In praise of,

[Ash]

In praise of my grandfather really. I am so grateful he gave me some old stuff. Especially the Zeiss Nettar 515. My grandfather's brother's camera. It's well travelled.

I can't get enough of that little wonder-camera. I guess I love Zeiss, if I ignore the fact I try and sell my Contax 😛

Scale-focus predecessor to the rangefinder ones, I gotta say Zeiss built to last.
A camera that is now a little over 70 years old, made of bakelite or plastic of some sort, and with the tiniest little anastigmat lens. It outperforms all my preconceptions and prejudices.

I should be using a hood on it to reduce flare, and to be honest I totally forgot about that the other day when I went to meet Andy and take some photo's. The lens has a pretty much permanent green filter on it. Unfortunately my negs always come out really flat when scanned, but I thought I'd share the photo's.

I've got an old blog with some photo's at Chinese New Year, where the camera proved itself to me. Here's the shots from tuesday.

Obviously some of these shots are messing about. For scale focus it was quite good though. It was so sunny at 6pm that I had the aperture at f/22!!

Remember to wind on consistently - here's the overlap

This has a weird dark area across the centre. I need to check the neg and re-scan it.

Here's me and Andy posing - I always look small next to him. Self timers are great!

I found the film in the camera had a few extra shots from Avebury too...

Cropped photo of me, from the start of the roll at Avebury. I believe I was atop the hill facing Silbury.

These photo's aren't blogged, but I may add them at the end of a later one.

 

[Keith]

Great stuff Ash ... I paticularly like the cropped self pic ... it's a classic! 🙂

ps ... get a haircut! 🙂))

 

[Ash]

Yes I was particularly impressed at how the Zeiss Anastigmat lens could render my ugly mug 😀

Haircut this year sometime. I'm waiting to visit a friend with scissors and peroxide 😱

 

[Tom Harrell]

Does that particular camera have a fixed shutter speed and fixed focus? Yesterday I stopped by one of my favorite Antique and Junk shops and saw an Agfa B2 Speedex Junior. I did not ask the attendent to get it out of the case for me to examine, but I think that model of Agfa is a fixed shutter speed probably in the 1/30 to 1/50 sec. The aperature had f11, f16, f22, and f32 setting if I remember correctly. I did not see where the lens had any focusing adjustments to it. I suppose with the depth of field that would accompany those aperature settings no focusing would be necessary. What do you think Ash? The camera looked to be in fairly good condition. There was another Agfa rangefinder in that display case that caught my eye and I may have to go back there this weekend and have a good look at them.

Looks like the camera your Grandfather gave you is capable of some good pictures.

Regards,
Tom

 

[Tom Harrell]

Oh, I was going to inquire about the photo with the stones. What is that about? Were they placed there a long time ago? I liked the shot, very interesting!

Tom

 

[Ash]

The Zeiss has a Telma shutter, it has 1/25 1/50 1/100 1/125 and B and T. The lens barrel rotates for scale focusing. I'll take a photo of the front later.

As for the stones, that's Avebury - the brother of Stonehenge 🙂

 

[Xmas]

Tom

4.5k older version of the obs at Palamor. if you are in UK, worth a visit, similar in Fr in Brittany, Astec and Red Indian cultures nearer to home, worth a visit too.

Noel

 

[Tom Harrell]

Noel, I've been to the UK a few times but not visited many places while there. I went up to the New Market and Ipswitch area. Delightful country! Wonderful people! Lots to photograph there for sure. I got to see the tower and etc. Hope to make it back someday. I was on business and did not have the time to be a proper tourist. Some of the places I saw though made me wish I had my Hasselblad SWC or an old 6X9 Folder with me. Are these stones in the south west part of the UK?

Regards,
Tom

 

[Ash]

Tom. these stones are around my area. I live in WILTSHIRE.

Close by you have Avebury, West/East Kennet, Silbury, Stonehenge, as well as an array of longbarrows and smaller stones and megalithic sites. If you planned a trip, you'd want to go to a bookshop and pic up "The Modern Antiquarian" by Julian Cope. Plan a route by sifting through that. Make your way down to Devon and Cornwall for some nice coastal 'action' and you could visit the sites around there as well.

Swindon, where I live, is a dump. It's also a Hub - I'm a short journey away from Bath (posh tourist locale), Bristol (you'd have to see it to understand), Oxford (posh tourist locale), and London (duh).

 

[Ash]

As a plug to my blog. Here's the entry with more shots and a panoramic of Avebury, and a shot of nearby Silbury Hill

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=9040683&blogID=244311790

 

[Tom Harrell]

Ash, those photos are awesome and the narrative is excellent. Makes me
feel as though I was there! Makes me wonder what ancient peoples put
them there and why!

What camera/lens did you use for the color photos? Leica M2!
Thanks for sharing your scenes and thoughts!

Regards,
Tom

 

[Ash]

The colours shots are (admittedly) from my camera-phone. I have a sony-ericsson with 2mp camera. It was a snapshot moment with the crawly, and for the shot of Silbury.

 

[Empire]

Hello Ash,

Great work. Using my Nettax, I shot some standing stones in Ireland a few years back. I packed all of the film and checked it on board. Yes, you guessed it, old man x-ray showed up in brilliant clarity. I can only hope my images would have turned out as nice as yours.

Long live Zeiss Ikon.

Sincerely,
Joe

 

[SCOTFORTHLAD]

Nice work Ash!A "great tune on an old fiddle"

Those negs must be huge.

Brian.

 

[Ash]

Not very huge. These are 6x4.5cm. As in, slightly shorter than 6x6. Much nicer to look at than 35mm, but not a scratch on 4x5inch negs.

Then again the Nettar fits in my pocket, and hangs off my little finger. 4x5 needs a big backpack and my whole body strength to lift!

 

[Xmas]

Tom

Correct in SW, easy Train journey from london but car hire better if you can tolerate the left driving and a stick shift. They were 'primitive' astromomical observetaries, at the least they were accurately aligned to the 'stars', when they were built. If you Google you well get lots of hits.

Noel

 

[SCOTFORTHLAD]

Not very huge. These are 6x4.5cm. As in, slightly shorter than 6x6. Much nicer to look at than 35mm, but not a scratch on 4x5inch negs.

Then again the Nettar fits in my pocket, and hangs off my little finger. 4x5 needs a big backpack and my whole body strength to lift!

For some reason I assumed they were 6x9,I am very much into pocketable myself these days,can't imagine going back to an SLR and zoom!

 

[Ash]

My 6x9 was from my grandfather as well - that's Ernie who I covered in goatskin I got from Jay.


The Zeiss is called Bert 😉

 

[Ash]

Here are some shots from Bert from yesterday, from my casual meet-up with Rich.

 

[350D_user]

Great. Not only do I feel guilty about my using my Autocord, I'm now feeling guilty about not using my Zeiss Ikon 518/16. 🙁

Good pics Ash, btw.