How about more and more fun with Leica M? (Film)

[Stuart Richardson]

Nice shots Mat, sorry to hear about the Sonnar though. I would recommend you put in a fine grained film and photograph something flat with a lot of detail. That should let you know if the lens alignment or centering has been knocked out. Not really a fun job, but worth doing I guess.

Maggie -- Tri-x is natively rated at 1250 in Diafine. It is a weird developer -- it is two baths and runs to completion, so time and temperature have no real effect. You just put in in bath A for a bit, then in bath B for a bit, then fix and wash. Because of the way it works, it gives a moderate to low contrast range (it protects the highlights very well), fine grain, and lots of film speed. Most films are a stop faster in it, Tri-x is stop and a half, so 1250.

In any case, here are a few random photos. I have been falling in love with older lenses now, and I have been shooting a lot with my 5cm summarit and a Canon 35mm f/1.8 rangefinder lens (which is like a holga wide open, but pretty sharp stopped down). I like the older soft look I can get with them at times.
This is a summarit one...

The rest are mostly with the M9 recently...I have gone on two walk/drives late at night in the past few days. Here is a link to the images...I will not post here because they are not film. They were all taken between 10pm and 2am I guess...doesn't get dark at this time of year. http://www.stuartrichardson.com/lightroom/midnight-walk/

And here are a couple from Berlin...I think 35/1.4 ASPH except the 75/2 for the last one.
I did not shoot much film there, unfortunately. I was out in the evenings a lot and did not bring any film faster than ISO 100 (when you live here you tend to forget that other places get DARK in the summer!).
Two from the hotel

From the apartment window of a friend's place in Prenzlauerberg

And a section of wall in Kreuzberg...all that white stuff on the ground is pollen or fluff from the trees. It was intense...like snow.

 

[Maggie O]

Maggie -- Tri-x is natively rated at 1250 in Diafine. It is a weird developer -- it is two baths and runs to completion, so time and temperature have no real effect. You just put in in bath A for a bit, then in bath B for a bit, then fix and wash. Because of the way it works, it gives a moderate to low contrast range (it protects the highlights very well), fine grain, and lots of film speed. Most films are a stop faster in it, Tri-x is stop and a half, so 1250.

Oh, cool! Thanks for the info, Stuart!! Learning! Hooray!

I'll have to put Diafine on my list of stuff to try.

 

[m_driscoll]

Maggie/Anthony/Helen/Claire/Scott/Mike/Stuart: Great work! Lincoln, St. Paul, Baltimore, wherever Mike is, Iceland, and Berlin. Ain't it wonderful!

Thanks everybody for sharing, and Lloyd and Steve for commenting. Also, thank you Maggie for identifying that as a "hat".

Cheers, Matt

http://mdriscoll.zenfolio.com

 

[Maggie O]

Also, thank you Maggie for identifying that as a "hat".

My pleasure!

One more from the 15mm lens:

El Alamo, June, 2010

 

[Lloyd]

You may have read elsewhere on the forum that I banged my Sonnar up pretty good (bad) the other day. The optical unit is a little wobbly now . I took some test shots Saturday afternoon to see if there were any optical side-effects, but ruined that batch of film (yet another forum topic elsewhere).

So I headed out with some Tri-X Saturday night in order to get more test shots. Here are a few. The Sonnar seems to be performing OK (but what can you tell from mostly wide-open shots?).

These were all shot with an M2, at night, on Tri-X @ 1250 ISO. Souped in Diafine using the 3+3 protocol. Scanned with a PlusTek 7300.

These are really nice Mike. Sorta like "old home week" for me looking at these. Tri-X @ 1250 in Diafine was my bread and butter for several years. I think I pretty much forgot how to do anything else for a while (at least when I had to shoot in low light.)

 

[mathomas]

Oh, cool! Thanks for the info, Stuart!! Learning! Hooray!

I'll have to put Diafine on my list of stuff to try.

