Just enjoying the images I captured on my day with Paul.
One more roll to scan. I’m about to go on a business trip to Seattle, so I won’t be able to scan anything until I return.
Category: Street
Leica M6 TTL
Posted by – August 28, 2010
HP5, Xtol, and a 50mm Summicron . . .
Before you start reading, just take a look at this image for a sec.
Look some more.
Ok.
Now we can start the post.
This past Sunday I spent with Paul Lester in Akron, Ohio, and we swapped cameras; he shot with my Bessa R2a mounting my 35mm Zeiss Biogon and I used his Leica M6 TTL with the accompanying 50mm Summicron. As we were parting, Paul said “I can’t wait for your write-up on the Leica, you don’t miss details and I want to know what you think.” So as to not make him wait, I summarized my off-the-cuff thoughts, then drove home, thought a lot more and have ruminated every day since then. Some of those ruminations made their way into my last post, about Brand Loyalty. I finally developed the rolls of HP5 last night, looked at the negs, scanned some, and wanted to share the impressions I have gathered.
Rangefinders in General
I’ve wanted a Rangefinder camera for the longest time, even going back to my FTb days. I had my aim on a Canon Canonet back around 1975. I remember shopping for one in the 47th Street Photo catalog. I can’t remember when I first came across the description of a rangefinder and the sense of “seeing beyond the framelines” when shooting with one but I had always wanted to try that idea. I never got one back then.
When I got back into photography, and realized that, in addition to shooting with my new Canon digital cameras, I would also continue to shoot film, I started to research rangefinders and finally realized what “Leica” meant. In 2004 or so I didn’t even know Leica had an SLR line, and when I read about the idea that one could buy a Leica lens and mount it on their Canon body with an adapter, I thought that *any* Leica lens could do that. When I found out the author was talking about an ‘R’ version of a Leica lens, not the “M” version, I was crestfallen. But I knew I still wanted to audition some of that Leica magic.
But, oh the cost. So, I bought a combo I could afford: a Bessa body and a Zeiss lens. The rangefinder experience is as great as I thought, and there is no doubt in my mind that I’ve captured some very nice images with that combo. But I had always wanted to try the real deal. Especially after I discovered Steve Huff’s web site. His write-ups of Leica gear got my blood boiling again, his passion for the gear comes leaping off the page. So, when Paul let me know we would get together in Akron, I couldn’t resist asking him if I could use his M6 that day. He agreed. I shot two rolls of HP5. So, what did I think?
The M6 TTL body
Solid is as solid does. There is absolutely no doubt that as a piece of camera hardware, the Leica M6 TTL is in a class by itself. The construction and the feel is better than anything I have ever handled. The only camera that even comes close is a Canon F1n, a lone copy of which I owned for a couple weeks a year-and-a-half ago. I had bought a used copy from Adorama, there was a problem with the AE finder, so I returned it for repair. But they took forever to fix it, and I eventually canceled the order. The F1n was as close as anything has ever been to the Leica, but not really. The Leica’s fit and finish is wonderful. It handled great, and it was invisible in my hands. Interestingly, however, the Bessa has one advantage. On the back of the body, where you would rest your thumb, the Bessa has a hump of sorts which allows you to grip the back of the body with your thumb and this does give you a sense of security when you hold the camera. The Leica does not have this hump, and I immediately missed it. So did Paul after he shot with the Bessa for a while and then returned to the Leica. One could buy a grip, of course, to make up for this slight difficiency.
The Leica’s shutter is indeed quieter than the Bessa’s, and noticeably so.
Bottom Plate/film loading
The Leica famously has a bottom plate which must come off to load film. Much has been written about how clunky and weird this is. There is also a back door which opens so you can position the sprocket holes after you’ve dropped the film canister in the body. As soon as Paul showed me how to set this up, I could see how it would be easy to load film time after time after time. Paul mentioned a story about Annie Leibowitz where she can apparently load film in a Leica M while running full-out, and with the set up of the back and lower plate I can absolutely believe it. Why anyone would complain about this admittedly quirky way to load film I cannot imagine, because it is absolutely easier than opening the door, threading the take up reel, etc. The only weird thing I can think of is that there have to have been cases where people dropped the bottom plate and lost it. That was my big fear. But the process was extremely easy.
