I like film...(open thread)

[Sparkassenkunde]

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4 hours ago, philipus said:

That Autocord has one sharp lens! Wow. 

You are absolutely right, there is nothing to complain in regards to sharpness. It is in many more aspects a very rewarding camera. It is easy to disassemble, e.g. for cleaning purposes. The waist level finder is held by four standard screws, so you can take it apart to clean the bright screen and the mirror beneath. The lens section is accessible in a comparable easy manner - important if you want to clean the lens or experience a slow shutter. The focussing mechanism is located at the bottom of the camera under the taking lens - maybe a bit strange for shooters with Rolleicord or -flex, but this way one doesn't have to switch the left hand from focussing knob to camera body. And not to forget the weight of this camera: with a light belt it is exactly 1.003g - compared to the 1.802g of my Mamiya 645. I will take the Autocord along on my next vacation to the Baltic Sea next week and will hopefully find some good shooting points.

After the next shot I remembered, that I had the T-Max in the camera. I intended to shoot the nice blue sky in contrast to the brown and orange colors of the leaves and branches. I also forgot the mirrored picture in the bright screen, so the thick branch begins at the lower right corner, where I wanted it to begin in the left corner for better "reading" of the picture:

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Minolta Autocord - T-Max 100

 

[Sparkassenkunde]

Another snapshot with the Autocord from the open house at the Berlin Police 2019:

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Minolta Autocord - T-Max 100

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[benqui]

vor 17 Stunden schrieb A miller:

Love it, Marc.  Very innocent expression!

Thank you Adam! I will tell it to her. I am sure that she will smiling..

[philipus]

Not sure which lens I used here but it's on Portra 160.

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Leica M6 - Summicron 2/35 - Ektar100

[fotomas]

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M6, 35 mm CronASPH1, Silvermax, Caffenol

Edited September 26, 2019 by fotomas

[Ernest]

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1943
M-A Thambar-M CS f/2.8 ADOX Color Implosion

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[Kl@usW.]

Am 24.9.2019 um 01:59 schrieb A miller:

Here's the second, which was about 15-20 minutes later, and around 8 minutes of exposure time...

Some of the highlights are blown to hell, but I think this goes with the long exposure territory and doesn't bother me.

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my choice- and I agree what has been said before in favor of this picture- due to the twilight.  Border situations seem to be interesting for humans:  water --firm ground; forest--open land,  male --female, and in this case: night and day... the blown lights don´t matter at all. If you have a beautiful  sculpture--the  marks of the iron don't matter, if you hear music, the scratching of the finger nails on the strings is fine and adds authenticity....so the constraints of our tool, the film,  does add credibility to our craft...

Am 24.9.2019 um 02:26 schrieb MT0227:

Inspector's Test 

(DUMBO - Booklyn, NY)

2019-09-20-00016 by Marc Tauber, on Flickr

• 50mm Dual Range Summicron
• Portra 400 - in Unicolor C41 Press Kit
• Scanned w/ Nikon LS-9000

as the unvisible part of the hand enhances the picture: there is more life outside the frame, the cut pushes our imagination, what's going on from here ... 

Am 24.9.2019 um 20:58 schrieb philipus:

I shot this in Sälen in Sweden in February. The moon didn't get higher than this (and these are by no means high mountains). I don't really remember what colour the sky was but it was probably more blue. Still there's something to be said for the way slide film exaggerates colours sometimes (and this is pretty much exactly how the slide looks on the light table).


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80 Planar+2XE Provia 400X X1

for me it doesn't really matter if the color is "true" --it´s a great picture with great colors. We aren't Humboldts documenting weather phenomena... 😁  

btw: my 80 Planar doesn't accept a converter--did you doctor it ?  

Am 25.9.2019 um 02:50 schrieb Ernest:

The teletype is whirring away, trying to keep up with your meteor shower of ideas.  So. . . here the ping pong match in my head.