Yeah, what Stuart said. I decided to go with Diafine, not for the speed increase, but because it's difficult to get it wrong . I've also read that it yields good negatives for scanning. I think that's been true so far, but I'm not experienced enough to know for sure.

 

[mathomas]

These are really nice Mike. Sorta like "old home week" for me looking at these. Tri-X @ 1250 in Diafine was my bread and butter for several years. I think I pretty much forgot how to do anything else for a while (at least when I had to shoot in low light.)

Thanks, Lloyd.

I went with Diafine because it seemed pretty painless, and is reusable for a very long time (I don't like pouring chems down the drain). I've actually been trying just about everything with Diafine. Matter of fact, I'm making a scanned contact sheet of Efke 100 right now. These were shot during the day today at smaller apertures. I'm hoping they'll help me see whether the lens is working OK on all fronts.

(This batch of Tri-X is actually my first self-developed roll of that particular film. TriX was my old standby in the 70s and 80s, but I always lab developed back then.)

 

[m_driscoll]

My pleasure!

One more from the 15mm lens:

El Alamo, June, 2010

Maggie: Nicely framed and processed. The large tree creates a great focal point with the sky/clouds as backdrop. I like that it's lighter then the other trees and extremely detailed.

Cheers, Matt

http://mdriscoll.zenfolio.com

 

[khc1013]

They're all nice, but I especially like these two. Were you shooting with a red or orange filter? The clouds are popping out nicely! I need to decide what superwide I'll get (if any).

+1 And I had the impression that you had some sort of orange or red filter too.

 

[khc1013]

I love this one the most.

 

[khc1013]

Nice shots Mat, sorry to hear about the Sonnar though. I would recommend you put in a fine grained film and photograph something flat with a lot of detail. That should let you know if the lens alignment or centering has been knocked out. Not really a fun job, but worth doing I guess.

Maggie -- Tri-x is natively rated at 1250 in Diafine. It is a weird developer -- it is two baths and runs to completion, so time and temperature have no real effect. You just put in in bath A for a bit, then in bath B for a bit, then fix and wash. Because of the way it works, it gives a moderate to low contrast range (it protects the highlights very well), fine grain, and lots of film speed. Most films are a stop faster in it, Tri-x is stop and a half, so 1250.

In any case, here are a few random photos. I have been falling in love with older lenses now, and I have been shooting a lot with my 5cm summarit and a Canon 35mm f/1.8 rangefinder lens (which is like a holga wide open, but pretty sharp stopped down). I like the older soft look I can get with them at times.
This is a summarit one...

The rest are mostly with the M9 recently...I have gone on two walk/drives late at night in the past few days. Here is a link to the images...I will not post here because they are not film. They were all taken between 10pm and 2am I guess...doesn't get dark at this time of year.

5cm Summarit is my favorite, if only my copy is clean, i would have kept it. The flare gets nasty on my copy.

Still bright out between 10pm-2am!! that is awesome. I would love to visit there sometimes.

 

[mathomas]

I love this one the most.

Thanks! I felt extremely fortunate to be able to capture this. The kids stood there long enough for me to do all that manual, no-meter, camera stuff and still get the shot .

 

[mathomas]

I think I've found my film!

I tried out some Efke 100 yesterday, using the Sonnar exclusively. Was able to close the aperture down a bit at times to test focus (not necessarily in evidence in these shorter DOF shots, but I have others to scan).

Exposed it at 150 ISO, and developed in Diafine 3+3. Aside from scads of very tiny white specks (any guesses what could have caused them?), the tonality is just amazing, IMO, and the grain is next to non-existent. I've liked Delta 100 best up until now, but I think this is my new 100-speed film.

I've now ordered 5 more rolls of the ISO 100 and two each of 25/50 from freestyle.com ($1 cheaper/roll than B&H). Also bought some Adonol (Adox' Rodinal flavor) to experiment with. I may have to try bulk loading if I continue to have this sort of result from Efke.

(check out that cool, abstracted bokeh -- severe backlighting!)

