jimdesu

Pardon the pun, but what's the objective? Are you looking for a new set of lenses that'll be more lightweight, or just generally curious? If you're solely using M42 lenses, even if the other lenses aren't as good, you might be pleasantly surprised at how many more shots you get with auto-aperture on the *istDS with its automation.

You're right about the lenses, but here's the dirty little secret: Pentax (prime) lenses are very, very good. I'll put a 50mm f/1.4 Pentax lens (any version) up against a Leica Summilux without blinking. Pentax doesn't market to high-end 35mm users because it doesn't consider 35mm to be a professional format, so you'd never know from the (consumer oriented) marketing literature how good their lenses really are.

 

I, personally, might hesitate to start all over w/ a Pentax DSLR, but that would only be if somehow a 2nd version of the Contax ND came about (bloody unlikely, it seems).

I know that the M5 bodies are supposed to allow you to doubly expose

frames, but opposing the gear train makes me nervous, so I was

wondering: since the rewind is racheted, can I pre-expose the whole

roll, rewind it, and expect the frame-spacing to be correct?

 

thanks!

 

James

Fantastic casual portrait camera, esp. with the 150mm lens (which's highly underrated, imho).

P.P.S. I don't have anything to show as an example, but check out pictures online by William Mortensen to see the sort of look that it generates (I got the idea from him).

Well, I've never tried to explain it, but here goes.

 

Give the thing a zone-III pre-exposure, fogging at that level. Normally speaking, if you subtracted five stops, your Z-V exposure would land under Z-III and be lost, as would everything under zone VIII. When you pushed the film, your shadows & mid-tones would be horribly compressed, resulting in an ugly, thick negative. But, with the pre-exposure, it doesn't work this way. Because you're already (way) off of the toe on the H&D curve, all the light that hits the film makes *some* difference. Your highlights at zone VIII that would normally land at Z-III don't make a Z-III exposure, because it's already there! Instead, you end up with twice the amount of exposure, putting you up to Z-IV. All of your exposure is compressed into the range between zones III & IV. When you give the film a five-stop push, you blow out that exposure back up to the zone IX range. I meter specular highlights at zone VIII; if you wanted to keep them without risking blowing them out (for instance, if you were measuring a forehead highlight), you might give a four-stop push instead. What you end up with is a relatively thin, low-contrast negative, with a lot of mid-range tone, and little to speak of for shadows. At this point, I scan it and start playing around in Photoshop, adding contrast back where I want it.

 

I wish I had a picture to post, but I had to re-install windows, and don't have anything on disk anymore but some shots on Impressa. I really like Impressa (and have a small cache of it in the fridge), but wish I could shoot it at 1600 and get even less contrast with it, hence my post.

 

(o:

 

James

 

PS. I know it's asking someone to torture the film, but it means I don't have to keep a bunch of chemicals in the house. :)

Hi there,

 

When I shoot B&W film (usually panF), I like to give a zone-III

pre-exposure, a 5-stop underexposure and a 5-stop push (well, I tell

*them* to give it the push, since I don't develop my own negs). I

like the results that I get from this, and was wondering if I could do

the same thing with C41 films. I searched around on the archive here,

and see two contradictory types of statements:

 

* You can push process C41 just fine, but expect color shifts

 

* You should never underexpose C41 film.

 

Which should I believe? Is it contextual and they're both right?

Assuming I haven't misspelled it, it's the ability to alter the plane of focus by tilting the lens, so that points of varying distance from the camera can be in focus simultaneously.

Quickie Q for anyone who knows:

 

Does the scheimpflug affect apply to Fresnel lenses?

 

thanks

 

James

Well, from my point of view, a lot of the photographic skills that I need to learn and refine have nothing to do with the type of camera I'm using. It's true that I don't shoot my M7 and my Medalist the same way, but the process in so far as what's going on in my noggin is the same, and limits me far more than my hardware.

Actually, as I understand it, the old Canon 50/0.95 was T-stopped at that, but, in general, you're right.

 

Got a picture of that 362/1.66? Sounds like a monster!

Enlargement seems to make my landscapes. What seems kinda bland at a small size is much more rewarding when it's printed large enough to catch the nuances. Of course, I normally shoot them with my Medalist, but it's a good use of a sharper lens.

