Category Archives: Photographs

Canon 50mm f/1.4 – some results

Film, Leica, Lenses, Photographs

Not half bad.

For an index of all Leica-related articles click here.



M3, 50mm Canon f/1.4 LTM and a BIG print.
I added the red lens alignment index dome.

After the interminable wait for the scans to come back from the photo lab – sometimes I just hate film – they finally arrived 9 days after mailing in my Dropbox account and I duly downloaded the Noritsu HQ scans into LRc and immediately added EXIF data. I generally search the LRc catalog by lens used as that seems to work best for my memory.

What makes a lens ‘good’? For me I care little about resolution charts, coma tests, distortion measurements, you name it. What I want is a high resolution print at 13″ x 19″ in size, often cropped from just 50% of the original. Using that criterion the Canon 50mm f/1.4 LTM lens adapted to my Leica M3 is a fine lens indeed.

Here are some results, all on pokey 100 ISO Kodak Ektar. It may be slow but the grain is very fine indeed and the reds are the closest thing to Kodachrome since Kodachrome.



Barista girl. 1/15th, f/1.4. Ektar is sloooow!


Bench. f/8.


Local barber’s shop.


I couldn’t but think of Stieglitz’s famous Wall Street image.


Near-Kodachrome reds. Click the image for a larger version.


In the style of Keld Helmer Petersen.


More Keld.


Hard hat place.

If you do not want to spend megabucks on a Leica 50mm lens, the affordable Canon 50mm f/1.4 LTM optic is recommended.

Moments

Photographs

50 years of Street Snaps

This book represents my favorite street snaps taken over a fifty year period, 1971 through 2021.

The early monochrome images were all taken on a Leica M3, mostly with a 35mm Summaron lens, always on Kodak TriX film. Most of the later color snaps were made with Panasonic G1 and GX7 MFT cameras with the 14-45mm kit zoom. From auto nothing to auto everything in 50 years. How did we manage to meter, focus and compose before the days of automation?

My goal all along was to infuse an element of humor into my photography eschewing, at all costs, ridicule and cruelty.

My favorite images?

  • Page 1 – at the Reg Bolton sculpture show. Talk of a magical Moment
  • Page 2 – the drama of the falling child in the most perfect urban place on earth, Paris’s Tuileries Gardens
  • Page 9 – the new bride in Parc Monceau, Paris, her bridesmaids all a tizzy
  • Page 14 – that gorgeous, crazy Irish Wolfhound
  • Page 22 – a poignant scene at the Holocaust Memorial in Paris
  • Pages 32-33 – young love
  • Page 34 right – the chicken getting a parking ticket
  • Page 37 right – all those pointing fingers
  • Page 40 – those beautiful girls in San Francisco’s Union Square – is there a more photogenic city?
  • Page 42 right – sheer joy


    Click the image for the book.

    I have allotted a generous 15 seconds to each image to permit leisurely perusal. The show starts 15 seconds after the opening caption. Try and view this full screen on the largest display in your home. Small portable device displays do not do the images justice. The story behind the images appears on the last page.

Anchorage 1978

Film, Photographs

A new life for an old image.

For an index of all my Film related articles, click here.

I lived in Anchorage from November 1977 through October 1980, after which I moved to New York, new green card in hand.

The long summer days brought with them acidic colors and what better emulsion to do these justice than Kodachrome? I preferred Kodachrome 64 to the slower 25 variant, trading coarser grain for one and a half stops in speed gain. Even so ASA 64 rather pales beside what modern digital technology can deliver at a far higher quality level.

This image was taken on 4th Avenue which was ripped apart by a 9.2 earthquake in 1964, still the most powerful recorded in the US. Appropriately enough this occurred on Good Friday, for 4th Avenue was a den of iniquity back then, replete with dive bars and shady businesses.


Kodachrome yellow.

This image has been given new life when recently rescanned using the Nikon D800. The original Kodachrome slide is as good as new, no fading detectable. and was taken on my Leica M3 with the 50mm Summicron lens.