Exposure guides
The Bessa has more exposure info in the frame window than the Leica, but I liked the Leica’s simple right and left arrow much better. The Bessa shows you the proper shutter speed it wants by flashing the speed if the proper one is not currently selected, and it’s kind of annoying, actually. The Bessa has Aperture priority exposure if you want it, which is nice when you DO want it. But I wish they had chosen a more elegant way to display the exposure info.
Overall, while I did truly enjoy the picture taking experience with the M6 TTL, on a pure cost point of view, the price difference between the Bessa and the M6 is large enough that I would stay with the Bessa. You could buy three Bessas for the cost of one used M6 TTL, and while the M6 is a better-made camera, it’s not THAT much better. Do I want to own an M6 TTL some day? Yes I do. But that purchase is not at the top of my list.
The Summicron
Well, here is the deal, eh? I LOVED LOVED LOVED the lens. The lens is as special as I have heard. One reader of the blog confided in me that the 50mm Summicron was his favorite lens ever, and my-oh-my do I see what he means. While the low-res JPEGS in this post are nice enough, they don’t compare to the look of the full-res images on my screen. While I truly love the look of HP5 and Xtol, I have never seen that combo look as beautiful as it does when combined with the Summicron.
Remember, I just developed rolls of HP5 in Xtol from my Disney Hall shoot, shot with the Canon 17-40L, and I can say without any doubt in my mind that I had to tweak those scans much, much more to get the images to look the way I like as compared to the images captured with the Summicron. When I tried the default settings for contrast and clarity I had just used with the Canon images, the Summicron images were too harsh by quite a bit.
The black & white film I shot with the Summicron looked just wonderful to my eye, not too contrasty but plenty sharp enough. I wish I had shot some color chrome or negative film while I had the lens, because the color rendering with the lens is supposed to be stunning, and the lens’ reputation with black&white film was certainly borne out by my experience. I just wished I had some Delta 100 with me that day, because the HP5 is just amazing. Why, Tri-X might even look good! (grin)
I have been looking for a 50mm lens to use on my Bessa for a while, and the search is officially over. I have now begun saving for a 50mm Summicron in an M mount, and I am thinking of somehow auditioning a 50mm Summicron R lens with an adapter on my 5D.
For me, this is a case where the ‘cult’ of the hardware has been borne out by experience. At least in my case.
Thanks so much to Paul for lending me the camera for the day.
Brand Loyalty
Posted by – August 26, 2010
Disney Concert Hall. EOS-3, 17-40L, HP5, Xtol
“We all have, deep within us, a desire to be part of a Tribe. Not just any Tribe, but a successful Tribe. Because only successful Tribes continue on. This desire can be traced all the way back to those early campfires, where we would tell stories about how we succeeded at the hunt that day. We’d sit around, eat that day’s capture, and revel in the shared nature of the Tribe’s success, as personified by our tribe’s best hunter. If our tribe wasn’t so good at hunting, our tribe wouldn’t last very long. So much of our ‘modern’ social interactions are simply echoes of our desire to be part of a tribe that ate well, and survived.” — David Mamet, American playwright
Marketers use the term ‘brand identification’ when they talk about how consumers decide whether a product is one we wish to purchase. While it is sometimes true that we buy products for the product itself, we all-too-often buy the product in an attempt, on a subconscious emotional level, to acquire some of the attributes of the product in addition to the product itself. Attributes that the marketing team have ‘connected’ to the product through their ads. Ads for dish-washing liquid don’t just talk about how well the soap itself works, but imply (through the actors chosen as spokespersons, and the way those characters’ homes look, and what their kids look like) that happiness, well-behaved children, and financial success all come from choosing the correct dish-washing liquid (which their liquid personifies, of course).
