Who needs expensive lenses.......

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Bertram2

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.......when his negs are big ? 😉

How easy life once was ! Found this in the shoebox while trying out my new 4490 with different formats. Maybe a bit OT but I expect some of you will find it intereting anyway.

Shot with a 1949 AGFA SYNCHRO BOX , one aperture (105mm/f11) , one time (1/30), no distance setting. Full auto ! 😀
This camera has a lens with one element only, and tho it gets terribly soft towards the corners it renders a clear and sharp photo in the middle. My parent's early albums a full of contacts, the usual order at the local photog in those days.
Film here was FP4, a lab dev.

regards,
bertram
 
nice pics, the old adage holds up so well and for all to see" its not the camera , but the photographer that makes the picture. the guy in your avatar, by his photos, is also a very good proof of that old saying.
 
xayraa33 said:
nice pics, the old adage holds up so well and for all to see" its not the camera , but the photographer that makes the picture. the guy in your avatar, by his photos, is also a very good proof of that old saying.
Click to expand...

I had to do a double take on that, before I realized it was no longer the 'naked butt' avatar 🙂
 
Nice photos. For those of us who don't know, Bertram, what size negs does the Agfa take?
 
105mm lens? That's 6x9 on either 120 or 620 (IIRC, the Agfas were built to tolerate either spool size.).

My Argus 75 is similar to that. I really gotta respool some 120 onto 620 and see what my soon to be 4 year old can do with it.

William
 
There are few MF cameras that produce lousy looking photos when usaed by a good photographer. Still, the photos are impressive, considering the one element lens.
 
xayraa33 said:
was there a naked butt avatar before the Aget portrait by Bernice Abbot?
Click to expand...

There was ! This portrait is wrongly said to be shot by Berenice Abbot, actually it is taken by Lee Miller some days before he died in 1927, in the Rue Campagne Premier. She was still Man Ray's assistant (she photographed, he signed) and his studio wasn't far away from Atget's house, same street as far as I remember.

Lee Miller was the one who saved the work of Atget after he had died, most of the thousands of negs landed in Berenice Abbots foundation in NY later, she took care that it was all kept together.

bertram
 
Such incredible vehicles for 1949 !!! 😱

VW and BMW should answer some questions... 😀

Great looking shots, you're right, with such big negs many things no longer matter (when reduced to screen size, note it), I've even had shots with a slightly motion blur that was gone when reduced for screen and posted here.

I love big negatives 🙂
 
Bertram2 said:
There was ! This portrait is wrongly said to be shot by Berenice Abbot, actually it is taken by Lee Miller some days before he died in 1927, in the Rue Campagne Premier. She was still Man Ray's assistant (she photographed, he signed) and his studio wasn't far away from Atget's house, same street as far as I remember.

Lee Miller was the one who saved the work of Atget after he had died, most of the thousands of negs landed in Berenice Abbots foundation in NY later, she took care that it was all kept together.

bertram
Click to expand...
So it was Lee Miller, I am glad that Aget's work was saved, so other people, like like myself and others, can still enjoy looking at his photographs.
 
xayraa33 said:
So it was Lee Miller, I am glad that Aget's work was saved, so other people, like like myself and others, can still enjoy looking at his photographs.
Click to expand...

In Memoriam

The house

This is the atelier house where Man Ray had worked in those days AFAIK, same street, 100m away

Atelier House

I've often seen B. Abbott named as the artist of the portrait, but the books I own
( a 3ft row on the shelf, kinda addiction 🙂 ) tell a different story which is for me the version with a higher probability, because of the mentioned neighbourship and because I am not sure if B. Abbott had been in Paris at all 1927.

Regards,
Bertram
 
Rue Campagne Première, near Montparnasse, also hosted Catalan sculptor Apel.les Fenosa. His widow one invited me to tea.
http://www.fenosa.org/biography.html

Bertram, you are a well of science!

As an aside, contemporary "single-use" cameras produce acceptable 10x15cm enlargements from 24x36mm negs, but their single plastic (methacrylate?) lens is aspherical and computer-designed...
 
Alec said:
Rue Campagne Première, near Montparnasse, also hosted Catalan sculptor Apel.les Fenosa. His widow one invited me to tea.
http://www.fenosa.org/biography.html

Bertram, you are a well of science!

As an aside, contemporary "single-use" cameras produce acceptable 10x15cm enlargements from 24x36mm negs, but their single plastic (methacrylate?) lens is aspherical and computer-designed...
Click to expand...


