be nonexistant. I think this is an artifact of the scans but I'm not sure. I'll have to make a hi-res scan myself to see.

And... the D700 with the 24-70 feels like even more of a behemoth now. Also I haven't touched the G10 since the M6 arrived. It may be for sale soon.

Showtime!

Untitled
Leica M6, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2

Got my first roll back from the lab today — and took in my second, and shot most of a third while walking over to King & Spadina. I'm having the film processed at Toronto Image Works, and getting 6 megapixel low resolution scans to use as digital contact sheets. I add metadata to the jpeg's from the cd of scans, and import to Lightroom. Any images that I want to work with further I'll make high resolution scans of by myself, and post-process in Lightroom and Photoshop in the usual way, and then print.

I'll post a few images from each roll in my Leica Year low resolution scans set on flickr, untouched as they come from the lab (except for the addition of metadata). Each image will be tagged with the roll number. As I work up the images, I'll add other sets for work prints and final prints. And yes, these will be actual physical prints.

The first roll is here.


Some process problems. First of all, metadata. When shooting 120 or 4x5 the pace is quite leisurely, and keeping track of aperture, shutter speed, time and place in a notebook is not a problem. With the Leica, though, shooting a dozen frames in a few minutes is easy (digital reflexes, remember?) so keeping track of things is more difficult. For this reason the metadata is likely to be inaccurate.

Second, the scan quality isn't great. The resolution is fine, but the dynamic range isn't, and the scans are dusty. So why not just scan everything myself, and stop whining? It takes too long. And it's just a contact sheet, after all.

Other things? Looking at this first roll, especially the pictures of the participants in the Influency poetry salon, I kept thinking of Robert Capa's comment, “If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.” The shot of NourbeSe Philip would be much better with tighter cropping, for example. Of course I can do that in post-processing, but maybe I should have gone with a 50mm lens. Or maybe I should just get closer.

More to come.

Colour weekend

Untitled
Nikon D700, 24-70mm f/2.8

I've decided that on the weekends I'm going to shoot digital colour, just to keep my hand in...

Anticipation

So I've now shot 2 rolls of Tri-X. Don't have them back from the lab yet: it's supposed to be in by 11am out by 3pm but asking for scans adds a day. I may decide to scan my own after all.

I realize I have digital reflexes, and I wonder if any of the images will be even vaguely in focus since I'm having some difficulty with the rangefinder with eyeglasses, compounded by my tendency to shoot in low light...

Starting up

M6 by G10

The M6 arrived yesterday. It's an early one, manufactured in 1987 according to the serial number; the red dot says "Leitz" rather than the later ones which say "Leica". (I'm not about to become a collector. Really.) It is a lovely machine, feels just right in the hand. and the sound of the shutter is seductive. Yes, the infamous removable bottom plate is a pain, but I can see that I'll get used to loading film that way quick enough.

Speaking of film, it was a bit of a run-around finding Tri-X 400 last night (everybody's buying it!) but I did get some, and have started shooting.


I also have three rolls of 120 and some 4x5's to scan..

A look at black and white

Untitled
Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515, Tri-X 320

This post is mainly a test (how to blog a picture from flickr), but I like this image. Apropos the previous post, does it look like it was taken in 2009? It was, with my old Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515 (which my father got as a teenager in Germany), on 120 TriX film. But does it look contemporary? To me there's a 1920's feel about this image — except for that fence.

Halfway

My lens arrived today. It looks remarkably like a piece of scientific equipment: the objective of a microscope, or a part of an apparatus used to look at thin transparent slices of crystal. With a bit of luck the camera body will arrive early next week.

In the meantime... I assume that everyone reading this knows about Leica, but in case you don't (or in case you haven't read it) go read this article from the New Yorker.

All done? Crazy, yes?

I'm not a camera collector, and I've argued at various times and in various places that the whole notion of the "decisive moment" (and of course the Leica mythology is all wrapped up in that) is the equivalent of the lyric epiphany in poetry, and, to my mind, just as suspect. (Not everyone shares this suspicion.)

So what the hell am I doing committing to taking pictures with a Leica for a year, if I don't buy this mystique? I don't feel that I need to learn how to see, either. (Oh, arrogance. Who knows how to see? Who sees?) (Maybe I've seen, once or twice. Maybe you have, too.) (HCB saw almost all the time.)

It's about constraints. It's about the liberating effect of constraints, like saying, for a year I will write nothing but sonnets, or, this novel will not use the letter "e", or, I will paint only in shades of blue, or ... I'm looking for a musical example, help me here (hear).

I'm also thinking about something Jörg Colberg wrote a while ago, about wanting to see black and white photographs that didn't look like they were taken in 1975 (or was it, that looked like they were taken in 2009?) (Colberg's tone often annoys me, but his blog is just as often a source of wonders.) Also a while ago, I started tagging images on flickr "another look at black and white" (deliberately echoing Philip Glass' amazing early work, Another Look at Harmony)

Another look. That's what this is about.

Blame and intent

It's all Mike Johnston's fault. And I've never met the man. But I just bought a Leica M6 on eBay, and have a Zeiss 35mm f/2 Biogon on order from B&H. Maybe I got a bit crazy after selling a bunch of prints at a show. Whatever. My intention, when the M6 arrives, is to shoot film with it every day (more or less), for a year (say, until July 1, 2010) and document the process and results here. No doubt I'll continue to shoot digital and 4x5 as well, so some of that may turn up here as well.

While I'm waiting for the body and the lens to arrive, I'll write a bit about where I'm coming from, and a bit about theory, and maybe point at some of my other stuff. I've also got a Zeiss Nettar 515 from the 1940's and a couple of rolls of 120 TriX ISO 320 that I want to use up before going to 35mm. So all that as preamble.

Watch this space.