The message deep beneath the ad is ‘people who buy our dish-washing liquid gain all these qualities,’ or, put another way, ‘members of OUR tribe all buy this dish-washing liquid, and see how happy we are?’
Tribal behavior includes outward displays of identification, such as wearing logo t-shirts or camera straps, using similar vocabulary and body language (“Acronyms for $20, Alex”), and unique shared activities. Families are the smallest tribal unit, and racial groups are the largest. Individuals identify with their tribe, and view people inside the tribe as ‘same’ and people outside the tribe as ‘other.’ This tends to happen to us without us being aware of it all the time, and influences a great deal of what we think and know and feel about ‘same’ and ‘other.’ It also infuses those discussions with a degree of emotion that often exceeds common sense. Example #1 that we are all familiar with is: Apple and Microsoft. All you need to do is bring up their names in a room of tech geeks and someone is bound to make a comment.
And think also about how Apple is a master at communicating to their customers that ‘our tribe is cool.’ I’ve always liked their products, mind, but I am also aware that they are selling the illusion of cool, and MS has struggled for a long time to find an answer to the Apple cult of cool. Vide the many different directions the MS marketing has tried in an effort to deflect the ‘cool’ tag Apple has adopted. Whether Apple deserves the tag or not is irrelevant, actually.
While I am aware of the desire we all share to be part of a successful ‘tribe’ (defining success in our current shared universe as ‘mastering photography’ in some form), and I am just as much a victim of this effect as the next blogger, My next post (currently in draft form, awaiting a scan of an image) is about my experiences recently using a Leica M6, and perhaps no other camera brand is as driven by the cult of ‘Tribe’ as Leica. In that post I will talk about my struggle to separate what I truly experienced in the moment with the camera in my hand while shooting as distinct from what I had bouncing around in my head about what I ‘should’ feel, as had been described to me by card-carrying members of the Leica tribe.
The point of all this? When you react or choose in an arena where there are Tribal forces at work, keep your head! Pick up the camera or shoot with the lens, try it for yourself. And then when you have the object in your hands, be CONSCIOUS. Try to be neutral. Observe your breathing. Be here now. It is just too easy to be fooled into this tribal thinking, too easy to convince yourself you see things that aren’t actually there because you want them to be there so that you can belong.
One example from recent events for me personally
However, as I said, I am just as vulnerable as the rest of us. I just went through a very similar thing, and I almost succumbed. As you know, I was weaned on Canon FD gear. The tribal influence at that time was very pro-Nikon, as my teacher was a Nikon geek. I didn’t have the cash to buy Nikon, but I could buy Canon, so I did. I resisted the tribal pull, and found that Canon gear worked just fine for me. Even today, the feel of a Canon FTb just feels right in my hand. I have never regretted it back then or now.
I read the forums of APUG to learn more about film and film processing, and I follow a particular poster and his discussions, because I have found him to be knowledgeable. He happens to shoot Canon FD gear (amongst many other film cameras). He recently made a statement in a post that the one of his favorite lenses was a Canon 50mm 1.4 FD S.S.C. lens. I own the later version of the lens, the 50mm 1.4 FD (not S.S.C.). This poster mentioned he liked the way the lens ‘drew.’ Now, with all the Canon old FD gear increasing in value these days (you can buy adapters for Micro 4/3 cameras that take the FD lenses) I looked at prices for the S.S.C. version on eBay. I came very close to buying a copy. I came close on multiple listings to buying a copy. But WHY was I doing this? Had I ever actually shot with the S.S.C. version of the lens? No. Did I know whether it was actually different than the non-S.S.C. version? No. Even if there WAS a difference, did I know whether I LIKED that difference? No. But I WANTED THE LENS ANYWAY. Now, the lens isn’t really all that expensive (they used to go for around $40, and with the recent inflation, they are now going for $60-$70, with the occasional poster looking to make a killing at $100+. When I sat back and carefully examined my longing for the lens, I realized that it was in part to be part of the Tribe that APUG poster belonged to, ’cause, after all, given what he knows, how could he be wrong about the lens? Yikes!
