getOBphoto

I've arrived in Stockholm which is the site of the Stockholm Fotomaraton/Photo Marathon the coming weekend. The pictured 100% analog camera is what I'm using to prepare. Today and Friday I'm making photo excursions to various spots in the central parts of the city to prepare for what's beginning Saturday at lunchtime. Being a former native of the city for four years - though that was more than a decade ago - I know my way around. New things are popping up though, like high-rises and new pedestrian streets. Gentrification is going into light-speed in some neighborhoods.   I'm using an old "reflected light" light meter and for rangefinding - because the camera hasn't any way of telling if you are in focus or not - am using zone focusing or guesswork. Though, I've brought my carpenter's digital/laser distance meter.   I'm exposing on black & white film which was predominant when the camera was made in the Fifties. Using the camera and...

I've been trying out an old auto-exposure camera. It's the Olympus-35 LE (mentioned in this post) from 1965. Since I like the camera I wanted to see if it still works within a tolerable range of error. The lens is supposed to be high-class and it shares it with the 35 LC, which was a manual operation version of the camera. The light metering - hence exposure control - is powered by a 4,5v current, which was a bit fiddly to accomplish to begin with. Once I got that in place the metering works, as is evident if I push the battery-check button, and also from checking the exposure times and aperture in several different light conditions. Once the film was loaded I had no way of knowing if whether exposure was near correct or not. The shutter being awfully quiet made me even more nervous about the camera exposing at all, but it did. So, one conclusion is that it's a good camera for discreet photograpers. I figured summer days and evenings to be good conditions to try it ou...

 I wrote about the 'pancake' lens Industar 69 in the last post. I've been using it a lot on my Fujifilm X-Pro1 in the last week, and I am very pleased.   Above and below you can see the light distortion in the corners. I like that effect - it gives the pictures a retro look. The other day I received something in the mail... It was a long expected Canon P rangefinder shipped from the Netherlands. It sported a 50 mm lens which I'd not given much thought since the P is what I coveted. Anway, since the P immediately had to be shipped to be repaired (since the rewinding release got stuck, thanks a bunch), the Jupiter 8 lens was to be excercised instead. I stuck it to the X-Pro and went out. And it performed really well - didn't it? Can't wait to get the P back, though.

I've gotten myself a pancake. That is - a "pancake" lens. There are some camera lenses that protrude a lot from the camera. Then there are a few that are very compact. The one I've got for my camera is the Industar 69 28 mm and it's something like 2,5 centimeters thick. I bought the lens because I was a bit tired of having to use such big lenses with adapters which is what the Pentax K-mount lenses I've used for my camera is. The lens is not as sharp as the 28 or 40 mm Pentax lens that I've used on this camera. But below you can see that there is nothing wrong with image quality using the Industar. The only downside to the lens is that it's a bit tricky to find focus in bright sunlight. But that is something that comes with more practice. It did with the Pentax lenses. Besides - the depth of field is quite deep even in dimmer light conditions. I would recommend anyone to use this lens. It's for LTM (Leica thread mou...

I'll be heading to the capital for Stockholm Fotomaraton on August 19-20. I'll see you there!   Below are some glimpses of my weekend in Malmö and my botched Malmö Fotomaraton this June. These two were scanned from negatives taken with the Petri Color 35. This and the following pictures are taken with the Canon S90. Lund's coloured glass walkway at the central station. The Maraton's second pit stop. The stop was placed in a gallery housed in an unused tram garage. Participants awaiting new assignments. Number 11 keeping his hands clean from the dirty work. The old shipyard - now home to offices and National Television studios.

These fairly similar cameras are of different generations. Looking at today's development in digital rangefinder cameras, with sizes increasing, one could deduce that the bottom camera was the younger one. That is not the case, however. Olympus-35 LE was introduced in 1965 and has fully automatic exposure. The 4,5 volt battery feeds a lightmeter situated on the front of the lens, which in its turn automatically sets aperture and shutter speed according to the light conditions. The lens is fixed and is very light sensitive at 1:1,7. The smaller Olympus 35 RC was introduced in 1970. The exposure is entirely manually controlled. The RC is one of a few fixed-lens rangefinder cameras with a top mounted control for shutter speed. Aperture can also be set for automatic (A). The RC has the choice of full manual control, while the LE only has focusing and ASA/ISO setting to be operated by the user.  Size is different but thickness is similar due to the constraints of t...

These are some pictures taken with the Petri Color 35. They are also the product of me trying to learn basic image editing - to produce pictures I like from my scans. I've not been too successful in the past, as can be seen in earlier posts on this blog.