Graybeard
Longtime IIIf User
I'm a dedicated B&W shooter - the only color film that I use is transparency film in my Stereo Realist but that is a different part of the forest. It is astonishing how many people have never seen stereo images. So many friends have never seen stereo in fact, that I keep a number of cheepie stereo viewers on hand so that I can give a viewer to my friends along with stereo pairs of things we've done together.
For me, work in the darkroom is at least as enjoyable as the orignal photography with the Barnack Leica. Black and white images are so uncommon to many people, particularly those under 30, that they are viewed as being special rather than second best to color. This seems to be particularly true at weddings. I'm just finishing a batch of shots from the Spring Fair at our church.
Last year, I bought a Focomat Ic and found that I like it very much indeed. It has the original Focotar f4.5 and is the match for the Componons and El Nikkors that I use with my LF enlarger. This is the first enlarger that I've used with autofocus and rather than being a frivolous feature, I find that it encourages my cropping the image properly - just move the enlarger head to where the image framing looks best and print.
I found a second Focomat at a price that I just couldn't pass up and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was equipped with a coated LTM Elmar. The autofocus cam on the Focomat wasn't calibrated for an Elmar so the lens went on my IIf. A junker Focomat with a really bad bellows selling for the price of a Jupiter-8 provided the Focotar for this enlarger and a box of spare parts.
If one is interested in the "Leica look" in B&W prints, the other half of the equation after a Leitz camera lens is a Leitz enlarger/Leitz enlarging lens. With a bit of patience and shrewd shopping, these can be found for less than the cost of a Summitar or Elmar. Plan on replacing the wiring, a simple job, as the wiring insulation seems to have crumbled in all of the Focomats that I've run across.
For me, work in the darkroom is at least as enjoyable as the orignal photography with the Barnack Leica. Black and white images are so uncommon to many people, particularly those under 30, that they are viewed as being special rather than second best to color. This seems to be particularly true at weddings. I'm just finishing a batch of shots from the Spring Fair at our church.
Last year, I bought a Focomat Ic and found that I like it very much indeed. It has the original Focotar f4.5 and is the match for the Componons and El Nikkors that I use with my LF enlarger. This is the first enlarger that I've used with autofocus and rather than being a frivolous feature, I find that it encourages my cropping the image properly - just move the enlarger head to where the image framing looks best and print.
I found a second Focomat at a price that I just couldn't pass up and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was equipped with a coated LTM Elmar. The autofocus cam on the Focomat wasn't calibrated for an Elmar so the lens went on my IIf. A junker Focomat with a really bad bellows selling for the price of a Jupiter-8 provided the Focotar for this enlarger and a box of spare parts.
If one is interested in the "Leica look" in B&W prints, the other half of the equation after a Leitz camera lens is a Leitz enlarger/Leitz enlarging lens. With a bit of patience and shrewd shopping, these can be found for less than the cost of a Summitar or Elmar. Plan on replacing the wiring, a simple job, as the wiring insulation seems to have crumbled in all of the Focomats that I've run across.
