"Die neue Foto-Schule" - 1937

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Visiting my mother, I came upon this interesting book, "Die neue Foto - Schule", lost in the middle of many other books that I had long forgotten.

That's the charm of old books: you forget about them, and then you rediscover them.

Again and again...

Going through the pages of this exemplar, one gets the chance of making a little trip back in time, to the world of photography in 1937!

And how the world has changed...
Beeig an admirer of german engineering, it is sad for me to see that most german brands, top brands, have long ago disappeared. A glance at some of the pages of this volume, clearly shows that.
Germany has long ago lost it's leading position in the photographic business, and the tradition of building handcrafted cameras is slowly waving goodbye.

We, photographers, are defenitively the losers!

The most important camera types (up to 6x9).

Eight small, but important helpers.

How to accomplish correct tonal value...

Handling the small camera...
(40 photographic rules for the 35mm format).

Cropped negative...

1936 was the year of the Olympic Games in Berlin, where the german photographic industry had the chance of showing off it's new photographic marvels, like the Carl Zeiss Jena 18cm (180mm) f/2.8 Olympia Sonnar Telephoto lens for the Contax camera.

Adolf was becoming more and more popular...

This page still makes the heart of any rangefinder enthusiast beat faster...

Something to read about shutter types...

Some advertisements that make me sigh...

Who remembers Perutz or Plaubel?

Rollei and Agfa are also gone...

We still have Leica, Zeiss and Schneider, but for how long?

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Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM - some photographs

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Now, you better fasten your seat-belt.

This is going to be a long post!

On my first post about Photo Gear, some months ago, I showed you the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens (what a long, complicated name: yes, I admit that I must look it up!).

Now I wish to show you some images I shot in the meantime with that lens.

Even though it's maximal aperture might be for some more sophisticated tastes than mine a little dark (also possessing a much heavier purse than mine!), I find the image quality of this lens rather outstanding.
It is also not such a heavy load, so that I can carry it around for some hours without feeling like committing suicide...

I don't miss Image Stabilization on this apparatus. As I said before, it nerves me a little to feel it working.
If I feel like having a purring sound, I will pick up my tender cat instead!

Please bear in mind, that all these photographs were shot with a Canon 30D, with a crop factor of 1.6x.
That means that the focal length of this lens, when used on the 30D, is equivalent to a 640mm lens used on a full frame sensor or a 35mm camera!


Just to make things a little easier for me, I will divide this post in parts, explaining some of the situations I find useful enough, or interesting enough, that I bother at all to use such a lens.

1) I choose to start by the most obvious reason: to get a far away object depicted bigger in your finder (as if you could get near, but with a different perspective).

You may wish to do that just to be able to photograph, paparazzi-style, a faraway hidden beach celebrity such as the prime minister on holidays, for example.

Or you may choose to picture a shy creature like an undomesticated animal.
(You could also easilly turn it around and you suddenly become the shy photographer: picture yourself in the middle of the african savanna snapping a wild enraged lion... ).

Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax), having lunch...

Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea) desiring to catch some lunch...

No, I don't intend to compete with all the serious nature photographers and ornithologists out there. Bird watching might be very enjoyable and instructive, but I wasn't practicing it when I found these birds.
I was working on assignment in the town of Tomar, last April, when I saw them, at two different days, down by the river. I just was lucky to have the 400mm with me...

The experts shall, please, forgive my humble efforts.


2) Now, this is where the fun genuinely starts for me: I like to use a long focal length to produce more or less abstract compositions where the main subject stands out against a blurred background, sort of visual isolation against a featureless immaterial and dreamy backdrop.

So I use the 400mm almost like I could use a macro-lens.
It is a pity that it only focus down to 3,5 meters. I would very much appreciate a little closer, so I wouldn't need to use an extension tube.

I find this kind of images most effective if you use back light.

(Most photographs on this post, if not all, shot at 5.6).

3) I guess that it sounds a little crazy, but I like the 400mm (640mm on the 30D!) to shoot (YES!) portraits...

I can almost hear the purists laugh, but how could they know that the background on both next photographs is made of trees?

My son Luis on the 11th of April 2009.

Please, allow me to say hello to him and congratulate him. Today, 18th of August, he celebrates his birthday. He was born 26 years ago in Heidelberg, Germany.
(Like my all other kids, I can honestly say that he is a nice guy! I am a lucky father...).

Maria Helena on the 14th of July 2009
(The woman who has enough courage to stand by me. I am a lucky man...).

My friend the cat, Mico, on the 21st of November 2008
(I can call him some other names, like Nicolau Mircolino, he will always answer.
I am a lucky cat owner...)

