I promised you, my dear readers: this would be the last Retina test. Actually it had been there for a bit of time and waited for his chance to be used. The Retina IIa is one of the most sought after on the market and in fact, I struggled just to find a copy in good condition at a reasonable price. The reasons are soon said: small, handy, but at the same time, equipped with a rangefinder and especially, the prestigious and fast Schneider Kreuznach lens Xenon 50mm f/2.
Things do not always go your way. But this case was (almost) expected. Too bad, because the Fuji GS 645 Professional is a very good camera, built with a mix of old criteria (folding structure and rangefinder) and more modern ones, especially the good and sharp lens and the meter. A good friend of mine lent me a copy in perfect condition, were it not for the presence of numerous pinholes in the bellows. I tried a repair with the “liquid electrical tape” but unfortunately it was not enough.
Finally, I got a Leica M …. namely, a M2. But also to use a legendary camera, you need the right lenses. So I had to find some… just to start and got a 35mm Voigtlander Color Skopar f /2.5 (Leica M mount) and are waiting for a Leitz Elmar 90 mm f/4 with Ltm mount (M39). But in the meantime, a friend of mine lent me a “Collapsible” Leitz Summitar 5 cm f/2 Ltm mount too, a bit ruined … just to test it. While waiting for a Ltm to Leica M Mount adapter ring, I decided to test first this one, both in digital (with a Fujifilm X-T10) that on film by mounting it on my Canon 7 rangefinder.
Generally (and you can see it all in this blog) I prefer to shoot with film in black and white. Both from the point of view of personal expression and because I believe that is easier and cheaper to self-develop b/w instead of color. Occasionally, however, (you may have noticed this too) I like to take some color photos. I do not have so much experience in this regard, having only used the Kodak Ultramax 400 35mm and a couple of Fujifilm (Pro 400H and Reala 100) in medium format.
Not happen often, because I prefer to shoot in b/w film and develop it by myself, something certainly less complicated than the color and also for economic reasons (at least here in Italy the costs for lab-development of a color negative reached 8 € or more) , but when it takes …. it takes. At times a bit of color can not miss. Besides, I wanted to see how would the Holga GN work in this case.
For one time, I make a transgression in this blog devoted entirely to analog. But it is not so strange, because the passion for vintage photographic gears leads, inevitably, to accumulate lenses, thanks to appropriate adapter, can also be used on digital cameras, taking advantage of some positive features . One of these is the Bokeh, which is the practical result of the reduced depth of field (D.O.F.) using wide apertures.
Ok, it’s a long time since I published on this blog. The problem is that my move went for long and between the forced inactivity and the cartons still to be opened, I have not been able to develop some rolls which are waiting for months. But a true blogger can not leave his readers with no new posts for too long. So I went to rummage in the archive and I pulled out some shots. These images come from the first roll which I took with my Rolleiflex Planar 3,5F more or less a year ago. Continue reading
Another box of slides emerges from the past …. Nothing more than a memory, since I was photographing the Air Show of 1996 with completely unsuitable gears: namely with a compact Olympus mju zoom (35- 70 mm). In my partial excuse is the fact that I did not know there was the air show, but I was just doing a walk to the sea …. 😉
There are many reasons (especially in the case of film photography) that lead me to prefer the black and white as a medium of choice. The main ones are precisely expressive. Eliminating the color variables, in fact, I can concentrate more on composition, I can pay more attention to the volumetric elements, to the alternation between light and shadow, to the almost infinite shades of gray. Probably, the b/w also helps in emphasizing certain elements that we can define as “emotional” of the picture. There are some nostalgic reasons too: many years ago, I began to approach to photography as passionate right through the b/w, developing my own films and printing in the darkroom. There are also practical reasons: to be able, in fact, develop easily (and cheaply) by ourselves is a major plus, to gain time and have more possibilities for action/experimentation to achieve the desired results. Continue reading
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