Musings on 2007

[Tom A]

I am by nature not a retrospective person, but occasionally the urge falls upon me to "review" the year that was.

My new toys this year are a R4M, 21f4P and 25/4P Color Skopar's, the Biogon 21f4.5 and the 18f4 Distagon. Obviously this is a year for a wide view! The R4 is one of those cameras that you go "Why didn't someone do this a loong time ago". Out of about 600 rolls shot in 2007, 25% has been with the R4! I consider it a Milestone Camera and those are few in my book!

The 21/25 P lenses are the same as the LTM versions, but more convinient with better aperture control. In short, damned good for the money!

The 21f4.5 Biogon is now my favored wide-angle. It is VERY good, small and compact and with the even illumination of the Zeiss line of lenses.

The 18f4 Distagon is large, but it is seeing a fair bit of use. Even though it is coupled, I have found that I tend to use it on my ZM SW more and more.

Oh, I have culled my M2 collection down to 12 and I think that should be enough. No other new Leica stuff and with current pricing, highly unlikely in 2008 (Ok, one exception, if they can make me a MP with ONLY 35 and 75 frames, I might reconsider).

The best part of 2007 was that Terry Cioni dragged me into the computer world! I now almost know what I am doing! He got me started on scanning, on RFf and Flickr. Through this we have made new friends and seen a lot of good photography and learned a lot.

The Flickr is amazing, there is a lot of "crap" there (peoples editing skills are sorely lacking), but also some outstanding photography that we never would have seen otherwise.

As for digital: I do have a Ricoh Grd and it serves as a great note book and quick reference shots camera. I haven't gotten comfortable with it yet, but i am working on it. I also have close to 900 rolls of Double XX and 350 of Tri X in the freezer so "analog" is still my mainstay.

Kodak released its new and improved Tmax 2-400 and for once the hype is warranted. It is improved considerably from the old version. Nice to see Kodak still having a go at Black and White!

As for my "other" addiction, yes there is yet another SP and 35f2.5 added to the Nikon's as well as 20+ Nikon reoladable cassettes. This could be seen as a pre-Nikon Historical meeting (Vancouver 18/19/20 April) dress-up item.

I have already shot the first roll of 2008 and as it is still light, I might squeeze in one more - just to start the year right.
Happy New Year 2008 Everybody!!

 

[Marc-A.]

Nice retrospective, Tom.
Happy new year, Bonne année et meilleurs voeux!

 

[Tuolumne]

Tom,
What kind of subjects do you shoot with your "wides"? Got any examples you'd care to share? Your comments about the R4 are certainly making me rethink it.

/T

 

[mike goldberg]

Hi there Tom,
I very much enjoyed your "introspection" here.

If I shoot 5% as much film as you do, that's a lot ;-) And, I enjoy one M2, a IIIf, Bessa R and Fed-2c... as well as a few others. I'm waiting for a Summitar 50/2 in LTM in the mails, as well as the classic Nikon 50/1.4 AI, for a favorite Nikon FM2.

in 2007, I got more keenly focused in RF, and with the help of a few RF buddies, I managed to integrate both digital & film work; this can be seen in flickr. Further, with the patient help of our Will Gunadi, I got a Journal up on the Net [Advance Lever MU]. Very recently, I had my 1,111th post in RFF.

In November, I had minor surgery on my nose, and it is healing nicely. Tho' I'm a bit overweight, and my cholesterol could be lower, my Cardiologist was very pleased with me this week. All-in-all, 2007 has been a good year.

I'm not really into any GAS attacks at the moment, famous last words 🙄 ...and I'm looking forward to utilizing the gear that I have in 2008. Hopefully, the new improved Tmax 400 will get to Jerusalem soon.

Cheers! Mike

 

[Tom A]

The health issues are important. 2007 was good for me. No nasty surprises which is all I want. I still have some problem walking, swaying like a drunken sailor and I have developed a great affinity to parking meters. They are great supports and occasionally work as mono-pod's.
Just finished processing 2007's last 5 rolls (Acros/Fomopan 100) and now I am starting with my XX. Should do rolls 4-5 for 2008 today and see what my FX 37 developer will do with it.
As for being slightly overweight - I could stand to loose some pounds, but as nobody seems to be willing to pay for them to go away (they cost a bloody fortune in good food to put on!) - I will leave them on and use them as a bouncing pad for the cameras instead!

 

[lkgroup]

Tom I would love to hear your experiences with XX. I just got my second 300 foot roll of Eastman xx. I have been using Hc-110 at 1:50 level and am trying to nail a time for the film at 100 250 and 400.

So far I think 6 3/4 at 68 degrees in a jobo is good for 100 ASA. Also I developed 4 rolls last night at asa 400 at 10 minutes. Now to work with ASA 250.

How has FX 37 treated you.

Have a great 2008.

Leo

 

[wilt]

Thanks for an interesting retrospective. My version is here (but you need to be able to understand ärans och hjältarnas språk ...)

Agree about flickr. There's also the photoblog variety, also with lots of crap, but with the occasional gem (guess it's like the photo clubs and competitions of old times, only on a global scale and just a couple of clicks aray). Lots of photoblogs linked from here, a favorite is this.

