I like film...(open thread)

[Doc Henry]

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Again from....Iran

Hope I do not bore you to death with these images from the same country. But it is just my enthusiasm for these hospitable people.

Tmax 400, Spur HCD 80/20

 

best regards

Marc

Superb portrait Marc

Well framing

Great work

Best

Henry

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[Doc Henry]

Volcanic crater in the Indian Ocean , Island of Reunion
You will notice bushes burned by volcanic ash !

 

Kodak TX

MP-50 Summilux

 

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Best

Henry

 

 

 

[philipus]

Well since I sleep all night and work all day, believe it or not, but this is from the quasi-forest (park, really, to anyone from outside of the Netherlands) on my way to work.

 

very beautiful, Philip.  But I didn't know that you are a lumberjack

 

Love this portrait, Marc. Very nice indeed.

Again from....Iran

Hope I do not bore you to death with these images from the same country. But it is just my enthusiasm for these hospitable people.

Tmax 400, Spur HCD 80/20

 

best regards

Marc

 

It's great to see you in the streets again, Adam. Excellent shot. Speaking of 28mm lenses, I've been wondering if I shouldn't sell my 35 FLE for a 28 as I often find 35 a bit too close to 50mm, which is my main focal length. As a result I rarely use my 35. Decisions, decisions. Is it v4 of the 28 Elmarit you use?

 

Lower Broadway, NYC 

MA, 28mm Elmarit (pre-asph), Cinestill 800T

[Doc Henry]

Lower Broadway, NYC 

MA, 28mm Elmarit (pre-asph), Cinestill 800T

I agree with Philip

Great picture and glad to watch again your Street Photos

Not easy to shoot but a combo 28 with MA is in symbiosis

and I agree with you Adam  ! ...  may be also with a 35 mm no ?

it can work 

Best

Henry

Edited December 30, 2015 by Doc Henry

[MarkP]

I've been wondering if I shouldn't sell my 35 FLE for a 28 as I often find 35 a bit too close to 50mm, which is my main focal length. As a result I rarely use my 35. 

 

 

And after you sell it you will then decide you want to use a 35mm lens and it will be GONE!

 

I too primarily use 28 & 50, but I would always still have a 35 for more general single-lens use.

[A miller]

I have gone through this kind of research for a while, too. In the end I couldn't justify spending some hundreds of € for a Ricoh GR 1(s/v) and stilled my GAS by treating myself with the purchase of a mere Rollei Prego Micron - a Ricoh R1 in another housing and with a differently labeled lens. It has a 30mm lens (f 3.5) and the function to switch to 24mm (f 8). It is a tiny little plastic cam and has the same LCD display problems as most of these cameras from the nineties - but is capable of producing interesting results. Here two examples showing the difference between 24 and 30 mm:

 

Bild-1-275.jpg

 

Bild-2-14.jpg

 

 

As you can see, it tends to vignette and distortions in the corners. Anyway, a cheap, very unobtrusive toy

very interesting, James.  thanks for sharing this.  It looks like a nifty little camera that left you with no buyers remorse

[A miller]

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It's great to see you in the streets again, Adam. Excellent shot. Speaking of 28mm lenses, I've been wondering if I shouldn't sell my 35 FLE for a 28 as I often find 35 a bit too close to 50mm, which is my main focal length. As a result I rarely use my 35. Decisions, decisions. Is it v4 of the 28 Elmarit you use?

Thanks for noticing, Philip. 

I actually have a lot of the same feeling as you with regarding to my 35mm FLE; but I still agree with Mark.  You shouldn't part with your 35mm b/c as soon as you do you'll be reaching for it. 

The 35 fle is a masterful lens and really comes through with contrast and resolution. 

I do indeed have the 4th version pre-asph of the 28 elmarit.  I find it great for film and plenty powerful for my needs.  And at about $1200 in mint- condition it didn't break me and I don't feel bad when I don't use it     

The 28mm is really great when (I) you want to be able to catch fleeting moments (if you aren't seeking this then the force of the 28mm is diminished quite substantially) and (ii) the light is reasonably good and you can take advantage of the deep DOF (even at f5.6).  The 35mm is similarly effective but you need to be at least at f11 (and with at least 1/500 shutter and ideally 1/1000, which implies pretty bright conditions) to have real freedom and speed of focus.  And even when the light is good enough to be at f11, in the street when wanting to capture fleeting moments I typically will prefer the 28 anyway as the DOF is even deeper and it lends itself to a little more creativity with perceptive scale.

