The castle of Montemor-o-Novo in 35mm

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October,2008

These photographs were shot with Agfa APX 100, developed in Adolux ATM 49, diluted 1+2. I find it somewhat grainy for such a low ISO film. Maybe comes from scanning? I should try to enlarge these negatives, so that I can compare...


In 1970, Rollei brought out a 35mm SLR camera, the SL35. The camera had a match needle metering system and measured exposure in the stopped down mode. The line of lenses were made by the famous optical company Carl Zeiss, what means "soulfull" excellence! Later on, they were also made by Rollei under license from Zeiss. Most of them used HFT coating technology (HFT = High Fidelity Transfer, is a multi-layer anti-reflection coating system co-developed by Zeiss and Rollei).

Mamiya (and maybe others) also produced a cheaper line of lenses for the 35mm Rollei: the Rolleinar's.


I used such a camera to make these photographs. Although a little "dated" and old-fashioned, I really enjoy using it. The finder is very good, much better than in a lot of modern cameras, and I really aprecciate the high-quality of the Planar's, Distagon's and Sonnar's lenses. Even the Rolleinar 28mm is a very respectable performer, as we can see in the last back lit image. These lenses don't need to be corrected in a post-processing program! Nice and simple "classic" equipment. I like it!

And for today, some more works of Art...

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Still by alphabetical order:

Bela Silva - "Adonis Peludo"

Charters de Almeida

Charters de Almeida

Fernando Pereira

Fernando Pereira

Francisco Goya y Lucientes

Franz Marc - "Zwei Pferde auf der Weide", 1913

Guilherme Camarinha (Tapestry, 1967) - Domus Iustitiae, Águeda

I apologize, but sometimes in the long run, I forget, or loose, the details and information about the works...


As on the post before, I used several cameras, from 6x6 to 5x7inches/13x18cm. I prefer to use Kodak color transparency film for reproductions, because I find it's color rendition more neutral. I avoid the use of "vivid" emulsions. The old EPR 64, and specially EPN 100, are my favourit versions of Ektachrome for such a task. New or newer is not always better...

Maybe one day I will feel like talking about some lightning technics I use...

Some paintings I've been photographing over the years.

By alphabetical order:

Adolf Hoelzel - "Sophie", ca. 1925.

Alexej Jawlensky - "Dunkle Augen", 1912

Almada Negreiros, 1928 (other details unknown to me)

António Inverno (date and title unknown to me)

Arpad Szenes, 1966 (details unknown)

Arpad Szenes (details unknown - Vieira da Silva painting Arpad painting...)

Beatrice Bulteau (details unknown to me)

Bela Silva - "A Terra dos Beijos" (date unknown to me).

When I was a kid, I used to dream about becoming a painter. Pens, pencils, brushes, pastel colors, and all those beatiful things that fill up some shops, always atractted and fascinated me. My father talked me out, with the argument that I would become one more breadless artist... In those times, parents still had the power of doing such things... So I thought about becoming an architect. As life so often turns out to be, I am none of it. Instead I can say that I am a kind of breadless photographer...

Oddly enough, I started my professional photography career at the History of Art Institut (Kunsthistorishes Institut) of the University of Heidelberg, in Germany.
When I decided to come back to Portugal, I managed to keep on photographing works of Art, and I also specialized, as you allready could see on the other posts, in Architectural Photography. Life is funny sometimes, and it surely has it's own ways...

So I will also post, from time to time, some of the paintings that I did photograph. I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did. It is always a thrill to have a good painting in front of my camera!

My respect, admiration and gratitude for such great artists. They make the world a better place to live in.


The images were made with different cameras: Hasselblad 6x6, Sinar 9x12 and Gandolfi Precision 8x10" with a reducing 5x7" back.