Shot hand held at 1/80!

I know that there are certain rules, like the one that says that you should not use a slower shutter speed than the focal length of your lens, in this case 1/400 (or something like that...).
But you know what I love most about rules?

I can break them!

So I decided to shoot all the photographs on this post without the help of a tripod.
I know that I could have achieved better (sharper) results sometimes, but I would have probably lost some shots...

The Nycticorax nycticorax wouldn't endlessly pose for me losing it's appetite, my cat would certainly fall asleep with eyes closed, the wind would blow the flowers away, and my back would hurt a little more...

Please, don't misinterpret me, I am a big enthusiast of tripods. Most cameras I use need one.

But as I said, I also love to break rules.

(On the photograph above, I suspect that some of the unsharpness is also caused by the wind shaking the plant, and not only by me. The answer, though, remains to be found...).

The Canon 400mm is not a telescope...

... but look how nice the moon shines, high above in this (strong) crop, just to bid you good night, sleep tight...

(also shot hand held by the way... I won't lie to you, the sky was not so dark, and the shot was made at 1/1250 f/5.6, at ISO 500. Underexposed one stop. The moon shone right above me).

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Kiev 4a - Photo Gear (6)

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Kiev 4a + Jupiter 8M

There are lots of interesting articles on the Internet about the soviets taking over the Contax production line as war reparations, after World War II. The facilities in Dresden, already almost destroyed by Allied bombing, were expropriated and dismantled, beeing transfered to the USSR, namely to Kiev, Ukraine, at the Arsenal factory.
That is how the soviets started producing a copy of the Contax II, launched in March 1936, together with several copies of interchangeable Zeiss lenses and other accessories.
Because of the Russian occupation of East Germany at the end of the war, Contax rangefinder production ceased, until the new West German Zeiss Ikon in Stuttgart launched its redesigned Contax IIA in 1950.

Beeing a deep lover of rangefinder cameras, and through my modest participation in Rangefinderforum, I became aware of the existence and possible quality this Former Soviet Union (FSU for short) cameras are able to deliver. My curiosity just kept on growing, until I finally was able to get a Kiev 4a and a Zorki 3-C.
Both cameras are equiped with a soviet copy of the standard Zeiss Sonnar lens: the Jupiter 8 1:2 f 5cm from 1956 in the case of the Zorki, and the Jupiter 8M 1:2 f 53mm from 1980 in the case of the Kiev. Both having a six elements in three groups design. Both focusing down to 0,9m. The Zorki Leica Thread Mount model has no click stops and has a non-rotating mount.
The version in Contax/Kiev bayonet mount has click stops and rotates.
Both lenses are coated.

I now utterly suffer from one more serious disease: FSU camera addiction!

I am doomed to deserve no salvation!

All photographs taken in Guimarães, North of Portugal, on the 21st of June 2009.
Kodak Tri-X film developed in Kodak D-76, diluted 1+1.

The day after we saw Judy Collins in concert, we made a short visit to Guimarães (World Heritage Site, emergence of the portuguese national identity in the 12th century).

In the North the wind typically blows a little cooler breeze...
Not so this time: the sun was hot and burning like if we were back home in Alentejo.

I started dreaming of a cool glass of bier...

Instead I kept shooting with my poor man's Contax!

My Kiev 4a is a type 2 (c. 1974-1980): the top shutter speed is 1/1000 sec.
Former versions were marked with a top speed of 1/1250!

Note the shutter release concentric with the film winding knob.
The rewinding knob shows a number: it serves only as a reminder. It has no connection with a light meter, as the 4a has no light meter!
You also have to manually reset the frame counter.

Please, also take note on the little wheel to the right, just before the rangefinder window: you can focus standard lenses by turning it with your middle finger, while your index finger rests on the shutter release. Beware not to cover the rangefinder window with your ring finger!
That's why you have to practice the "Contax hold" until you feel confortable with it: that is the price you have to pay for the uncommonly long, and theoretically more accurate, Rangefinder Base of 90mm...

Viewfinder Magnification: 0,9x.

Time to glimpse at the focal plane, vertical moving shutter with metal curtains.

Time to glimpse at the Contax/Kiev bayonet.

My Kiev shows some problems with light leaks, apparently a common problem with this type of cameras. Well, we should not forget that these cameras are now some decades old, and that they presumably had in their vast majority a rather poor maintenance.

Light leaks should be relatively simple to repair...

So, now the big question: is it worth to photograph with a Kiev?

Look at the face of the man in the photograph below, and find the answer for yourself!

I would like to kindly dedicate this post to all the nice and supportive people who have come to regularly enjoy my blog.