Having said all of this, I wouldn't bring my 28mm on a family vacation as my only lens.  For this I would take either my 35 or 50.  I find the 35 to be (on balance) the best when we go places that have beautiful background that I'd like to have in the frame in addition to the family. The 35mm was stellar on my family vacations to Miami last year; coupled with the Cinestill 50 and Portra 160 I still can't stop staring at the results (it took us about 7 months but we finally got around to finishing the 70-pg Blurb album just last week).

Assuming that you can contort your brain in this fashion, think of it this way: keeping your 35mm FLE and not selling it will save you $1200+ of economic loss that you would incur on the sale (based on what you paid for it) and this saved money can be applied to the purchase of a 28mm pre-asph v4 elmarit

 

 

 

HENRY - As I said above, it really depends on your shooting style that you want to emulate on the particular day.  When the light is good, there are so many fleeting moments to capture here in NYC that I want to be as quick as possible.  As I approach a scene or subject, I want to be able to blindly make a quick turn of the focus ring (which after enough use becomes quite familiar) to the appropriate DOF range, quickly compose and SNAP.  Of course this is possible with the 35mm under the right conditions, but even more so with the 28mm.  Just my perspective...

Edited December 30, 2015 by A miller

[MarkP]

Hütten by -Ric Capucho-

 

 

Ok, last of the foggy trees for now. Also with the Contax T2 on XP2.

 

Right, all this talk about the Ricoh GR1v reminded me of a similar search I did for a compact film camera.

 

I wanted something compact around 50mm with decent enough optics, aperture priority, and (shoot me, why don't you - but an ironic twist comes later) autofocus. The idea was to keep it in my car, or shove into my work briefcase when I'm on a business trip. And to generally have something to hand that I can treat like cr@p, don't mind getting wet, don't mind it getting cooked in a hot car in summer, and don't mind it being stolen if it comes to that. All too much to bear when thinking about my beloved Leica gear.

 

I considered the Minolta TC-1 and the Ricoh GR1v but 28mm is waaaay too wide for me. After nearly a couple of years with the M6 and the 50mm Summicron, my eyes no longer work that way. I also looked at various 1990s options from the big brands, and discounted any number of Nikons, Canons, Olympi, and whatnot, as none of them came close to what a Ricoh GR1v or Fujifilm Klasse or various Contax could offer. The Klasse came close, but I was put off by reports of shutter lag and the cr@p view-finder. Oh, and the Leica Mini has an appalling reputation, which I'm not at all sure it deserves.

 

So that left the Contax's. I tried a TVS-II which is everything I wanted bar the bloody finicky (and slow) zoom lens at the front. Must sell it on someday. I looked at the T3, and that's when I discovered and read the reports by Hamish, Bellamy and Ming Thien. The T3 seems to be a cracking camera, with its 35mm Zeiss being close enough to 50mm for me to bridge the gap, but the T2 is even closer: the 38mm is close as damn it to 40mm, it's a doddle to operate, and the view finder isn't a catastrophe after the luxury of peeping though the M6.

 

So after nine months with the Contax T2, I'm sorted. A bit like Adam is with his Ricoh. If it breaks, I'll Ebay a replacement. I came close to buying another one for (non-flash) night photography, but have already made some, erm, adjustments to the one I've got: I've gaffer-taped over the flash, which shields the flash during street photography. That allows me to set it to the flash speeds of f/2.8 and 1/30 regardless of what the meter says - but there's no alternative without the blinding flash.

 

I also use the exposure compensation a lot, either at night (-2) or during fogs (+2) or anywhere in between.

 

But taping the flash wasn't enough because a huge amount of flash still came through the autofocus window... so I taped over that, with guess what results. So I now use the manual zone focus positions. If it smells like 5m then I set it there, otherwise infinity does the trick. Oh, and the gaffer tape also did for my framelines, so I frame by remembering where they were... probably. One day I'll see if there's a way to fully remove or otherwise disable the damn flash. But I think a disabled capacitor, or a capacitor which is unable to discharge because of a blown bulb leads quickly to a bricked T2.

 

Other bugbears: it's a bit too big to be compact, and there's no DX override other than the exp comp - and *that's* a bit limited by -2/+2. It might be that the T3 is closer to my perfect compact, but until then I'll stick to the T2... and continue to treat it like cr@p.

 

Ric

 

Ric,

to me the T3 was the pinnacle of compact 35mm cameras - spectacular Zeiss  T* lens, excellent manual override features (especially for selecting aperture, less so for focus distance), and very compact.  A shame that such a camera will never be made again.

