Finally Fisheye

I picked up a Pentax 6X7 35mm 1:4.5 fisheye lens the other week. I've only had one chance to use it (though I'm hoping to take it out again very soon.) The lens has a corner-to-corner angle of view of 180 degrees and, as such, warps the heck out of the image plane. This has a lot of creative image possibilities, and I tried it out with portraits.


These are scanned from a contact sheet, not the negatives, so they have slightly higher contrast and slightly lower resolution.




Here I tried to get the smoke coming out of Ashish's nose, but it didn't really show up well.



Just a sample sot of a wall to show the full image circle.Taken from arm's length.

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.

Softball on Film

For the last game of this year's softball league, I decided to bring my Pentax 6X7, Kodak Brownie Model B Number 3, and my DSLR. I took a single roll of HP5+ (400 ISO) with the 6X7 and a single team photos with the Brownie. I had loaded it the day before with a sheet of 100 ISO Arista 4X5 sheet film. I'd never tried 4X5 film in the Brownie before, and was both nervous about and excited for the results.
Pentax 6X7














Kodak Brownie

To make sure the camera was light-tight, I cut 127 backing paper to fit over the red hole and used mashing tape to hold it on. That large white dot is from when the tape failed overnight, exposing it to a little light from the streetlamp outside my window all night. I also wrapped the junction in backing paper, though in hindsight I think that was silly. In all, I'm really happy with the shot. It proved that the old Model B cameras can use 4X5 film for one-off fill-frame use (respooling any film size onto their paper backing leaves a cropped image.) Also, it showed that, with some care, the camera is lightproof enough to use sheet film. And, it showed that the simple meniscus lens has enough resolving power to provide good photos on modern films.

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)

Medium in Martinez: Pentax 6X7 visits the Ocean

A week after I bought the Ricohmatic 225 I talked about yesterday, I decided to go back to Martinez and see if there were any more deals to be found. In short, no, but I did manage some fun photos during the trip.


An old boat at the marina


A detail shot at f2.4.

Palm tree silhouette

Palm tree metered for shade


I wonder where the kid swinging on it went.


Stena Concert. The Pentax 6x7 has pretty good resolving power. The ship's name is easily readable when enlarged to 100%.


The GF. This is the shot I made into my first opalotype (just tonight, in fact.) When that blog post's time comes next month, I'll explain the process.

A train engine

Wide-angle down portrait. Unless you're going for a specific effect, as here, always photograph a person from their chest level. That makes the proportions normal. You may note the Argus 75 she's holding. I'm looking forward to using that myself soon.

Video: Pentax 6X7

Pentax's professional system camera for more than 30 years -- the 6X7 and later 67 -- led the professional photography market with best-in-the-industry lenses, uncompromising image quality, and solid build quality. A consummate system camera with capabilities to photograph almost any assignment well, the 6X7's engineering still exceeds that of many modern professional film cameras.

The camera's DNA remained basically unchanged throughout the production run. The 67 was, inside, very similar to the 6X7. The 67ii changed the inner workings to an electromechanical design.

If you'd like to watch the other two videos in this series, check out my YouTube channel. If you haven't subscribed to it, you can and you'll be notified when I have more great photography videos. Here's a link to my YouTube channel:

David Hancock on YouTube

Geriatric Film and Poor Results

I need to stop using geriatric film. Old film has consistently yielded poor results for me, so I don't know why I still try. Today's old film -- the last, I think -- came from my Ilford Delta 100 stock that expired in 1989. These results were the best of any of the rolls but are plagues by something that looks like static.As such, only three images were worth even considering to share today. These shots come from the status "Smile", which is at 201 Spear Street in San Francisco.







So, lessons learned for today:

1- Quality results require quality film. I knew this but had to do something with this roll of Ilford.
2- Proper film storage is a must.

Old Film, Not Great Results

I shot a roll of Kodak Tri-X that expired no more recently than the mid-to-late 1980s the other day. I exposed it as 320 ISO to give a bit more light to this old film stock. That, however, did not help the results too much as this post will show. The camera was my new (to me) Pentax 6X7 MU that I picked up in Milwaukee a couple weeks ago. This roll used the 55mm 1:3.5 lens. Today I took this same combo out with a half-used roll of Fuji Velvia 50, images that should be back from the lab in a couple weeks. This shot turned out, I think, the best from this roll from a technical standpoint. However, I thought I was metering the statue, not the background. A statue in Embarcadero Center. I forget which one of these similar statues this is. Let me correct that. I remember that this is the dude, but I forget who this statue depicts. The other of these similar statues Getting past this images obvious technical issues, this lens renders closeups at shallow angles with fast background drop offs in an interesting way that I need to experement with some more. Ghandi says 'sup.' California Street Canyon, a typical 'roll killer' for me. Just a shot of reasonable predictability with which to end a roll. Of course, I had one more shot after this, so I took it again. This image has a few problems. 1- I loaded the film a little further back than I should have, so this 6X7 image was more like 6X5. Therefore, 2- I didn't have any space at the end of the roll with which to attach the clothes pins for drying, hence the clothes pin damage along the bottom. Oops. Lessons learned: The 6X7 is a bit tricky for loading film, so I need to be more careful than normal.