Your admiration is my energy to keep on moving.

Thank you very much for your kindness!

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Judy Collins in concert, photographed with a Kiev 4a in Famalicão, on the 20th of June 2009.

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We at times spend our days rushing restless.
Endless hours are spent aimlessly running like a starving cockroach in an empty kitchen!
Like standing on the platform looking at a missed train leaving the station, gazing goodbye as it slowly fades away...

I think that we should better stop and think, we should better watch the sunset, we should better listen to some meaningfull music...

Judy Collins live in Vila Nova de Famalicão, Casa das Artes, 20th of June 2009

Judy Collins is one of that very rare breed of singers who picks up a song by somebody else, and easily makes it her own. Besides having such a great educated voice, that voice expresses a style full of character and maturity.

Pick up a Leonard Cohen or a Bob Dylan song, take some Lennon / McCartney lyrics, offer her a song by Harry Chapin or Sandy Denny: Judy Collins will make her own world out of it. As if she had been singing it from the craddle.

What a talent, what a personality!

Judy Collins introducing Mr. Russell Walden, musical director and piano performer (sadly hidden by the piano...).

My very close friend Fred (we have been some kind of brothers for over forty years now...) just called inviting me to go to the concert of Judy Collins in Vila Nova de Famalicão, in the North of Portugal. He would buy the ticket, as a birthday present, and we would take his car to drive us there (good old Fred knew that I was completely broke...).

All I needed to do, was to jump in and enjoy the ride...

And what a joyful ride it would turn out to be!...

At seventy (!), Judy's voice just sounds great, so young and fresh as some thirty years ago, not losing a bit of her seemingly eternal charm.

You have to see, and hear (!), to believe.

What a LADY!!!

Judy also performed some songs at the piano

I shall be forever thankfull to Fred and Ana, for this wonderfull birthday present!

And, most of all, thank you Judy for all these years of great music and joy!

(You can find a link to Fred's My Space page below. Lots of interesting music there. You can even hear some of his broadcasting in Évora's radio station, Rádio Diana!
If you care about music, you shouldn't miss that precious link!).

This is the cover of a record by Judy Collins that I treasure for many years now. I first bought it as a LP, at least for two times, and then, as it got worn out, I bought it again in the form of a CD, when I was in Chicago to photograph Mies' buildings.

One of those special, intimate recordings!

On this record, Judy sings an excellent cover of Leonard Cohen's "Bird On The Wire", maybe only matched in intensity by the cover version sang by the late Tim Hardin.
I have already mentioned a song by Bob Dylan on a former post of this blog, "I Pitty The Poor Immigrant". Judy sings that song on this record too.
In my opinion, another highlight of this great album is a song that she penned herself, and that she also sang in the concert at Famalicão: "My Father".

Without question, it is hard to encounter something better than the title song, "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", a song by the late Sandy Denny, who was better known as a vocalist with the british folk rock bands Fairport Convention and Fotheringay, besides her solo albums. Sadly Sandy Denny died in 1978, aged thirty one. The version of her song by Judy Collins will certainly help to immortalize Sandy's work for many ages to come!

On this record, Collins is backed up by such great musicians as Stephen Stills (remember "Judy Blue Eyes" from Crosby, Stills and Nash?), who apparently happened to be her lover, and James Burton on guitar, Buddy Emmons on pedal steel guitar, Chris Ethridge on bass and James Gordon on drums. Piano and keyboard duties are shared by Michael Sahl, Michael Melvoin and Van Dyke Parks.
Judy Collins also plays acoustic guitar and piano.

Please, do yourself a favor and don't miss this record!

The photographs on this post, shot on Kodak Tri-X developed on Kodak D-76 1+1, were made with a camera new to me.
As a matter of fact, this was the first time that I ever used a Kiev 4a rangefinder camera (soviet copy of the Contax II, launched in March 1936), equiped with a Jupiter 8M lens (soviet copy of the Carl Zeiss Sonnar).
I didn't use a light meter and guessed the stage exposure. The resulting negatives are a little dense for scanning, but I believe that they would be all right for printing in the dark room.
Stage lighting is usually very contrasty, and you either lose shadow detail or blow your highlights. Obviously I prefer to lose shadow detail...
I didn't move from my seat on the second row, and, never having used the camera before, I was afraid that the shutter could be heard out loud.
I also missed the white framing lines from the Leica. In the dark, I couldn't see the limits of the image. Not so comfortable for someone who likes to compose with exactitude...
As I only have a 50mm lens for the Kiev, I also couldn't fill the frame as I sometimes wished.

So the pictures are less than ideal...

But who cares? The music was absolutely enlightning!

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