WARREN CONNECTICUT – Still shooting with the old stuff. Here is a photo of my Leica Monochrom with a Carl Zeiss Jena 13.5cm f4.0 Sonar lens – the lens is from 1936. The following images are made with it.
Day 2285 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day three years ago (day 1189): I smell a rat.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – I’m shooting today with my Leica Monochrom and an 85mm Nikkor from 1956 or so. This lens was made for the Nikon Rangefinder camera and has roughly the same mount as Contax. David Douglas Duncan (a prominent Life Magazine photojournalist) discovered the Nikokors, and this lens in particular, while shooting in Japan; his editors at Life Magazine were stunned by the images. This was the start of the international ascent of the Nikkors and Nikon.
This its still a remarkable lens. Here’s a Steve Huff review: Huff review
The second image below is 8 frames stitched.
Day 2285 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day six years ago (day 93): Terry Tanner’s barn Originally posted in color – it’s stronger in B&W.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – – Still shooting with my old Carl Zeiss lenses. I’ve grown tired of struggling with these lenses on my Sony camera so I’ve switched over to my Leica Monochrom, at least for today. Here’s what it looks like with the 28mm lens from 1937 mounted on it. With this lens I’m relying on hyper focusing.
So . . . here are today’s images taken with the 28mm from 1937.
Day 2283 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day six years ago (day 92): Saks Fifth Avenue
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Not a super good day of photography. I’m bored with the dull light, and the Sony 7rii that I’m shooting old lenses with just doesn’t resonate with me. It’s not that it’s not an excellent camera, it’s just that the way one sees with it does’n fit my style.
I stayed indoors and struggled a bit. At least with the Sony it’s easy to add an extension tube to do close-ups.
Day 2282 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS – Here again and still shooting with legacy Carl Zeiss Jena lenses. Today I strapped the tiny 2.8 cm (28mm) f8.0 Tessar from 1937 onto my Sony 7rii. The best image of the day was a shadow selfie with security camera, but because of the difficulty of managing and shooting with this odd lens it was slightly out of focus. It’s ok at web resolution so I’ve presented here flaws and all. Also some images of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank in brutalist light. Did I mention that turning the Sony color images into something that looks like my work is a huge time sink.
Day 2281 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day six years ago (day 90): Poets Walk, Central Park. A common tourist shot for a good reason, reasonably well executed here. One of the commenters on Twitter on this image referred to The Third Man, the fabulous film noir from 1949. Indeed this film has been an important influence on my visual style. Ironic that I’m shooting now with lenses from that era.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – On my way to Boston this morning for meetings. Still shooting with my Sony 7Rii and ancient Carl Zeiss Jena lenses – today a 21mm f4.5 Biogen from 1956. I bought this lens on eBay from a seller who listed it as a rare pre-war lens. Very rare indeed since the 21mm was not introduced until 1954. It’s a genuinely fine lens and a useful focal length for me. I often crop to square with wides. If you shoot level (to avoid radically converging verticals) you often end up with a vast expanse of boring foreground. The problem is solved by cropping the foreground out – a square aspect ratio works about right for a 21mm.
My largest online presence is on Twitter, where I have 92,000 followers.
Here’s a link to my Twitter feed: Woody’s Twitter feed. Twitter is actually down this morning so I’m pretty irritated.
Day 2280 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day two years ago (day 1550): Good light
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spent some time today on the Upper West Side, ending my walk at St. John the Devine. Ok light (curtain filtered sunlight) so ok images. All shot with antique Carl Zeiss Jena lenses, mostly a 28 mm f8.0 Tessar from 1937 (the lens actually quotes its focal length in centimeters – 2.8 cm – which is the norm for pre-war Zeiss lenses). This was amazingly wide for its time – overall not a bad lens. The 28mm perspective is similar to an iPhone.
I’m shooting these lenses on my Sony 7Rii, which I don’t much like as an object and purely as a camera, but it has developed into a universal platform for legacy lenses of all types, as a result of very good support by adapter manufacturers. Its 42 meg sensor oversamples most lenses that aren’t designed for it or other very high resolution applications. But I’m tedious spending hours in Lightroom and Photoshop converting the Sony files to B&W and making them look like my images.
Day 2279 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day two years ago (day 1549): More fog
