The little Leica IIIf is adorable, tiny, and capable. Built in 1946, it’s showing its age a bit. Also, it’s kind of a pain to use, so I only drag it out occasionally. I notice there’s also a light leak.
This time I used a long-expired roll of Ilford XP2 Super.
The best camera is the one you have with you. Unless it’s a shitty camera. In that case the best camera is the one you left at home. Idiot.
Jack Baty, Twitter 2010
I exercised the M6 by running a roll of Portra 400 through it, as it’s been dormant since I bought the MP.
This was self-processed in Cinestill C-41 chemistry using the JOBO. Scanned on the V750 and processed in Lightroom with the Negative Lab Pro plugin.
So I currently have four beautiful Leica M cameras in perfect working order. They are (from left to right in the photo)…
Leica M4 (1966). I purchased this M4 in 2009. It’s not my first Leica (that was an M6TTL bought in 2004(?)), but I’ve had it the longest. One cool feature of this particular camera is that it has the M3/M2 style levers, which I prefer. I’m happy to have it back.
Leica M3 (1960). The OG Leica M that started it all. I love the super-bright, high-magnification viewfinder with a 50mm or 90mm lens.
Leica M6 (1998). Purchased in 2017, this particular M6 is one of the last 10 made, which I think is cool. It’s had the MP finder upgrade and the unneeded frame lines masked out. Since it has a meter, this is the body that gets color film when I’m in the mood for color. A great workhorse of a camera.
Leica MP (2021). The idea of having a brand new Leica film camera has haunted me for years. This year I was fortunate enough to find and purchase a brand new black paint MP. It’s just the most beautiful thing. My “forever” camera (assuming I never change my mind about shooting film ????.)
That’s sixty years of innovation, Leica style. It’s what happens when you get it right the first time.
But I also complain a lot about the problems with viewing tiny Instagram photos on a phone. “Too small!” I’d lament. It got me thinking about making larger prints. I don’t mean crazy 16×20″ monsters that eat up ink, paper, space, and money. I was thinking maybe 8×10″ would be a nice, larger change of pace.
I can only enlarge 35mm negatives in my current darkroom, meaning that for anything larger than that, I need to print digitally. So, I made a few (digital) prints on 8×10″ Canon photo paper with my 10-year-old Canon Pixma Pro-100 printer.
The prints look fine, but they don’t feel good. They feel flimsy and cheap. It bugs me. I almost never mount and frame my prints, so I prefer something meatier. Something that handles better. You know, like a proper silver gelatin print on fiber paper. But, as I mentioned, my darkroom can’t do anything other than 35mm. Besides, making fiber darkroom prints is a ton of work, and reserved for only special images.
I want to print the more mundane stuff, too, but I don’t want the prints to feel cheap, so I bought some Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag Paper. Wow, what a difference good ink jet photo paper makes.
I installed the ICC profile from Canson for my printer and made a few test prints out of Lightroom. I really like them. Instead of going full-bleed borderless, I added a giant border on all four sides and added a narrow black border around the image itself. It may be a little gimmicky, but I think they look great and the border makes them easy to handle as well.
The actual image area ends up being only about twice the size of the 5×7″ prints, but bigger is better, and this is a good compromise between size, convenience, and cost.
Now to figure out how to make decent color prints
These were all shot with the Linhof Master Technika on HP5 Plus, developed in HC-110 for 5 min (Dilution B) and scanned on the V750.
The Leica M3 is The One, when it comes to the Leica M line. I love it so. The higher-magnification viewfinder makes it easier to focus longer lenses, so I sometimes mount the Elmarit 90mm and it’s a fine combination. A few here are using the 90mm. The others are using the Summicron-M 50mm (v4). P
The roll of HP5 Plus was processed in HC-110 (Dilution B) and scanned with SilverFast on the V750.
A friend of mine mocked me for carrying a camera around my neck and I said, “I like to always have a camera with me.” and he held up his phone and said, “I always have a camera with me, too, see?” and I asked, “Does it take film?” and he laughed and said, “No, of course not.” and I said, “Then you don’t have a camera with you. You have a computer that can record images.” and I’m kind of a dick I guess.