The reason that they say they can get film quality is related to what you're saying about printing at home, but in a different manner. A casual person shooting film generally won't use Velvia or such, he or she will be using a 400 or 800-speed print film. The issue is not resolution, for which film beats digital without sweating, but perceptual noise. Digital sensors nowadays have really low noise, esp. when compared to a consumer-grade film. Consumers generally print at a magnification consistent with not seeing film grain. Even though the image size is less, a digitally captured image can generally be magnified much more than consumer-grade film, so, the user can get prints of the same size that he or she used to get with film, without noticeable degradation in quality.

K2 or K2DMD -- solid, reliable, aperture-priority mode, and build like a little tank.

Taylor & Hobson Anastigmat (LTM)

oops -- I meant anti-Zeiss bias.

Actually, Derek, I don't think it matters period. I use an M5, but don't use Leica lenses, so my statement isn't an anti-Leica bias, just a reflection of the amount of effort it would take to acheive this kind of resolution in practice.

 

Now, on the other hand, I am eagerly anticipating seeing what the 400-lpm result implies for contrast at lower resolutions...

It's a lot like the recently discontinued Kodak Technical Pan film, really intended for copying documents. It's got wickedly high contrast, and can only be used for pictorial purposes if special developers are employed. But like Tech Pan, it's VERY high resolution.

If you use high-resolution document film like Gigabit-film, and you've attached the camera to a shock-mounted sand-box or block of concrete like you do for holography, then sure, that kind of resoution is possible. Not that it really matters in the real world....

The answer to that is that they don't. Zeiss and Leica (and Cooke) are the best lens manufactuerers in the world, and produce lenses that compete against each other much more tightly than other manufacturers.

 

BUT, all lens manufacturers optimize their lens designs to different fitness landscapes. This gives lenses from different manufactureers different characteristics to them, and many, many people prefer the Leica characteristics. I actually strongly prefer the flavor of Zeiss lenses (and Pentax, oddly enough) to Leica, but it's like arguing that Pistachio ice-cream's better than Black Cherry.

I'm with you, Philip. I'm having fun making pictures I like, most of which wouldn't be considered nearly unique or technically astute enough for people to want to pay for.

Instead of a screwmount leica, they should produce 4/3-system versions of R lenses, and use that as a cash-cow to support the more traditional Leica development. Let some other company concentrate on digital cameras and let Leica continue to make great film cameras.

I don't know who Iggers is, but we are; we're talking about the usefulness of classic cameras 50 years from now -- whether or not digital will make classic cameras no longer an option.

Classic cameras are more than just old cameras; they're a set of tools

enjoyed by a particular crowd of users (we geeks). I despair as to

what things are going to be in the future given the continual rise of

digital. I'm not against newfangled digital cameras per se (I bought

my fiancee one for xmas); digital has advantages like:

 

1. perfect sensor flatness

 

2. no need to wait for film to be developed

 

3. no need to spend hours photoshopping out scratches on one's negs

 

4. adjustable ISO on the same "roll" (card)

 

But...

 

My Kodak Medalist (converted to 120 by Ken Ruth -- highly recommended

btw) gives me negs that, when scanned, let me have 70 MP images to

play around with and enlarge as I please. Even when the technology

gets there for pro-cameras, it'll be vastly out of my budget, AND,

being modern electronics, by the time the pros have moved on to their

gigapixel cameras, the "old" 70MP cameras won't be serviced by anyone,

will take obsolete media, and have very little lifespan left in them.

 

As more moves to digital, those of us who use pro-level, obsolete,

"classic" equipment will be more and more s*** out of luck. When you

add in the steady increase in cost of tiny-market 'vintage' film types

(my beloved Impressa 50 is already unavailable at any price,

Kodachrome 25 is a memory, Tech Pan's disappearing, etc.), where are

we Luddite amateurs going to be in 50 years? Locked out of the new

'good stuff' and unable to afford to use the old 'good stuff'? Will

Ikontas, Medalists and their ilk be only for the well-heeled?

Hi there,

 

I don't want to start a flame-war on whether pre-flashing/pre-exposure

is useful or not, but I've just bought a camera that doesn't do

double-exposures the way my old one did. With the old camera, the

pin-spacing was ratcheted such that I could pre-expose the whole roll

of film, rewind back to the first frame, then start shooting. My new

camera won't do that, unfortunately, so I'm wondering: is there any

kind of machine that anyone knows of that will pre-flash a roll of

35mm film and leave the film ready for insertion into a camera afterwards?

 

thanks in advance,

 

Jim