Now, maybe I will eventually get myself a copy of the lens to audition. And, if I don’t like it, I’ll sell it off. But I’ll be conscious about what I am doing (hopefully). When you read my soon-to-be-posted Leica thoughts, use this post as a filter for that post.
Be Here Now.
Hope Again
Posted by – August 14, 2010
We broadcast Hope 24/7
While I was in LA, I visited Freestyle, a brick-and-mortar store dedicated to the film photographer. This building was across the street. Just love the look of Delta 100 in Xtol. I’m gonna run the digital – film test again soon, this time with Delta 100 and the 5D. That will be interesting, I’d bet.
* * *
I was cleaning the office today and I organized the un-scanned frames of b&w film. Normally, see, what I do is wait until I can develop two or three rolls of 35mm at once in the same soup. This makes the most of my darkroom time, mixing the chemicals, washing, etc. My tank can handle up to three rolls at once, so, unless there’s a specific need for only one roll, I’ll let things slide until I have three of the same film (or at least, same developing time).
However, scanning takes much longer than developing. So, what I often do is scan only one roll or a few frames from one roll, note what I learned from the experience (such as above: holy smoke I like Delta 100 even more than Pan F) and make a note what to do (order more Delta 100, for instance). But then I usually have more rolls to develop, so the extra roll or frames go un-scanned. Well, I keep them folder between pages of a large heavy collection of Ansel Adams’ work in order to help flatten them.
But, until today, I had no idea how many rolls I had un-scanned stuffed into the pages of the book.
24.
Yup, that’s right, I counted 24 rolls of 35mm black and white film un-scanned in the book. That’s roughly 24 x 36 frames, or 864 images waiting to be scanned.
Yikes. Some of those rolls are from December of ’09. Wow. I had no idea. I need to come up with some system where I can scan only the promising or ‘keeper’ images. When I get my traditional darkroom running, I’ll just make a proof sheet and scan only the ones that look good. But until then, wow.
* * *
One of the best things about the blog-o-sphere is the information and inspiration that I learn from other bloggers. Some of my newer friends have really got me thinking. For instance, from Sabrina Henry I came across Steve Huff, who is now one of my daily reads. He has single-handedly re-lit my desire to own a Leica and made me even more passionate about using film (as if that were possible). And his writing style has really made me consider what I write about and why.
Then there is Mark Olwick, whose incredible Holga work has made me think through what I am trying to achieve with the look of my work, and how I need to leverage what film can do different from digital.
* * *
The next post is gonna be my 300th. See ya then.
Found Image
Posted by – August 12, 2010
Pan F, EOS 3, 17-40 Zoom, Xtol
One of the things I enjoy about shooting film are the surprises. Since I can’t chimp, all I can do is see an image, try and capture the image, hope I got something interesting, and then move on. It’s only when I look at the negs (or, sometimes, after I scan an image in) that I get a sense of what I came away with. And since there is usually a delay of hours, days or weeks until I see it, there is always possibilities of surprise.
That’s what happened above. I was walking back from my first session at the Disney, both the 5D and EOS 3 hanging off my neck, and I saw this pattern on the street. I raised the EOS 3 up, captured a couple frames, and moved on.
As I was scanning the remainder of the roll last night, I came across this image. Just quite liked the mood and the play of shadows and reflections on the right-hand wall, is all. But until I scanned it, I had quite forgotten all about the frame. I’m glad this was Pan F, as I might think about blowing this up a bit.
Visit to NYC via the Train
Posted by – May 31, 2010
We changed crews in Harrisburg
So all the images in this post are taken with the Bessa/Zeiss Biogon 35/Tmax, and all from the first roll of the trip.
I traveled to NYC via Amtrak, just for the fun of it. I carried my camera along the way, and grabbed a few images. Harrisburg is about 1/2 the distance from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, we stopped there for about 20 minutes to change crews.
