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Flare and the 19 Elmarit R

W

workingcamera

Guest
Thought this might be of interest to readers here. Film shots but still relevant I think.

This is a real life experience with the 19mm Elmarit-R (second version) that I think provides a nice example of how this lens handles flare wise and when pointed at the sun.

On the job early one morning I was shooting a pretty banal scene of city council workers setting up for the days work. I needed some way of making it look a little more interesting and decided to go wide with the 19 Elmarit on the R6



I was able to hide the sun behind the digger arm… but the light was pretty tricky to deal with. The general scene around the subject was flat light wise so its hard to tell if flare helped that along to some extent. It’s obvious effects are minimal given the circumstances and localised to centre of the shot but the lens handled the situation remarkably well. The next shot shows where the sun was actually at

The operator moved the arm of the digger and direct sunlight came bursting into the viewfinder.


This is the result as it came back on film straight scan no PP work

Don’t try this at home the experience was what I imagine a nuclear blast to like to the naked eye. It hurt! I can assure you that big fat front element of the 19 certainly sucks in light.
 

Stuart Richardson

Active member
This meshes with my experience in using lenses like this...the other lens I have that does this on occasion is the Mamiya 43mm f/4.5. These super-wides can handle flare quite well to a point, and then you get secondary reflections. One thing to check on the 19mm is that you don't have a lot of dust floating around inside the lens. I bought mine used...a bit of a beater, and the filter tray filters were covered in a fine film of dust. That sort of dust exacerbates flare and removing it can really help. Hold yours up to a light, with the rear element facing you and see if there is a bunch of dust on the filter elements...if so you might want to get someone to open it up and clean it out. Choose someone trustworthy though, as it is a complicated lens.
 
W

workingcamera

Guest
Thanks Stuart good advice

the lens was brand new when these were taken … ie clean as a whistle… and still is btw.
 
W

workingcamera

Guest
I’ve got NPC jotted down… which seems a little odd I normally used NPS outdoors back then
 
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