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| Yeah, been a while, I've had other things to do.
A couple of weeks ago I visited Stuttgart, Germany. The weather was
rather bad and I was running a slight fever most of the time so my
photography wasn't quite like I had hoped it to be. After some
pondering, I had
taken only three lenses with me: a Zeiss Tessar 2.8/45mm, a VPK
Meniscus
6/75mm and a Schneider-Kreuznach Radionar 4.5/105mm. The Tessar is a
nice, small and very light lens, which is very sharp and contrasty. I
didn't anticipate really using it, but I took it with me just in case.
Well, I didn't use it - I found it too wide angle for my state of mind
at the time and boringly sharp,
just another run-of-the-mill very good lens.
The Radionar has a lowish contrast but is reasonably sharp and has a
really astonishing bokeh, something to be seen to be believed:
I extracted the Radionar from a broken down 6x9 folder camera
(built in 1938) and glued it to
the front of an about 40mm long M42 extension tube for mounting on my
EOS 350D - the finished assembly weighs only slightly more than the kit
lens. This lens is much less well corrected than modern high
quality
lenses and produces a much better bokeh with practically no disturbing
artefacts, something none of my Takumars, Tessars, Planars and Sonnars
are capable of. The low contrast can easily be enhanced afterwards to
produce quite nice pics:
However, the lens I really prefer is the 1915 vintage VPK Meniscus Achromat, which can
produce really magical photos, very soft and with lots of flare. Here is a view of the Staatstheater on
March 12:
Here is a shot of the statue of Schiller seen against the sky:
And some platans covered with ivy (in Tübingen):
More photos from my trip can be found at http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/bwde_sg.html
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| Well, it seems to me it is time to start writing, i.e. to start writing
about my philosophy concerning photography. These days, I'm a kind of a
retro, I'm doing pinhole photography, I'm using various old cameras and
I'm using old lenses on a digital SLR body. I do not use auto-exposure
let alone auto-focus. All this started when I noticed that quite many
if not most people doing photography harboured the notion that one had
to have the latest and greatest auto-focus zoom lens in order to take
good photos. What a silly misconception. It is quite possible to take
good photos even without a lens, a good photo doesn't necessarily need
to be sharp, lens flare isn't always an evil to be avoided at all
costs, a hundred years old camera or lens can produce photos with a
great visual or emotional impact despite being technically
lacking.
The following photo has been taken with a ninety years old lens taken from the cheapest pocket camera of that era:
It perhaps isn't a great photo, but the latest and greatest lens would
have precious little to add - and would probably detract something
essential from the mood. (Click the pic to see a larger version.)
The following photo was taken completely without a lens, with a pinhole camera:
It would be very difficult or quite impossible to take this photo with
a normal camera as the nearest 31mm high chess piece is only about 85mm
from the camera. (Click the pic to see a larger version.)
Every day, on many forums, people are asking which lens they ought to
use for this or that in order to guarantee good results. Well, a
technically perfect photo isn't necessarily a good photo, and a
superior lens doesn't transform the owner into a good photographer -
there is no magic bullet. In a way it is quite liberating to use a
"bad" lens as one then cannot blame the lens for bad photos and one
need not be disappointed if a photo isn't technically quite as perfect
as expected from an expensive "perfect" lens. I've got a number of very
good lenses, but I mostly use my "bad" lenses because then I'm free to
concentrate on the essence, on the pictorial aspects of photography. | | |
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