It is the only camera I ever regretted selling so I recently bought a pristine black double-tooth T3 (without the data back) with filter adapter and hood earlier this year from Japan.  Fortunately this was just before Kyocera discontinued support/service for Contax so I sent it to Kyocera Japan for routine CLA (not that it needed one) including replacing all the seals (and was given a spare battery cover).  $150 for the service and return shipping - done with in a fortnight (are you listening Mr Leica?).  The T3 can be reset to a number of different defaults which do NOT change after the camera has been turned off, in particular permanently disabling Auto flash.  This camera goes almost everywhere with me and if I'm out with my digital Leicas I'll usually have the T3 in the bag.

 

My only complaints about the T3 are: it doesn't always focus lock at distance and won't take the photo until it's locked (so occasionally there's a delay whilst I find something to focus-lock on or set focus manually),  I would like to be able to preset focus distance without having to go into the menu before using the scroll-wheel (much easier access to focus preset in the T2) but having a dedicated aperture scroll-wheel is nice, and it's now very expensive on the used market.

 

The T2 is a lovely camera - almost bought a platinum edition. Relatively expensive for a much older camera, larger than the T3 and really no chance of being able to be repaired at it's age with lack of spares (also becoming a problem for the T3). I was also put off it by the limitation of manually controlling/setting maximum aperture.

 

I bought a second-hand TVSII years ago but it was large and heavy after the T3 (half way up in size to an M film camera), I never got my head around the viewfinder information displays and the lens was slow. Sold it for what I paid for it.

 

The TVS III was a dog. I bought a nice second-hand one cheap about the time I bought the replacement T3 - planning to have B&W in the T3 and colour in the TVSIII.  The retro drop-down lens protection door and electrically controlled zoom lens and ludicrous aperture control was very uncomfortable tand awkward to use - terrible ergonomics . It's beyond me why it didn't have a manual zoom and aperture control as per the TVSII. I think that Contax considered the retro-styling more important than function which was a big mistake. Very nice lens except too much barrel distortion at 28mm.  Sold it for a slight profit.

 

 

Adam,

have you considered a Nikon 28Ti?

Edited December 30, 2015 by MarkP

[Guest]

Ric,

to me the T3 was the pinnacle of compact 35mm cameras - spectacular Zeiss T* lens, excellent manual override features (especially for selecting aperture, less so for focus distance), and very compact. A shame that such a camera will never be made again.

It is the only camera I ever regretted selling so I recently bought a pristine black double-tooth T3 (without the data back) with filter adapter and hood earlier this year from Japan. Fortunately this was just before Kyocera discontinued support/service for Contax so I sent it to Kyocera Japan for routine CLA (not that it needed one) including replacing all the seals (and was given a spare battery cover). $150 for the service and return shipping - done with in a fortnight (are you listening Mr Leica?). The T3 be reset to a number of different defaults, in particular permanently disabling Auto flash. This camera goes almost everywhere with me and if I'm out with my digital Leicas I'll usually have the T3 in the bag.

 

My only complaints about the T3 are: it doesn't always focus lock at distance and won't take the photo until it's locked (so occasionally there's a delay whilst I find something to focus-lock on or set focus manually), I would like to be able to preset focus distance without having to go into the menu before using the scroll-wheel (much easier access to focus preset in the T2) but having a dedicated aperture scroll-wheel is nice, and it's now very expensive on the used market.

 

The T2 is a lovely camera - almost bought a platinum edition. Relatively expensive for a much older camera, larger than the T3 and really no chance of being able to be repaired at it's age with lack of spares (also becoming a problem for the T3). I was also put off it by the limitation of manually controlling/setting maximum aperture.

 

I bought a second hand TVSII years ago but it was large and heavy after the T3 (half way up in size to an M film camera), I never got my head around the viewfinder information displays and the lens was slow. Sold it for what I paid for it.

 

The TVS III was a dog. I bought a nice one cheap at the at the time I got the replacement T3 - planning to have B&W in the T3 and colour in the TVSIII. The retro drop-down lens protection door and electrically controlled zoom lens and ludicrous aperture control was very uncomfortable tand awkward to use - terrible ergonomics . It's beyond me why it didn't have a manual zoom and aperture control as per the TVSII. I think that Contax considered the retro-styling more important than function which was a big mistake. Very nice lens except too much barrel distortion at 28mm. Sold it for a slight profit.

 

 

Adam,

have you considered a Nikon 28Ti?

Hi Mark,

 

Cracking info, thank you. Based on the above, I'll get round to the T3 when its time comes. Next up is something completely different: fancy a Rolleiflex for landscapes.

 

Ric

[A miller]

Adam,

have you considered a Nikon 28Ti?

