Showing posts with label Wander. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wander. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Lucky Findings

Morning, as they say around these parts, and it is. Not as cold as it has been thank goodness.
This post is going to extol the sheer enjoyment of walking around with the right camera.
You're probably muttering to yourselves, what? and you could well be right. I wander a lot with a 35mm camera and it is fine, but there's certain things that deserve the breadth of greys that you will only get with 120-size film.
The strange thing about this is, that just using medium format isn't always a guarantee of tone. My main camera for a number of years was a 1960's Rolleiflex T - quite possibly (well any Rollei really) one of the greatest cameras ever invented; negative size was the ubiquitous 6x6 cm,  however I have at times struggled to get a spaciousness of grey tones.
A number of years ago I had a Pentax 67 for a very short time - it was great but totally unreliable, as well as having the loudest shutter on the planet (akin to a bird scarer actually). I returned it to the vendor, and missed it like mad. Last year I had the opportunity to buy a Koni-Omega Rapid 100 - yes it has problems like the film advance which is the most strange thing ever, and its rangefinder is a tad dim, but the lens, gosh it's a beauty. Mine is the 90mm Super Omegon a direct descendent of the original Hexanon in a different shutter. It's a Tessar design, but actually one of the very sharpest lenses I own.  Very versatile, AND attached to the correct 'walkabout' camera (see where I am going here) just the thing for wandering around with just in case the unexpected turns up . . .which in this case it did. It wouldn't have looked half as nice in 35mm.




This TriCool machine was pure happenstance, found in some old mill buildings along the road from me. What it was for I have no idea . . however it was obviously three times cooler than any other machine on the planet.
The scan doesn't do the negative justice. Film was TMY2 400 at EI 400, developed in the rather marvellous HC110 Dilution G. This was a compensating dilution as extolled by Mr. Ansel Adams, and I really like it. HC 110 is very active, but using this dilution semi-stand gives an enormous palette of greys. The camera was handheld, and yes, the white specks everywhere are what you think they are - God bless the pigeon.
There y'go, you've maybe learned something and it wasn't too painless was it.