Classic Cars, Medium Format

After my Japan trip and some much-needed recovery time, I took in a classic car show in Port Costa, California, with my Pentax 6X7. I had just, a couple nights before, picked up the 135mm close-up lens (it's called a macro lens, officially, but only magnifies to 1:4 in-lens, making it a close-up lens). So this was a great chance to try it out. I brought slow film (which I've found I like for digitizing but not darkroom printing because the grain is too small to focus on with a grain focuser.)


The 6X7, any time I take it out, garners some attention. So I bought a T-shirt with a print of the 6X7 on it to wear when I use the 6X7 in the future.
The 105mm proves, here, that it's just a fantastic lens.


The 6X7 weighs so much that two weekends ago after a five-hour walk with it around the Castle Air Museum (those photos will come later this year or early next), my back was sore for six days. I'm also, in related news, a wimp.
One of my first shots with the 135, I was surprised to see how much it compresses the for- and background.


Because the 6X7 doesn't require cropping to fit 8X10 prints, the entire negative can be enlarged. Unlike 6X4.5 formats, such as the Hassleblad and many other cameras, this provides a lot of image efficiency and creates a higher effective lens resolution. That said, the 6X7 lenses are lpmm for lpmm basically as good as Hassleblad and Zeiss lenses.
The 55mm, at f3.5, provides a nice, shallow focal plane and exaggerated depth perception.


The Canon F-1 had the most components of any system camera ever made. The Nikon F line has the most professional film cameras in the line. The Pentax 6X7, however, takes far better pictures than either because of the negative size alone. To put it in perspective, if a 35mm frame were 8.6 megapixels (2,400 X 3,600 pixels for 24mm X 36mm) then a 6X7 image would compare to a 42 megapixel image (6,000 X 7,000 pixels for 60mm X 70mm.) So medium format captures much greater detail and tonal range.
The 55mm proves that it's very good for subject isolation.


Modern DSLRs cram tinier pixels into the same sensor size with each new version. This leads to reduced image quality at many of the smaller apertures. Also, this actually leads, to my eyes, to reduced tonality and color range. I suspect that each pixels records color data less truly.
Again the 55mm, the lens I use the most in my 6X7 kit.


Rendering in ways I can only (and often) describe as cinematic, the 55mm f3.5 captures light better and more nicely than any other lens I own. The 31mm and 77mm FA Limiteds may be sharper and more contrasty, but the 55mm seems to just grab light and direct it efficiently and attractively.


I shot this inside, hand-held, and 1/8th or 1/4 of a second, I forget which. Note that in the window there's some faint tree detail. The dark shadows here to faint tree detail represent more than nine spaces on the exposure index scale. Tmax 100 -- it's taken a long time for me to get used to it and to say I like it, but I do. I still prefer Plus-X 125, but that film is quickly disappearing and not to be found in medium format at all any more.


Another photo, not an enlargement from above.

Domo Aragato, Mr. Roboto -- the Film Version

In early July I had a post called Domo Aragato, Mr. Roboto. It featured some still lifes I made with my dad's old toys and my Pentax K-7. This week I'll share some of the film photos I took that night along with the camera I used.

Pentax 6X7 (Fuji 100 Acros)


Minolta SRT 102 (Foma 100)






Pentax Spotmatic SPII (Foma 100)

Yellow filter (note that the red caboose is substantially lighter than a red caboose would normally be while the blue robot in the front is very dark.)


Red filter (here the red caboose is dark enough to read the white American Flyer text, mostly due to a slightly longer exposure time, and the robot is much darker than in the previous image.)


Blue filter (here the caboose is dark and the robot much lighter.)

Filters work by cutting lights waves that don't pass through the glass color. So a red filter actually cuts all the light waves except red. The further the color rests on the spectrum from the filter color, the more effectively that filter blocks it. So red filters make blue dark gray or black and blue filters make reds dark gray or black.

Canon RT (Kodak Double-X, 5222)






Zeiss Ikon Contaflex (Kodak Double-X, 5222)














Canon AE-1 (Kodak Plus-X 125)

A new camera: The Ricohmatic 225

A few weeks ago I went antiquing in Martinez, California. Other cities in the area have reputation for being great for antiques, but I think Martinez is the best I've found. I'm always on the hunt for old cameras, and my only complaint about Martinez is that the cameras are all VERY expensive. In all the shops I visited, the cheapest box camera, for instance, was $32. Typically, that model box camera sells for $7 on eBay and about the same at other antique stores I've visited. So I didn't expect much. But, I did find one camera I liked in good condition -- a Ricohmatic 225.

I took a test roll that day, but not much turned out worth sharing. The next week, after figuring out some quirks, I took some worthwhile shots in Benicia.


An old Cadillac. In real life it's gray, too. I liked that this was the first photo I took with the Ricohmatic that turned out. A camera from 1959 seems, to me, to be well suited for photographing things also from that era.


At the fire fighter's museum. They have a small but really great collection of old fire trucks, fie hydrants, and other things related to fire fighting. If the Ricohmatic hadn't been misbehaving, I would have enjoyed the time there a lot more. I need to go back, though, with a different camera.


That's some unfortunate framing.

I admit that I'm very pleased by this camera's performance. It's a solid performer in terms of lens sharpness, contrast, and clarity. I digitized these images in multiple shots, to replicate the difference between small- and medium-format images. If you're interested, here is a video on how it's done.



After walking around in the sun for a while, I decided to get some indoor shots. Benicia once was the state capitol. The old capitol building still stands and is a state park now. For $3, you can take an unguided tour of the upstairs and downstairs, seeing the chambers as they were in the 1800s when the state's earliest senators and congressmen voted on new laws.
 
A door next to the main entrance


Stairs inside the capitol building


Sunlight on an unused bench


A shaggy tree in the garden outside


A rose from the house next door

I developed some of these photos in caffenol, and the results weren't great. The caffenol was fine but the film I used was particularly cheap. Lucky brand film lacks an anti-halation backing so light passes through it and scatters of the backing paper. This picks up any flaws in the paper as well as printing. Unfortunately, Lucky brand film uses very cheap paper, so lots of flaws are picked up. But even respooling it onto good paper yields poor results as the film is damaged by x-rays when it arrives in the U.S. If you'd like to see the video I made of these next photos being developed in caffenol, here it is:




You can see the light and dark flecks, which come largely from x-ray damage and are emphasized by the caffenol.


The numbers and dots on the image stand out because the light reflecting off the paper backing damages the film differently where there is and is not printing on the backing.


I'm not sure why that one bubble turned out well. If all the images had looked as good as that one area, there would be a lot more in this post.