Sunday, February 5, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
A new old lens
Those who have followed this blog will recall that sometimes I like using old lenses on newer cameras, but this is kind of extreme even for me. With some help from a colleague who made some adaptations to a camera lens board and a camera mount, I was able to mount a 1950s 250mm Rodenstock Imagon onto a Sinar view camera, and then mount my Canon 5D onto the camera. Cool, eh? I know, all of you are dying to try this at home. With a machinist and about $3,500, you can have the same set up.
The lens is classic design but its main attribute is that it is a soft-focus lens. In the early 1900s, before the Ansel Adams generation came into vogue, there was a movement or genre of photography called pictorialism. These photos were characterized by being in focus, but also being soft. I know, a bit confusing. Pictorial photos were both in focus but they looked soft. It wasn't the photographer, but the lenses that they used. These lenses were just very poorly corrected compared to today's lenses, and then on top of that, they were often more diffused by the photographer, who put things like disks with different size holes in front of the lens elements--the great thing about them is that the level of softness is adjustable. They were used for landscapes, but they were more often used for portraits. What a great idea! There are no dramatic wrinkles with a soft focus portrait lens, and women, and honestly men, too, loved theses lenses for that reason. These old lenses are now in high demand, and some of them cost thousands of dollars.
I found and bought one of these are few years ago, but haven't used it--film is too hard to use. The adaptations that my friend helped with allows me to use it. Certainly these photos don't touch all the potential of the lens, but I am learning with the lens. The photos are in order, and show the lens without a disk, the lens stopped down, and then with some of the disks and the different affects. The street scene is the lens at its in-focus softest.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
It's about time...
It isn't like I have done nothing, or that I have just sat on my (growing) backside. There was the end of the semester, the holidays, the beginning of a new semester, work in general, and all of that stuff. But I also was a participant of sorts in buying a house, getting it ready, and then moving into the house. I know, how is that for an "oh, and by the way" statement. There may have been a few understated thoughts about life-changing moments in that sentence. And they would all be true. And they would all be positive, too. Imagine the changes, from shoveling snow to painting for the first time ever to changing an occasional diaper to having someone to come home to every day to sopping up water from broken pipes to consolidating and sharing things and space.
It hasn't been entirely easy. The phrase, "old dog, new tricks" comes to mind. And probably not just to my mind. This is the first time that I have shared space full time with someone since 1997. Certainly that has been by choice and by circumstance and by necessity, but that is a long time, or at least long enough to make the transitions noticeable.
But in all the changes and in between the coats of paint and the dripping water and the things lost and misplaced and in the clutter of a move to a new house, something has happened. We are making a home out of this house, a home that will evolve and grow (and be more organized) in the future. It is good space, and I am glad to be in it, and I am glad we are in it.
I have taken very few photos, but here are a few that I have made. There are few of the house, and there are others of the recent foggy days. Hopefully more will follow in the next few weeks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)