While we made stops all along the route, the next major stop was 30th Street Station Philly, where we changed crews and engines for the last leg through NJ to NYC.
The light inside these stations was very dark, and I was shooting hand-held at about a 1/15th of a second at f/2.
Notice in this frame gent to my left is moving a bit. I was really surprised I could get this close to a crucial operation (de-coupling the engine) without someone telling me to either back off or put away the camera.
After I got to the hotel, I wandered around the Village and grabbed some shots.
This was the first time I shot Tmax and developed it in FG7. Learned a big lesson. When you develop in FG7 what you are supposed to do (with traditional grain films, anyway) is to rate it slower (I shot it at 250) and expose for the shadows. FG7 is a compensating developer and it will hold the highlights while it keeps the shadow detail. If you think about it, by exposing for the shadows and down-rating it, I effectively shot Tmax 400 as if it was ISO 125. While this process really worked for a number of the dark-ish images, the images I grabbed in broad daylight had a bit of an overdeveloped look to them. Tmax had a very broad latitude by reputation, and I think this combo was too much. So, next time I use this film, I’ll either develop it much less or rate it at 400.
Clearly Tmax has a look of its own; not quite as biting as HP5 and mot quite as smooth as Tri-X.
Visit to NYC
Posted by – May 31, 2010
42nd Street Library Lion
Developed and Scanned first rolls from NYC visit, more to come. This is just a teaser. For those of you just dying to know, Tmax 400 developed in FG7, exposed at ISO 250, captured with the Bessa.
New York, New York
Posted by – May 21, 2010
FTb, IR transparency film of some sort, 1979 or so
I’m leaving tomorrow for a few days in NYC to attend a conference. I was reminded of the image above when I posted the ladder shot the other day, and then though “well, how fitting that I’ll be in NYC soon.” While there I hope to meet up with Dave Beckerman as well as Kevin Lee Allen, and perhaps take in the Cartier-Bresson show. I’m sure I’ll be checking out B&H as well.
I took this image with my old FTb on some kind of IR transparency film (I don’t remember what, exactly). I’m pretty certain it was IR film, and I’m also pretty certain that it was the only roll of that kind of film I ever shot. There’s a portrait of my dad on that roll that was the best image I ever took of him. I was living at my parent’s house at that point and I vividly remember grabbing a ‘snap’ of him sitting at the kitchen table in a very typical dad pose, heading out to get in the car and driving into the Village and wondering the streets, snapping away. You may recognize that the image is my gravatar image.
It’s partly because when I see the image I remember that day so vividly, and partly because I know that a few frames before this image is an image of my dad that I chose this to by me gravatar. It’s also obvious, if you look at the ladder image, that I am drawn to this kind of vertically segmented composition. It doesn’t shock me that I kind of replicated it with the ladder.
You’ll have to pardon me, as all this talk has made me want to post that picture of my dad.
Gerard Alfred Klug
Both of these images were posted on the original version of this blog, which existed on my iWeb site.
If anyone remembers what that film might have been, let me know. The next images will be from my NYC trip.
Skater Boy
Posted by – May 18, 2010
5D, Silver Efex
Near the parade Port Townsend has a Skate Park where Ray has a number of friends. We hung out there waiting for the last bits of the parade to pass by so we could extricate the car. This young man was just waiting for a friend.
Port Townsend
Posted by – May 17, 2010
Waiting for the Parade
Got back from a visit to Seattle and Ray yesterday, and just started going through the images today. I’ll be posting more images throughout the week. It was the Rhododendron Festival in Port Townsend this past weekend, and I got some shots of the excited people waiting for the excitement to begin.
Also began an experiment that day, which will take some film developing to deliver to you, so hopefully I’ll get to those rolls tomorrow night and have them scanned before the end of the week.
Also carried the 5D with me and those are the images I’ll be posting. This image was processed in Capture One and then in Nik Silver Efex.
Had a great time with Ray, btw.
