As I was walking around (at night) shooting the second roll with the R2A - looking for places to use the 40mm at f1.4 - this plastered guy who was standing nearby approached speaking a language I couldn't understand - though somehow he made it known that he wanted me to take his picture and that he had a specific pose in mind - this one.
He made various flourishes - such as you might make to a King - and then kneeled. Possibly this had something to do with being presented to the Queen of England.
Afterwards - he thanked me - again in an unknown tongue - bowing and scraping and sometimes sputtering "thank you."
[Most of my time is going into getting my development times right - and I'm still futzing with various developers. This was in TMAX. You know, the appearance / sharpness etc. of the film grain is different with different developers. ]
Untouched crop. F1.4, 1/30 sec. Light was from the storefront that was behind me.
It's a bit soft - though certainly printable. It is also not a fair test - or at least not a scientifc test - since it was a fairly slow shutter speed, was pretty dark, and who knows if my focus was 100% on target.
I went out this morning and shot another roll - all at f5.6 which should be pretty close to the meat of the lens - and all of shots that had very small lettering somewhere that I focused on. Things that I know from experience that with the Hexar or the M lenses should be readable with a 16x loupe.
And of course I've made one of the oldest scientific mistakes - using several different developers - which effect appearance of sharpness. For this last roll with the tiny lettering, I went back to my old HC110B formula. News at 5.
13 comments:
Dave,
Having only used TMAX dev I'm interested in your comments re: sharpnes. After my 10yr hiatus I will be developing my first rolls of HP5+ and Ilfotec LC29 tonight.
I will take note of the sharpness of the test frames I shot. I used to think my Olympus lenses were just soft!! May be there's hope for me yet!
Cheers,
Dave, why the R2A vs. the R3A?
The only difference is the viewfinder, right?
Why choose other than 100% for the viewfinder?
Well, there's the viewfinder, and a different set of framelines (the R3a has 40mm framelines; the R2a has 35mm framelines). The 2a comes a bit closer to what the typical Leica shooter deals with (for those just tuning in: the R3a, according to CameraQuest's Mr. Gandy, is the first leica M-mount camera body with a 1:1 VF).
Oh, and to clarify: 1:1 magnification does not indicate 100% VF accuracy.
Jeff - so Leica makes 3 different magnifications for the viewfinder - and what's best depends on what focal length lenses you are generally using.
The .72 is what used to be the standard M magnification - sort of an all purpose magnification - good for normal to wide angle and okay for longer lenses...
As the magnification increases it's better for longer lenses - say a 90mm in terms of how much you see, and ease of focus.
It has to do with how much your eye can see in terms of framing - pressed up against the viewfinder.
Maybe someone can explain it better than me - I just remembered that a while back I used the higher magnification M6 and didn't care for it - or for that matter the .50 - something which I wasn't crazy about either because I had trouble seeing the full frame.
The 40 seems pretty sharp, right?
So far so good. I need to do some prints to confirm it - and I need to dig out my loupes and lightbox to really confirm it.
I'm not quite sure that the focusing mechanism in the viewfinder is as good as the M6. Think I want to compare the two side by side in low light conditions.
from what I hear - the Bessa has a shorter rangefinder
base than the M6, therefor focusing is less accurate
wide open or with long lenses. the 1:1 vf is grand tho'
Well Dave,
All this talk of rangefinders has me reaching into my bag of no-longer-used equipment and dusting off my R2. And look at that, even a partial roll of film in it! I drug it out on a canoe trip this weekend, ugghhhh... nature photography, but enjoyed shooting with it again. Now, I have to go buy some new chemicals and dust off the film scanner. Thanks for the inspiration :)
Oh, dear...see what you've started, Dave? ;-)
Hi Everyone:
Since we are all getting deep into film, what about Kodak's chromogenic 400 film for B&W. How does it compare to Tri-X, HP5, etc. Since the local labs can't do B&W to save their lives is this a solution? The color developing machines are automated, or can they screw this up to.
I'm trying to find a good solution for using film again. I really don't want to do the developing, although it may not be an option.
See what you started Dave. You got us all looking at grain and developers. All the stuff that you don't look at with digital.
Craig
Craig - used a couple of the chromogenic films a while back. I brought several rolls to different local labs - and guess what - they all looked substantially different. And to top that, the same local lab did two rolls and they both have different tonalities.
So what that means is that you still don't have the convenience of just dropping it off at your local lab. You need a good pro lab. And if you're going to do that - yep - you guessed it.
Footnote: Dave actually got me on the HC-110 kick (of course, I've only recently gotten back to souping my own film in the last six months...ain't dloing a Winogrand here, no-sir), and I do like what I see, never mind the convenience/economy factor of concentrated developer. This has been a lot of fun (granted, having an electric film dryer halps in this respect), and leaves me conjuring other possibilites.
"What will we do with all this useless beauty?" - E.C.
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