Is the photograph a statement? If so, what does it say? Can it not be a question, perhaps the scaffolding of interrogation? Is the question, itself, a statement? Is there a conflict? What are the conditions for resolution? Or is the resolution irresolute? What are the casualties? What is at risk? Can a photograph be a line in the sand? What is the challenge of such a metaphor? What is the death of cliché? Can boring be interesting? Can the commonplace be unique? Can a photograph dismantle itself, deconstruct? Is what is not seen, actually what is to be seen? It is not all photography metaphoric, revolving? Rhetoric on the run? Or is it simply evidence that risks allegorization? What is the penalty of being irrelevant? Why does rage and outrage hold hands? Why is there no such thing as erasure? Is the concept of panorama a conceit? Does color dream?

Then, I have to come back to the frame, Alberti—what’s in and what’s out—and the poetics of perspective, the metaphor for subjectivity. Phil will have his meat cleaver to make the necessary cuts.

Cheers,
Rog

Yes Rog, a photograph can be all of this.... and thank you for your stream of ideas... 

Am 25.9.2019 um 12:25 schrieb stray cat:

 

 

Not sure about taking the meat cleaver to the above discussion, but I'd like to produce some pictures from the last few days that I hope will provide EVIDENCE that all of the above, and more, is true.

Klaus elliptically refers to what John Szarkowski referred to, allegorically, as Mirrors and Windows, the binary concept for an exhibition he staged at MOMA in 1978. His basic premis was that photographers tend towards those whose interest lies in the intensely personal, introspective work or those who frame the world not in a mirror but through a window, telling it like it is.

Of course, Klaus is right - we all, I think, tend to oscillate between the two, depending, I suppose, on a whole lot of things. And pictures, too, can have that same duality to them, and this of course depends on who is doing the viewing and their own state of mind at the time. All of the pictures below could be categorized as both - mirrors and windows, although I'd suggest that, for me, they all say a lot more about the photographer than the world at large. A brief summary of my own thoughts on the pictures are as follows:

Summer Dream by Calin is a remarkable picture because it shows something quite unexpected, ie girls in 19th century dress, assuming what looks like a painterly 19th century mannerism, and it is presented in a quite unexpected way ie where the two girls, who we recognize as the principal subjects, are out-of-focus. So it plays with my mind and stays with me as a very powerful picture.

Inspector's Test by Marc T. is, on the surface, a Window (ha ha) but, looking deeper into it, there is so much more EVIDENCE in the picture that leads me to the conclusion that it is significantly more than that. I made a comment at the time so I won't repeat that, suffice to say this is, for me, an incredible picture - but then I'm inclined to see it that way. It doesn't matter if you're not, of course - we each must diligently defend the sanctity of our own reading.

Anthurium close-up by mdp... well, I did half-jokingly make the Mapplethorpe reference, but the delicious colours, the detail of what is included and what is left out - it doesn't take much imagination, does it, to see this as a highly refined analogy of a sexual nature. Or is that just me? Freud, where are you?

Sparky's Minolta Autocord refuses to just be a picture of a tent and some tree branches. There is such a definite tension in this picture. Brain, wired from a too-long session at Starbucks, is threatening mountains. Or something. What IS it about this picture that kind of unnerves me? But it's far from a straight descriptive picture - if you want it to be. Did James want it to be? Whether he did or not (and I suspect he did) it is there for US to ascribe our own meaning to, based on our own equipment that we bring to the show.

Rog's Skit - well, we could certainly segue to a discussion about titles, but perhaps that's for another day. This is a picture that I'd find difficult to think of as a Window picture, although Rog has framed someone through bars. Someone, ostensibly deep in thought, looking over a lake, is thrust behind bars next to the red for danger color field that we read in the western manner, left to right, before the fire is quenched by a magnificent blue, that perhaps harks back to the lake. It forms a circle and you wonder why. Is there an answer? Well, it's a Skit - a kind of satire, and I think the joke may be on us. Well, OK, on me then.

jona_gold's MP can certainly be viewed as allegorical, metaphorical, a Window, a Mirror - an amazing picture. A young girl stretches upwards on tippy-toes, her arms raised - almost a gesture of supplication but, really! - that's just going too far. Isn't it? The material object of her attention seems to be a bird perched on a window (aha!) ledge - except that we then see that the window has been bricked-in! Talk about mess with your mind! Aaaagh! But, hang on. IS the bird what she's stretching toward? She has no hope of ever reaching it, and the bird seems pretty disinterested in flying down to her, although it COULD perhaps be looking her way. But maybe the girl's interest is not in the bird at all. Maybe it just SEEMS that way... What a glorious picture this is.

