Alexandre M. Pereira - Look inside my book

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Scanned directly from the book. Dimensions: 24x24 cm (9,4x9,4 inches).

Bilingual: portuguese / english.

Texts by Manuel Tainha, Nuno Grande and Paulo Martins Barata.

Design by Francisco Vaz da Silva.

Price: 20 euros + p&p (list price: 31 euros).

...

Photo gear

...

Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM

Every now and then, I will post some thoughts about photo gear. Nothing fancy or too much technical, I am not that kind of guy, just feelings about old and new equipment. Maybe even only some photographs of cameras and lenses. I might sometimes write from a professional point-of-view, other times just about the pleasure of creating images.

We, photographers, tend to be very gear-oriented people, we have a very physical relationship with our cameras, we touch them, we carry them, we smell them, we put them to our faces and noses.
I dare to say, that very often I find myself caressing my Leicas for instance, for I do love to grip that round shape with my fingers. It senses a little bit like "home". Am I silly? Well, I guess... But if you imagine that I am already doing it for over thirty years now... Kind of good old friends, me and my Leicas...


I start by posting my three last acquisitions (I choose to leave my Leicas for a later date).

The lens depicted above, I bought used in Leica Shop in Wien, Austria. They have a phantastic catalogue on line, and I was very pleased with their service. If I had some more money, I would certainly order a couple of things more from them. If you also love or need photo gear, take a look a their site. I think that you won't find it a waste of time.
I haven't tried yet this lens very seriously, but it surely focus fast, at least for a 5.6! It is relatively compact and light (for a 400mm, that is...), and is, in terms of L optics, still affordable. If you should need a long lens, and like me, don't need or can't afford f/2.8, take this one in consideration. Very good optical quality!

(By the way: the images of the two other cameras, were shot with the 400mm and a 30D).

Yashica IC Lynx 5000E

This camera actually belonged to my father. A couple of months ago, my mother asked me if I wanted to keep it. At first I showed no interest, but then I thought that it might be a good souvenir.
I must admit that I was wrong: the camera seems to be better than I thought. The lens is a six-element (Planar type?), and the Copal leaf-shutter is very quiet. Furthermore, it is mechanical, the batteries are only needed for the light-meter. No Leica, but solidly built anyway!
I think that I will keep it behind the seat of my Land Rover pick-up. Just need to find a lens-shade and a yellow-filter...

(IC should mean Integrated Circuit. Must have been the world's first camera to use such a thing. So he says: I mean the Yashica Guy! He surely knows better than me!).

Carl Zeiss Flektogon 2.8 / 35mm

I think that I am giving up beeing a snob... I started to enjoy using my Varex IIb!
After many years of staying in the cupboard, I decided to give it a try. I must say that it keeps me awaken, it makes me think even more than shooting a 4x5 inches... The finder is dark, the shape is certainly odd to say the least, the slow shutter-speeds are hard to set, the shutter-release is maybe good for left-handers...
But where else do you get a twelve-second mechanicaly-timed exposure? So cheap?

So I decided that I should start looking for a nice selection of lenses for this "freak"...

I already had a 2.8/35mm Schneider Curtagon from the sixties, but I wanted to compare it with a 2.8/35mm Flektogon (Zeiss east german equivalent to Zeiss west german Distagon).
Outstanding in this optic, is the short-focusing distance of only 18cm (less than 8 inches!), for sure unusual for this focal length. Some people call it the Macro-Flektogon!

I haven't tried the beast yet, the postman brought it a couple of days ago, but I bet that I won't have the need to use a post-processing program to correct the optical quality...

(I ordered this specimen from Foto Krüger in Dresden, Germany. Looks nice and feels nice, with a nice leather case. It left the VEB Carl Zeiss Jena in 1976. I love classic stuff!).

Nice close-focusing distance, but not that small...

(If you like Exaktas, or got interested, take a look here on Captain Jack's. You won't regrett it!).

...

Black and white portraiture

.

I always had a special pleasure on doing black and white portraiture of the informal type. So some friends and relatives, or just people I met, often came in for a sitting in my living-room or in the studio.
Only the last shot was made while on assignment. The man is a worker in a large quarry in the mountain of Monchique, south of Portugal, where I improvised a small studio in the dining-hall. I just loved the way he came and sat there, full of dignity. Sadly, I don't know his name.

Ana

Barbara

Florian

Filipa

Francisco

Irina

Luis (my son)

José (my father)

Sara (my daughter)

Stephen

Worker

All photographs on this post were made using a camera by Hasselblad (either a 500 C/M or a 500 EL/M), and a Sonnar 150mm, made by Carl Zeiss. Phantastic gear, designed for hard-work of the highest quality.
Light was sometimes made by a single portable flash by Metz, aimed at an umbrella, or using Hensel Studiotechnik equipment, built in the nice german town of Würzburg. I usually prefer to keep my portrait lightning simple, using very often a single light source.

The photographs were scanned directly from black and white prints, produced on the traditional wet-darkroom. Somehow, they lack some detail and get too much contrast for my taste. I really need to do some home-work on scanning!
I apologize...

.

Some portuguese VIP's...

.

Adelaide Sousa

Bárbara Guimarães

Catarina Furtado

Fernanda Serrano

Filipe la Féria

Júlia Sargeant

Paulo Pires

Simone de Oliveira

I used a Canon EOS 1n with EF 70-200mm f/2.8L lens to make these portraits, in different dates and locations. My lightning equipment comes from Hensel Studiotechnik, Würzburg, Germany. Very nice people out there, manufacturing very good "deutsche Geräte". I am a big fan...

.

The castle of Montemor-o-Novo in 35mm

..

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...

..

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.