Friday 15 March 2013

Mirror Lens with the second Leicaflex

A Photograph taken in the last few weeks.I used a Leicaflex SL,the second reflex Leica made between 1968-1974.
The lens was a Tamron Mirror 350mm and film was again T-Max 400 in D-76 1:1

Thursday 7 March 2013

Looking back to Technical Pan film

I found this older shot of a local house which was taken by me on Technical Pan film a few years back and it made me think how much we miss that superb emulsion in Vintage Leica circles .Of course Kodak were in it to make money, not as a charity to help Vintage photographers, but I wonder if the end of TP made any real difference in the speed of Kodak running down to todays position. Still, we have T-Max remaining and I am just starting to use a TP substitute in the shape of Adox CMS-20 but supply is erratic and some confusion surrounded the processing for a time. What we had in TP was a proven emulsion and a matched developer which, despite detractors, came to be a very practical film.The razor sharpness and micro contrast just jump out of an original print but may not be obvious in a scan such as this.
The camera was a Leica M2 with f2.0 Summicron,and the print produced on a Focomat Ic with a TTH 50mm lens.

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Bejar Valley, Extremadura, with the M2

Early Leica M2 with button rewind was used to make this portrait of a Garlic seller in Bejar,Extremadura,in early Spring.
The light was brilliant at 11.00 am and not the best for photography but the surroundings reflected a lot of light to fill the shadows.Within a few miles we were in deep snow cuttings.Film was Delta 100 in Perceptol 1:3 and the lens was one of the first Summicron f2.0 rigid types from the early 1960's which is in my opinion the sharpest lens I own but has been cleaned and adjusted once in its life.