So I've rabbited on about these wonderful pictures (there are so many other brilliant pictures to choose from, even in just the last few pages) and haven't addressed ANY of the things Klaus or Rog brought up, and have, amongst other things, condemned myself to probably years on the psychoanalyst's couch (thanks mdp!). Looking at these pictures again a phrase from the many interesting (rhetorical?) questions Rog raises in his  discussion which I quoted above nibbles away at the edge of my brain: what is at risk?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you Philip  to draw my attention to the " Mirrors and Windows"  exhibition. The title  is more or less a perfect summary of what I tried to say...  And your interpretation of some of the pictures in the light of this concept is very convincing.   Chapeau ! 

Edited September 26, 2019 by Kl@usW.

[AntonioF]

Gallipoli - Mamiya 645, Sekor 80/2.8, HP5

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20190918-DSC03703 by antoniofedele, on Flickr

[Kl@usW.]

Am 25.9.2019 um 20:25 schrieb Sparkassenkunde:

This is an interesting and very inspiring text. I wish I could give something to this thoughtful remarks, but fail in finding the right words. Let me make some remarks about my picture you mentioned, though:

Yes indeed, there are more dimensions in this picture than just a depiction of a tent and some branches. First of all this was a test with the new to me Autocord. From a strictly technical point of view this test went well - the camera took a picture the moment I clicked the button, it is certainly exposed the way I wanted it to be and the lens seems to be properly aligned and able to deliver sharpness all over the field. But what made me think about taking exactly this picture? When I stood in the line to get my wife and me a nice little coffee, I realized by looking at the oh so blue sky, that summer is going away - as the left-over leaves at the branches where brown and dried already. I then realized, that the square format of the camera seemed to fit the straight lines of the tent with a nice framing at the top, made of the branches. The contrasts of light and shapes came into play and and I thought about keeping this fleeting moment and capturing it on my film. When I developed the roll I was pleasantly surprised about the result. As a side product I was amused by the inscription on the tent with its typical mix of english and german words. It made me wonder: Is Caffeine really king? And what is its kingdom? Coffee, as the arrangement of the words might suggest? Or king above men? If any of these thoughts crossed anyone's mind out there, the picture did everything intended by me. Not to forget the concealed message, that I am truly one outstanding person and photographer, having tamed this mysterious medium once more and created a unique piece of art

Just to continue the story, I attach this picture of my wife with the cup of coffee mentioned earlier in this post:

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Minolta Autocord - T-Max 100 

James, you and the Autocord seem to be a match ! Well done. 

[Calin]

try 3 Portra 160

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[Kl@usW.]

Uckermark IV  

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HB, FE 50, Scala @ 200

 

 

[Kl@usW.]

 

Uckermark V 

Church door and  typical wall of one of the Uckermark churches. This one is mid 13th century, the stones were left by the great scandinavian glacier after the last ice age... 10 thousand years earlier. Beautful granite slabs. 

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same lens, same camera. 

 

Edited September 26, 2019 by Kl@usW.

[mdachs]

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m6 1.4/35 pre agfa precisa

 

Joachim

[A miller]

5 hours ago, Kl@usW. said:

my choice- and I agree what has been said before in favor of this picture- due to the twilight.  Border situations seem to be interesting for humans:  water --firm ground; forest--open land,  male --female, and in this case: night and day... the blown lights don´t matter at all. If you have a beautiful  sculpture--the  marks of the iron don't matter, if you hear music, the scratching of the finger nails on the strings is fine and adds authenticity....so the constraints of our tool, the film,  does add credibility to our craft...

 

I like the way you think, Klaus.  Thanks for that moment of clarity 👏👏👏

[A miller]

Tel Aviv 🕵️‍♂️

IIIg, 28 summaron, Portra 400

 

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[jona_gold]

"The Kiss", Leica III Mod. F, Summitar, TMax 400/1600

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[Xícara de Café]

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Mango flowers. IIIf, Summicron 5cm 1:2 collapsible, Ilford Delta 100, Kodak D-76 1:1.

[mdp]

Wet rose buds in sunshine

MP Visoflex Summarit 90/2.4 PanF in DDX

 

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