Ektar 100 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Sage in Bloom

I took this photo a few years ago with my pre-WW2 Voigtlander Brillant. It is a simple camera that gives lovely results, as only a vinage camera can. I wonder if it is from their uncoated lenses.

I haven’t been to the local botanical gardens since last year, where this picture wast taken, when I fell down a hill and came home looking like something out of a horror film. A bit trepidatious to return, I admit. However, after the rains of last months, I know I have to go. The hills are greening, and the air of spring is in the air.

Definitely time to get out. I think more Ektar is definitely indicated, too.

A Touch of Autumn

I just had to put this photo out there today.

I recently acquired a new-to-me Certo 6 camera, It has the legendary Carl Zeiss Tessar 80mm f2.8 lens. The camera and lens date from around 1953 (give or take). I shot this at f2.8 to check out the DOF and sharpness of the lens. I’m amazed. The Ektar 100 came through, too, with beautiful colors.

The Certo 6 is an odd folder in the sense that it has many features that other folding cameras (bellows cameras) of the same time era do not have. Also, because current 120 film is thinner than that of the 50s, there is a potential for overlap of images – which I did not experience – and other quirks that need to be worked out. I really like folders because they force you to slow down and think, as well as consider what you want to see on your film.

Square format is a compositional challenge as well. As this is part of my first roll through the camera, composition was not of any real importance for me, but using the camera was. For some reason I got only 9 out of 12 exposures on the film, but that is something I think I have figured out, and will run another roll of play film through the camera to check out my ideas . . . like I said, ya gotta think sometimes!

More to come.

Strange View

Another picture I have no idea that I took! The aliens that visit must have done it, or a cat. No idea. I have been thinking of doing double-exposures lately, and maybe this is an accidental one as my 1937 Weltur doesn’t have any mechanism to prevent that. Whatever, it is rather interesting to me.

Sky, Trees, Water

This is a B&W version of a panorama I took with my 1937 Welta Weltur. Two images sewn together in Photoshop, and then turned into black and white. Old glass which is uncoated gives a characteristically different look to film, whether in color or black and white. You can see the color version here.

Whaler’s Cove with a 1937 Welta Weltur

There is something so different in the quality of a photo taken with a film camera, rather than a digital camera. It is apparent even more so when it is done with an uncoated lens from 1937. The lens in question is a lovely Schneider Kreuznach Xenar 2.8, 75mm, taken using 1937 Welta Weltur camera. It is a folding camera that takes the still-available 120mm film. I used Ektar 100 by Kodak, and applied the Sunny 16 rule for manual exposures.

I have a 6×6 version with a 6×4.5 reduction mask. I thought I had removed the mask – but hadn’t. All my supposedly square images came out rectangular! I stitched two images together in PS6 and then tediously removed threads and dots of dust that were apparent even after scanning with Digital Ice on the Epson V600.

This photo makes me think of landscape paintings of the 1700s and 1800s – especially that turquoise sky. Mayhap a painting will follow.