It’s like a real-world Instagram filter and I don’t care for it. If it were in better condition, I might like the overall softer look for portraits.
I have a few other older lenses that I’ve almost accidentally collected over the years. There’s an Olympus OM 85mm f/2 which is wonderful and makes a good excuse for using my beat-up but adorable OM-1n. The Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 is legendary, (mostly because it was used by Steve McCurry to make the Afghan Girl photo), but I’m not blown away by it. I have a 1960s thread-mount Canon 50mm f/2.8 from 1958 and I like it for the IIIf but otherwise, it gets very little use.
Taking advantage of the “character” in old lenses is an attractive idea, but in practice, I gravitate toward “better” lenses. I made the photos of lenses in this post using the APO Summicron-SL 75mm and good lord what a lens. It’s hard to ignore the difference in technical quality and just let the old lenses charm me. Perhaps if I was going for a specific look for “my work” but mostly I’m just taking snapshots, so the charm of vintage lenses is often lost on me.
Still, I’m going to take the Elmar apart and clean that hazy front element and see where it gets me.
But this is not just about Chromatic aberration, as Peter Karbe explained to me, the lack of aberrations results in much more contrast at the point of focus than in an ordinary lens, and that this contrast falls off very quickly in front and behind the point of focus. This means that an f/2 lens can appear to have the same depth of field as an f/1.4 lens (or even less in the case of the 75 f/1.4 compared to the 75 f/2 M lens).
Leica APO lenses are so good it’s ridiculous. I have two of them for the SL (35mm and 75mm). They really do look special. One day I think I’d like the APO Summicron-M 35mm but I’d have to sell my car first.
(Photo is from the original Macfilos post)
I’ve standardized on Ilford HP5 Plus for black and white film and Kodak Portra 400 for color. This doesn’t mean I won’t try something different occasionally, but those are my go-to films.
To make room, I’ve challenged myself to shoot all of this old stock before ordering any more new film.
Here’s the 35mm inventory:
I may not bother shooting the very old stuff. For example, the Tech Pan expired in 1991! The Plus-X and Tri-X Pan are probably not far off from that. Plus, they’re in unopened boxes, which are worth keeping intact just for nostalgia’s sake.
And here’s the 120:
There are 2 rolls of Astia but they’re 220 and I don’t have a back that will hold 220, so that’s out.
I was excited to see the Acros in there. It’s a great film.
It also looks like I’ll need to buy some E-6 chemistry for the Velvia and Provia.
If I’m being honest with myself, I understand that this is about three years’ worth of film, given my normal pace. I’m hoping that this challenge will induce the feeling that I’ve got to hurry and “use it up”, and so will accelerate things a little.
I'm trying to use up the rolls of expired TMAX 100 that have been taking up room in my fridge for a few years. I pulled the Nikon F3 out of a drawer, loaded batteries in the motor drive, and shot a roll. As usual, it was mostly photos of Alice and I around the house.
The film was processed in HC-110 (Dilution B) for six minutes and scanned on the V750. The first couple were shot using the vaunted Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 AI-s lens, for what that’s worth. The others were taken with the Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AI-s.
My love for the Nikon F3 has waned since the initial love affair, but once in a while it’s fun to clamp on the big motor drive and burn through a roll.
Here’s a photo of the F3 that I made with a Hasselblad.
I love the way the Zeiss lenses for Hasselblad render. The 80mm Planar has been my standard and favorite for years. I put a roll of Tri-X through it today, just for fun. Of course it was mostly shots of Alice, who poses patiently for me whenever I ask.
The gentleman who sold me the Linhof later sent me (at no charge!) a Grafmatic sheet film holder. The Grafmatic will hold up to 6 sheets of film at once and allows one to “rapidly” expose them. Here are some instructions.
