russell_brooks

That's normal. You have to take the lens with adaptor off of the camera and then unscrew the adaptor.

The summaron has a curvature of field(I think that's the right term). The focus plane is not flat but curved. This helps when you focus(by definition at the center) and then recompose the subject off center. With the curvature it should stay in focus. Also these older lenses have just the bit of flare that you want for B&W. Basically what happens is the light scatters but the density added to the shadows seems to be more than the highlights(log). Or said another way, it puts an S curve on the density/log exposure graph for the negative. This is what we try to do with chemicals with 2 bath developers and compensation, etc... Old lenses do it at taking time. Basically it seems like you get more grey scale and it's easier to print. What you give up is a few shot opportunities where the lens would over-flare. But I'm willing to trade a few shots against getting sweet negatives. I bought a screwmount f3.5 summaron a few months ago and I'm having it cleaned. Let's see how it goes.

Get a IIIc. Why waste time with lesser bodies?

I thought Scala was Agfapan 100 in disguise? And that explains why it's so contrasty at 200?

I had a Noct with play in the focus. You can never know if your pictures are out of focus because of the DoF or because of the focus play. Return it and pay another 400 and get a decent new/used one.

Is that the Leica glow that I see popping up behind the Summarian's head? Or is it just a spotlight? Hahaha. Sorry, I'm just juiced up a bit.<br>Yeah, I missed most of the exhibitions this summer :(<br>The negative carrier for the Minolta 5400 doesnt hold them too much flatter either. I can say this after having tried multiple films on it. The only solution I can figure is to jury rig some AN glass to it.<br>Older lenses are where it's at. Best in B&W. Puts the curve right where you want it. A tiny bit of flare picks up the shadows and puts a shoulder on the highlights so the negative will better match the limited (5-7 stops) output range of paper. You do give up a few shot opportunities directly into a light source that a modern lens would take.

More summar madness.<div></div>

Here are some from the main entrance hall. The London's nicest softbox.<div></div>

Yes, I can be a bit corny at times... At any rate I took this during

the summer(summar?) at the British Museum with my Leica III and a

50mm Summar using Kodachrome 200. All pictures scanned with my

Minolta 5400 (which I am losing confidence in do to it not having a

glass carrier to keep the negs/slides flat) so some edge softness is

not due to the lens but to the crummy scanner. Yeah, and if it's not

a real Summarian I am sure someone will tell me, but it was right

next to the room that had the Summarians. And let me tell you - they

sure knew how to design lenses back then!<div></div>

I found some anti-newton glass from an old slide mount and tried to sandwich my negative. This actually kind of worked. In order to check if it would work consistantly I would need to get some AN glass cut to fit the whole Minolta carrier. I tried one side as well as two sides, and the two sided look like it was getting there. Which means that I would need a bit thinner glass so the negative carrier doesnt try and burst open.

Anyone know where I could get some thin AN glass cut to fit? I'm in London...

The other solution seems to be paying up and buying a Imacom scanner which takes all these problems away from you.

Also tried switching from emulsion side face first to the other side and that didnt really do the trick either...

Naw, grain dissolver didnt really help to solve the focus problem...

Hmm, there could be something to the grain dissolver. Let me try with that...

The only other idea I've had to to maybe increase the depth of field of the scanning sensor. Then you'd stay with the one focus point pass method. But that could degrade optical performance due to diffraction at some point... On the other hand a smaller sensor would have more DoF so they could shrink that thereby picking up more DoF in exchange for a slowing scan due to increased number of passes needed to scan - the motor would be the bottleneck.

I bought her book this spring. Found it unreadable and gave up. But to be honest after I got my undergrad in Liberal Arts I kind of soured on all this blowhard writing. But she did champion photography. Now, if you want to read a better liberal female author from the 60s check out Joan Didion. And her stuff you can actually read.

Thanks Nick,<br>

The tape concept wont work. Best case is it'll get on the negative and ruin it. The anti-newton glass carrier might work but I can imagine problems there as well unless Minolta makes one specifically for the scanner. I know this because of my wet darkroom work and how hard it is to get the edges and center. We're talking fractions of millimeters here. I guess the drum scanners actually wet the negatives and then they stay stuck and flat?

<br>Also after more experimenting I found out the problem with different magnifications. Yep, you're right. The usable size of the edges scan is roughly 10-20 pixels taller so when I make the two layers they dont match properly. So I shrunk it down with a bicubic interp but that's geting to be alot of work...<br>

What I'm thinking is that at scan time after each pass the scanner could go back and make another pass at the different focus point and then bicubic the two to match and blend taking the sharpest of the two? Waddya think - is Minolta going to go for it? :)

Ideally, there would be an algorithm that checks for sharpness and takes the pixels from the scan that has the greatest sharpness. Each neg will be just a bit different in the carrier but the negative bow will most likey be on the edges and at an minus offset. What do you guys think?

Woops, edgecenter didnt display<br><div></div>

And now centeredge with focus=+.08<br><div></div>

And now edgeedge. Again with focus=-.09<br><div></div>

Now the edgecenter which was scanned at focus=-.09<br>

Let's post an example. This is the center of the scan at 5400dpi at focus = +.08mm. I'll call it centercenter. Oh, and it's TMZ so that's why all the grain...<br><div></div>

Damn, I was just there in Oct! The Hidden Tree Bar was there if I can remember properly, but I didnt go in... Here's a <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/2978519">link</a> to my shot of South SanLiTun Bar Street. When I was there I saw the cops chase down a cameroon guy from the R&B bar(that you have in your portfolio) for about 15 minutes before they caught him behind one of the buildings they were tearing down. I can imagine the whole scene will change since there was a lot of drugs/etc in that neighborhood.

You'll want to also buy Silverfast scanning software to go with whatever scanner you choose. The Negafix software that is part of Silverfast has all the curves for Tri-X, Delta, etc... pre-programmed in and make B&W all that much easier to scan in.

<a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/presentation?

presentation_id=270408">China 2004 </a> - Here's a link to a recent trip to China. These were shot with the collapsible Elmar or a Noctilux on a M7. It's not Nikon, but it shows how I evolved from Nikon to Leica which suited my style(but maybe not everybody's) better. What you do give up is the varing focal lengths. I'm sure I "missed" a few good wide angles or telephoto shots. On the other hand I've learned the 50mm lens so well I probably picked up a few shots that I might have otherwise overlooked. But I do still have my Nikkor 20mm, 85mm, and a 28-105mm, which I am saving for the day when I finally break down and buy one of the digital Nikons to play around with...