 

[Tom A]

Wilt, svenskan ar inte nagot problem eftersom jag ar 'skaning' ock fore detta lundensare fram till 1970.
Nice blog and some interesting statements. I agree in regards to Micke Berg - one of the best of the Stockholm "shooters".
I am not that keen on Cindy Sherman. I can take her stuff in small portions, but a whole exhibition is scary!
Agree with you on the Nature stuff! To many trees and misty ponds. I like my reality well organized and preferably paved with white or yellow lines!
2007 books that I liked (and bought). Too many too list, but a favourite is Richard Kalvars "Earthlings". Richard is a friend, but my enjoyment of his book is not colored by that. There is a gentle humour and a quiet laughter between the covers (as well as one of the most enigmatic and hilarious of covers!).
I am still fighting with and for film. That digital stuff is probably a passing fancy anyway.
i do admit to being somewhat addicted to Flickr - it is wonderful to go randomly through the sites and find good pictures, but just like my own stuff, you occasionally have to wade through a lot of crap to find the "jewels".
Gott Nytt 2008

 

[Tom A]

Leo, I have used a lot of XX before and usually use the same times as with Tri X and pull 10-15% of the time (D76 1:1 9 min).
The FX 37 works well, but it is a bit "harsh" and the grain can be noticable. I like FX 37 in grey. overcast weather as it punches up contrast a bit in mid-tones, without frying highlights. Last night I did five rolls of 100 asa film with it (too lazy to mix Beutler) and it works fine (6-6.5 min) with Acros and Fomapan 100.
I haven't tried XX in HC 110, but will have a go at it later this month. If you are shooting in extreme contrast and pulling it back to 100-125 asa, I would be tempted to go to Rodinal 1:100/16-17 min.
Some years ago I did shoot with it @ 125 and mixed some D-23 and it worked very well. The D 23 is a bit lower contrast and that suited the film at that speed.
I did find that the XX is not that great for pushing to 400 - grain gets a bit ugly and the contrast is increased. I suspect thesae movie stocks are optimized for a specific speed and will give you consistent quality then. Most of the processing for this type of film is done in full 400 ft reels or even spliced longer than that. "Hollywood" does not like variables with this kind of stuff.
I did try D 96 which is Kodak's recommended soup for XX and X emulsion. looks a bit like D76 and can be replenished for 30-40 rolls without loss of quality.
One of my projects with this batch of XX is to do it in Td 201 (Steve Anchells "The Film Developing Cook BooK"). This worked very well with films like Tmax and Delta/Fuji as well as Tri X.

 

[Tom A]

Tom,
What kind of subjects do you shoot with your "wides"? Got any examples you'd care to share? Your comments about the R4 are certainly making me rethink it.

/T

If you go to Flickr and type in the tags for the various wides " Zeiss Biogon 21mm f4.5" for example and all the others, there are plenty of them there. Not only mine, but there are also some very creative use of wides there.
My pictures tend to be less subject driven and more opporunistic, though there are a lot of cars in them (i like old cars!).
The R4 is one of the truly great cameras if you have any lingering "wideitis" - It just works so well and there is none of the "back and forth" that you are forever doing with top-mounted finders!

 

[GeneW]

Tom, could you elaborate a bit on the 'new' T-Max 400? I've not seen it yet, but am curious. I never took to the original T-Max 400. T-Max 100 is a different story -- I've had some luck with it. My main films are Tri-X, HP5+ or Neopan 400.

Gene

 

[Nando]

i do admit to being somewhat addicted to Flickr - it is wonderful to go randomly through the sites and find good pictures, but just like my own stuff, you occasionally have to wade through a lot of crap to find the "jewels".

I love flickr too. However I do like going through the "crap" to find "jewels". When I find them I get that same wonderful feeling as when I take a bite of roast pork and finding a nice chunk of garlic swimming on my tongue. I enjoy the photographs of my contacts - none of the photographs are really crap. I find that the more mediocre photographs often are good set-ups for or provide nice transitions to the "jewels" when I view a collection as a slide-show (my favourite way a viewing photos on flickr).

I must admit that I don't do any editing with my photographs on flickr. I use it more like a big holding tank for photographs that I would like to show friends or link to from outside websites. All a bit informal. If I had a website of my own to display my photographs, I would definitely be much more picky on what I would show.

That said, I very much enjoyed viewing your photographs on flickr. You are one of a handful of photographers on my contacts that share new photographs on a daily basis. I only fear my 21 Biogon ZM GAS may come to a boil. Happy New Year.

 

[Tom A]

Tom, could you elaborate a bit on the 'new' T-Max 400? I've not seen it yet, but am curious. I never took to the original T-Max 400. T-Max 100 is a different story -- I've had some luck with it. My main films are Tri-X, HP5+ or Neopan 400.