 

 

Mark - yes, I did, and it didn't make the cut.  For 28mm, the Ricoh GR1 and Minolta TC-1 are the two top two performers.  I chose the Ricoh over the better build-quality (and more beautiful-looking) Minolta b/c of my conclusion that it has a better functionality for manual zone focus street shooting (I found the lens to be quite suitable).  Assuming Ricoh operates normally, I would stand by my judgment.  It is the lack of reliability of the Ricoh that has caused me to reconsider what I might replace it with (which might be another Ricoh, or possibly a TC-1). 

The Contax seems like a great camera, and if they made a 28mm version it might upset my apple cart

[DirkR440]

a shot from London with the MP, 35 Summilux and TMAX:

 

London on film by Dirk Raffel, auf Flickr

[Keith (M)]

The church overlooking the tiny village of Selworthy in Somerset.  MP, 1967 35mm Summaron f2.8, Acros 100, Rodinal 1:50.

 

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[Keith (M)]

 

Next up is something completely different: fancy a Rolleiflex for landscapes.

 

 

Good choice  admittedly mine is a Rolleicord Vb, chosen purely for weight reasons otherwise would have gone for the Rolleiflex with Planar f2.8.  Really enjoy using mine for landscapes, some of which are in the Rolleicord  album on my Flickr page.

[Trev]

The church overlooking the tiny village of Selworthy in Somerset.  MP, 1967 35mm Summaron f2.8, Acros 100, Rodinal 1:50.

 

Lovely picture Keith. That lens seems to be very good at maintaining true perspective.

[MarkP]

 

Adam,

have you considered a Nikon 28Ti?

 

 

Mark - yes, I did, and it didn't make the cut.  For 28mm, the Ricoh GR1 and Minolta TC-1 are the two top two performers.  I chose the Ricoh over the better build-quality (and more beautiful-looking) Minolta b/c of my conclusion that it has a better functionality for manual zone focus street shooting (I found the lens to be quite suitable).  Assuming Ricoh operates normally, I would stand by my judgment.  It is the lack of reliability of the Ricoh that has caused me to reconsider what I might replace it with (which might be another Ricoh, or possibly a TC-1). 

The Contax seems like a great camera, and if they made a 28mm version it might upset my apple cart

 

 

 

The Nikon 28Ti is also quite bulky and heavy. Just interested in whether you had considered it.

I dismissed the Minolta when considering a 28mm P&S. 

For a 28mm P&S I too would have chosen the Ricoh which actually has a very good lens.

 

Yes, unfortunately you can only get to about 28mm in Contax with the TVS cameras which would not be suitable for you.

[gbealnz]

A toy display on the streets of Paris.

M6. 50 Summicron M

APX100. Rodinal 1:50

Minolta 5400 scanner

Gary

 

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[Guest Benqui]

Absolutely not Marc! Keep your beautiful captures coming please!

 

 

This is the kind of photo I would like to be able to make! Well done!

 

C.

 

 

No way Marc, I too am loving the pics. I'll echo Chris' comment, I too would love to do these.

Gary

 

 

wow, now THAT is a soulful portrait.  

Amazing

 

 

This is very good Marc, be nice to see more.

 

Peter

 

 

Superb portrait Marc

Well framing

Great work

Best

Henry

 

 

Well since I sleep all night and work all day, believe it or not, but this is from the quasi-forest (park, really, to anyone from outside of the Netherlands) on my way to work.

 

 

Love this portrait, Marc. Very nice indeed.

 

It's great to see you in the streets again, Adam. Excellent shot. Speaking of 28mm lenses, I've been wondering if I shouldn't sell my 35 FLE for a 28 as I often find 35 a bit too close to 50mm, which is my main focal length. As a result I rarely use my 35. Decisions, decisions. Is it v4 of the 28 Elmarit you use?

Thank you very much for your encouraging comments! Maybe you know that feeling when you are about to take a photo, look through the viewfinder directly deep into the soul of a person and you feel this image cold be something special. Sounds very esoteric but these very rare moments are the reason why I love photography.

[A miller]

Somehow some Portra 160 found its way into my camera...

The East River, NYC

 

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[gbealnz]

Your river scenes Adam, all with gorgeous out of bed early or late evening light. I wonder what they'd look like at midday?
Gary

Edited December 31, 2015 by gbealnz

[MarkP]

Somehow some Portra 160 found its way into my camera...

The East River, NYC

I'm surprised you didn't throw the camera, film and all, into the river 

 

 

Your river scenes Adam, all with gorgeous out of bed early or late evening light. I wonder what they'd look like at midday?

Gary

 

 

I suspect they would be fairly flat. Morning and Evening light is almost always preferable and more flattering to such subjects. Adam?