NEW YORK NEW YORK – On the West Side today running some errands with my Leica Monochrom a a 24mm Summilux lens in hand.
Day 2184 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day three years ago (day 1088): Ground Fog
Category: Landscape
NEW YORK NEW YORK – As I go about my day I look for parking lots and vacant lots – missing teeth in the structure of the city. They often permit points of view or light that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Today I’m back to shooting with my Leica Monochrom and a modern 50mm Asp. Summicron lens, in this case three frames stitched. I’ve taught myself to stitch reliably and do so every day at this point. The stitched image produces a very large file – larger than the highest resolution digital medium format cameras – which means that there are enough pixels that I can correct converging vertical lines in Photoshop and still have good resolution at the top of the frame. It turns out that this works better for me than the traditional way of avoiding converging verticals, a shift lens, because of the problem of decreasing image quality as you approach the edge of the shifted lens’s image circle. Anyway . . .
Day 2182 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day last year (day 1817): Madison Avenue. Another three frame stitch with my Monochrom with converging vertical lines corrected in Photoshop
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Monday October 5, 2015
WHITE PLAINS NEW YORK – A lesson that I learned decades ago in Brazil about landscape: on some days there is time where the light is somewhere between magnificent and magical. When that happens, stop what you’re doing (in this case driving), point the camera at anything and shoot. It doesn’t matter what. It’s the light that matters. Here are water bottles at a gas station on the Hutchinson River Parkway. Still shooting with the Carl Zeiss lenses from the 1930s. Amazing,
Day 2181 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day four years ago (day 720): Riverside Park
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Sunday October 4, 2015
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Still shooting with my Sony A7rii and an uncoated Carl Zeiss 5cm Sonnar lens from 1936. I’ve shot this tree before but it’s completely different through this lens, which produces transparent shadows but with good local contrast. The overall look amazes me. Autumn 2015 in living black and white.
Day 2180 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day two years ago (day 1450): Freedom Tower captured with my Leica Monochrom.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Still shooting ancient Carl Zeiss glass with my Sony 7Rm2. Around the neighborhood.
Day 2179 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day five years ago (day 353): Methodist Church, South Britain CT.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Today I experimented with old lenses. I have a small collection of Carl Zeiss Contax-mount lenses from the 1930s including an early and a late f1.5 50mm Sonnar, an 85mm f2.0 Sonnar and a 35mm. These lenses were notable for their speed and brilliant quality. They are mostly unusable today because the Contax mount is weird – the 50mm focusing helix was actually part of the camera body – but fortunately I was able to buy on eBay an adapter from the 1950s that adapts these lenses to a Leica screw mount. Another part adapts the screw mount to a Leica M mount, and a further adapter lets me put M mount lenses on my Sony 7Rm2. These lenses don’t actually work very well on an Leica M because the rangefinder doesn’t couple properly and the wides don’t fit at all. I’ve also got copies of legendary Nikkor lenses from the 50s, also in Contax mount.
All of these lenses work well with the Sony 7Rm2 – which is turning into the universal platform for all lenses ever made. I spent some time experimenting with the old Zeiss lenses today. They are uncoated, so there can be a slightly dreamy quality and veiling flair tends to make shadows look transparent. Dreamy wide open; thoroughly modern stopped down.
I’ve included a night image through the 1938 f1.5 Sonnar 50mm shot wide open, and a picture of the lenses and their adapter.
Day 2178 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day four years ago (day 717): Laura
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Thursday October 1, 2015
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I took the subway to Wall Street today and spent a couple of hours exploring the Trinity Church graveyard. Not much going on there other than flocks of tourists.
Day 2177 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day three years ago (day 1081): Staten Island Ferry Terminal.