(tons of specks here -- more visible than in other shots, but they're on every shot)

 

[mathomas]

Oh, and thanks to all of you for previous commentary!

Maggie - you're really making me want an 18mm, but I need to get my Sonnar fixed/adjusted (if that's truly necessary) before going for more glass.

Stuart - thanks for filling in the gap regarding shooting/development with Diafine. I especially enjoyed your cityscape shots. They do seem the slightest bit clipped in the whites though (?).

Scott G - your Sonnar shots demonstrate why I have been saving my pennies to buy (then cause blunt trauma to) a Sonnar of my own. Really nice stuff. I love the bar scene.

Anthony - your wedding shots are phenomenal. Thanks for friending me on flickr. I'll friend you back.

 

[Maggie O]

Mike, those spots look like dust to my eye. I used to get those all over my negs when I used the communal darkroom at MCAD. There was always some sort of schmutz in the air and it always found its way onto my drying negatives. It kept me from printing a lot of negs, due to the near-impossibility of spotting all the white flecks out of a print.

It might also be in your water- I had a filter fail in the family darkroom and the well water was full of stuff. You could try developing a roll with distilled water and if the spots go away, you'd know. Or maybe it's something with that batch of film?

 

[mathomas]

Mike, those spots look like dust to my eye. I used to get those all over my negs when I used the communal darkroom at MCAD. There was always some sort of schmutz in the air and it always found its way onto my drying negatives. It kept me from printing a lot of negs, due to the near-impossibility of spotting all the white flecks out of a print.

It might also be in your water- I had a filter fail in the family darkroom and the well water was full of stuff. You could try developing a roll with distilled water and if the spots go away, you'd know. Or maybe it's something with that batch of film?

Well, I had those same thoughts, but I have never had that kind of spotting on any of my other rolls, with exactly the same location, materials, and process. You're right that it may be the particular roll. I'll certainly shoot more because I love the tones. I have been doing the last stage of my wash with distilled water for the last couple of rolls, as well.

One thought I had: I dropped most of the roll while winding the film onto the reel. There was probably 6" of film in the reel, and the rest just spun out of my hand. I wonder if static electricity could have been caused by this, and could have led to this effect, either photographically, or by sucking dust in (?).

 

[Stuart Richardson]

Mike -- thanks for the compliments. I am not sure what could be causing the clipped whites -- I edited them on an Eizo CG-210 on gamma 2.2 at 80cdm, so that is a pretty dim monitor designed for color management. If you are using a more standard monitor with higher brightness, they may seem too bright.

As for the marks on your film -- Efke is notorious for poor quality control and dirty/scratched film. They are using old soviet film coating machines that simply cannot be run as cleanly and consistently as the modern machines of Ilford, Fuji and Kodak. It's a shame, because they have some really nice films. But I have had their films be extremely dirty, come with curl that never flattens, pinholes, scratches, and even have had the emulsion peel off the film base (this was Rollei R3, but I believe it is the same factory)! I try my best to avoid it entirely. If you want a similar look, try Pan F or even Fuji Acros.

Anthony -- my summarit is scratched quite badly and very hazy. I still seems to work ok though...I have a voigtlander hood on there, and it certainly flares a lot, but if you are careful it works very well.

 

[shtarka1]

Some really beautiful shots there Anthony!

Agree!

 

[shtarka1]

My pleasure!

One more from the 15mm lens:

El Alamo, June, 2010

Very nice contrast,angle & composition Maggie!

 

[Maggie O]

Maggie: Nicely framed and processed. The large tree creates a great focal point with the sky/clouds as backdrop. I like that it's lighter then the other trees and extremely detailed.

Very nice contrast,angle & composition Maggie!

Thanks, guys! I'm well pleased with my first results.

I can't help but wonder if the tonality and contrast in the 15mm comes from the lens or the film? BW400CN responds unlike any other B&W film I've used, including Illford's XP1 and XP2 family of chromogenic films. I like it, but it is different!