Gene

Gene, the new Tmax -2 is a vast improvement on the old one! Like you I struggled with the old one. it was fine in controlled light environment (studio, set up with lots of light available for lifting shadows) but for general shooting it was iffy. If your highlights were fine, you usually had completely blocked shadows and if you had details in the shadow and decent midtones - highlights were fried!
The new 2-400 is far more sensitive to the latitude, You get very smooth negatives with decent details both at the top and bottom end. This said, it is still a more finicky film than the tri X and requires good exposure understanding.
I only had 15 rolls of it to try, so I decided to try for developers. It works in most of the standards, Rodinal,D76,HC 110, Tmax etc as well as in my homebrewed soups (PCK,FX 37, Beutler). You need to give it a bit more time, 10-15% over your usual HP%/Tri X times
The results are quite stunning. Grain is that of a 100 asa film (tmax/FP4+) and it is very "smooth" in appearance.
OK, it is not as flexible as Tri X, but then nothing is in my opinion, but it is good enough that I will pick some up when it is available here and use it as a substitute for 100 asa and gain two stops in the process.
It seems to scan very well, at least according to my limited skills in that. I shot and developed it for wet print so I had to tweak the contrast slightly in lightroom to match my screens.
If you go to our Flickr site and type in the tag "KODAK TMY-2 400" there is about 60 shots that I scanned in, These were done with various developers and screen images are not ideal to judge from, but you get some ideas from it.

 

[Tom A]

I only fear my 21 Biogon ZM GAS may come to a boil. Happy New Year.[/QUOTE]

Nando, thanks for your words and let's face it. When it comes to the ZM 21f 4.5 Biogon, resistance is futile! It is a stunning lens and compact to boot! It is more or less permanently stuck on my R4M and bounces around in my bag until I decide that I need a wider view.

 

[Tom A]

Tom I would love to hear your experiences with XX. I just got my second 300 foot roll of Eastman xx. I have been using Hc-110 at 1:50 level and am trying to nail a time for the film at 100 250 and 400.

So far I think 6 3/4 at 68 degrees in a jobo is good for 100 ASA. Also I developed 4 rolls last night at asa 400 at 10 minutes. Now to work with ASA 250.

How has FX 37 treated you.

Have a great 2008.

Leo

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you. I did run 5 rolls of XX yesterday and scanned some stuff onto our flickr site. The FX 37 works well with the XX (7.5-8 min) but I would like to get some smoother midtones. I am shooting another 5-6 rolls the next couple of days. I will try the Td 201 two part developer from "The Film Developing Cookbook". I tried it last year and it gave good results. I think the heavier emulsion of the XX would suit it.
I will do a run with HC 110, but probably go for a 1:60 mix and maybe 7 min. I suspect that the grain will be quite rough though.
Let me know how your XX works out. It is not for mural size prints, but 11x14 looks good.

 

[GeneW]

Thanks Tom. I'll watch for the TMY-2 400 and give some a try.

Gene

 

[HSI]

🙁





I need film.
I'll trade somebody some expired 120 slide
for some 35 black and white... 2008.

 

[wilt]

Tom,

Kul att höra att du är lundensare 🙂 Jag bor på Karl XI-gatan. Passerar du dina gamla hemtrakter någon gång vore det kul att ses över ett glas eller en espresso!

Thanks for looking at my blog! And thanks for the tip about Kalvar's book, which sounds really interesting.

Good to see you fighting for film! I think we will see filmbased photography a long time. Film and chemistry might be more or less gone from many local photo stores and many of our local photo friends might have gone digital, but now that we have the internet, we can get our fix anyway.

Reading Anne-Celine Jaeger, Image makers, image takers, it was interesting to see how many of the photographers interviewed were using film of just about every variety: 35 mm, 120, 4x5 and 8x10. And not only the established ones (Salgado, Mary Ellen Mark &c), but also several of the book's section of up and coming people were doing film.

 

[Tom A]

Wilt, jag bodde i manga ar pa Laboratoriegatan 5. A small house, built in and around 1700. it had a feature that was unique - the crossbeams were only 175cm from the floor and I am 180. Thus if you forgot about it, your head was like the proverbial stick along the fence. It did rattle the brain!
I went to "Spyken" and later, after a stint at Sydsvenskan. moved to Goteborg for a degree in journalism and on to Stockholm as a magazine editor. Back to Lund when we got married and Tuulikki finished off her MBA there. Rented a small attic apartment on "Vastergatan" for several years! I also accumulated a degree in Clinical Chemistry - not very useful, but it does allow me to concoct film and paper developers with reasonable succes. We left in 1970 and took off for a year and a half on a trip around the world. Never lived there since, but occasionally go back and see friends. Lunds is an interesting town as its population is highly transitory due to the University. people come there, stay for a while and then go somewhere else.
In the 60's you could take "Paga-taget" to Malmo, a ferry across to Copenhagen, go to a jazzclub, have a beer or two for about $3 and sleep in waiting shack at the ferry terminal and catch the "Milkrun" at 6 am and be back in Lund by 8am.
There usd to be a good photo supply store. "Molanders" I think on one of the streets leading from the railroad station to the Cathedral in those days. If they are still there, they are most likely all digital today.

 

[RayPA]

Great thread, Tom. I saw your Xmas gift on Flickr. You're going to be busy I think. Good to have you as a contact over there. Looking forward to 2008 and everyone's efforts.


🙂