Thanks for the link !
A well of science ? No, but about the 20s and 30s on the Montparnasse I know quite lot, that's true. A special Rue somehow, next to this atelier house is "Hotel Croatia", they got a plate at the entrance, a lot of famous artists have lived there.
And Godard's "A bout de souffle" ends there too, Belmondo breaks down, shot in his back, at the end of the Rue Campagne Premier, where it meets Boulveard Raspail . Noticed that some day ago first when I watched this movie in TV .

Back on topic: The single use cameras can achieve results which make you thought ful too ! 🙂 I know of a pic which had won a contest because nobody knew what camera was used..........
And afaik Atget's glass plate camera had a so called flat lens, fixed aperture,
no shutter. The whole equipment with tripod and glass negs must have had arond 25 to 30 kilos, and the old man lugged it around on his back all day long by feet, from Montparnasse to Montmartre !!
I fact Atget died mainly from malnutrition , ( the pic shows it) a stupid milk diet he had kept strictly for many years, because stupid doctors said in those days this would get stomach probs under control.

Enuff stuff from that huge fund of useless informations now ! :angel:

Regards to Paris ,
bertram
 
Bertram

Nice results. I had always heard and read that the 35mm users concentration on resolving power etc of lenses was because it was very important considering the small neg size especially when enlarging. That it is not as critical in larger film formats seems to be shown by your results. There is something to be said for med format folding RFs.

Bob
 
my latest moskva 5 works only at 1/100 and 1/50 (to slow with free hand), so I use it with only one time (1/100) and at f11, 16, 22.
Use it is not very difficult and results are very good (format help very well)






Bertram2 said:
.......when his negs are big ? 😉

How easy life once was ! Found this in the shoebox while trying out my new 4490 with different formats. Maybe a bit OT but I expect some of you will find it intereting anyway.

Shot with a 1949 AGFA SYNCHRO BOX , one aperture (105mm/f11) , one time (1/30), no distance setting. Full auto ! 😀
This camera has a lens with one element only, and tho it gets terribly soft towards the corners it renders a clear and sharp photo in the middle. My parent's early albums a full of contacts, the usual order at the local photog in those days.
Film here was FP4, a lab dev.

regards,
bertram
Click to expand...
 
Nikon Bob said:
Bertram
I had always heard and read that the 35mm users concentration on resolving power etc of lenses was because it was very important considering the small neg size especially when enlarging. That it is not as critical in larger film formats seems to be shown by your results.
Bob
Click to expand...

Bob,
I think we all once had this experience, looked at our first MF print and said "How stupid was I ???!!!! Bothering myself with all this expensive micro-sh*t for so much money ?!"
But, in the same way we all found out later that the 35mm idea wasn't THAT stupid as it seemed to be after our first MF or even LF experiences. And those who switched to MF completely learned that by doing, I mean by trying to use a MF camera like the 35mm they were used to. Most of them came back, partly at least. There are too SEVERE restrictions compared to 35, cost, weight, DOF (!!), film flatness, slower lenses, camera shake with longer lenses and so on !!

There is a huge "BUT" tho: If your style and craft allows you to live with those restrictions, without losing any part of your technical freedom then indeed 35mm
seems to be a pretty ridiculous miniaturization , which tries to achieve results comparable to 35mm with an enormous effort, but not really successful anyway.
The fact that 35mm never could replace MF completely proves it.

Prob is tho most of the people can NOT live with the MF restrictions, as the success of the 35mm idea proves. I can't either as I found out, and thank god I never switched over to MF completely, tho I really L-O-V-E these negs !!!! 😀

Best,
bertram
6X9 @ 4800dpi 16bit greyscale = 280MB, 🙄 I'd need a new Computer too !! :bang:
 
Bertram

Yes for portability, versitility and convenience 35mm is hard to beat, in film, compared to larger formats and you do have to be really picky about lenses. The very things that made 35mm popular are now at work with the digital avalanche. That's kind of funny isn't it. No system is perfect for everyone so it is a good thing that there are various solutions to fit ones needs. You really do need a faster computer and lots of RAM to handle scan file sizes that big.

Bob
 
I see a whole new career and life opening up here Bertram, photo-historian.! And Photo-resurectionist.
In my days of judging photos at Camera Clubs and also attending competitions when the results are being given out, I have often felt that the information about which camera, lens etc was being used got in the way of the judgement of the actual worth of the picture.
I always got the feeling that the people who "needed" all this information were far more interested in the equipment than the photography. :angel:
 
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