I loaded four sheets and went out on the deck with Alice to practice. As you can see, it didn’t go all that well. Loading film into the septums was easy enough. And racking the guts of it in and out to “advance” to the next sheet is something I’ll get used to. My problem was that I never advanced past the last frame I shot and then opened the dark slide, exposing and completely wasting one sheet and fogging the next couple. Other than the frontmost sheet, which was totally ruined, this was the worst of them.
The other two were salvageable…
It’s as if she was sad for me, in advance. And then the last one, which wasn’t damaged at all…
On the plus side, this makes shooting a series of (handheld) photos with the Linhof pretty speedy. I was able to focus and frame accurately handheld, and that’s quite a feat.
Once I get this dialed in it should be great. I do love how large-format photos render.
Obviously, I struggle with which tool to use. I was certain I’d “permanently” settled on Lightroom Classic just a week ago. In my comparisons, Lightroom wins nearly every category. But there was this entry:
C1: I get better images, faster
I couldn’t get this advantage of Capture One out of my head. Somehow, with my digital files, Capture One’s defaults come really close to where I want to end up, whereas in Lightroom I always have work to do.
My head says, “Use Lightroom because it’s ‘standard’ and works with everything.” but my heart says, “You know you like using Capture One better, so do that!”
The the other thing that settled it for me this last time was the realization that I want my editor and my library to be decoupled. Lightroom really wants to be my library. In fact, I spent a good portion of last weekend importing 100,000 images into a single Lightroom Library. It’s an adequate library, but using it as my primary tool puts me in a situation I don’t want to be in: I’m relying on Lightroom (and Adobe) for everything. Much better to have a DAM tool that isn’t entirely dependent upon a specific photo/RAW editor.
This is where Photo Mechanic Plus comes in. I’ve been using Photo Mechanic for a decade or more, and there’s nothing better or faster for ingesting, culling, and applying keywords and metadata to photos. Now, with the new “Plus” version, it’s also a powerful DAM.
My process is currently as follows:
Once the initial edits are done and I have created permanent JPGs, everything lives in organized folders on my hard drives and are viewed, searched, managed, shared using Photo Mechanic. If I want to do followup edits later, I can always open the RAW files in Capture One or whatever other app I might want to use.
I miss things from Lightroom. For example, to convert scanned color negatives I use Negative Lab Pro, which only works in Lightroom. I miss some of the plugins and other tools, too. But I feel like this is better for my library and my photos for the long haul.
For example, currently, we don’t have likes. If and when we launch a feature in that vein, it’ll be private. We’ve intentionally avoided any public counts. We don’t want Glass ever to become a popularity contest. We’re not home for influencers. We are a home for photographers.
Tom Watson – On my Om
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a reasonable alternative to Instagram? I wish it could be Flickr, but I doubt that’ll ever happen.
Maybe Glass will have a shot. I’m number 482 on the waitlist so I’m about to find out.
UPDATE August 12, 2021: I’m in as @jbaty on Glass. I’ll play with it a bit and let you know what I think
UPDATE August 14, 2021: I like it. I don’t love it yet. It looks nice, but behaves in ways I don’t expect. It’s also froze on me a few times. I love the old-school Flickr feeling. I guess my problem is one that Glass can’t solve and that is I don’t like viewing photographs on a phone’s tiny screen.
There are too many things that can go wrong when shooting large format (4×5) film.
I made four exposures of my friends Steve and Bryan this afternoon. Two of the four were ruined right off the bat: The first, because I’d left the shutter open when pulling the dark slide. The second because I didn’t expose it at all and processed as though I had.
Large format is hard.
There are so many opportunities to fail that making a successful image is really quite rewarding. Today wasn’t a rewarding day. Both of the photos that weren’t completely ruined were spoiled in other ways.
The above image was taken while facing into the sun. That was dumb. I was so flustered after accidentally exposing the first negative that I basically ignored the actual subject of the shot.
And the following image shows some blooming/flair around the overexposed decking and table areas. I’m not sure why it’s so severe. The lens may have been dirty.
Oh well, I’ll just need to keep practicing because when it works, it’s awesome.
Mostly snapshots from our family reunion. Leica MP, HP5+.
