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Your favourite lens

Hi Q,

Na.. "adapted for use on Hasselblad" is too vague for me. Is the Biogon not adapted by Zeiss to make it fit nicely on the SWC? Just as well as Zeiss adapted the Biogon to fit the Alpa?

Not a very fruitful distinction therefore. Maybe only in the case of Arsat lenses machined to fit a Blad?

Wilko
 
Sounds like a Cottage Industry opportunity for me ... scanning for dollars :)

Actually, a lot of people hate scanning .... but I love it. It's like the darkroom without the mess. Simon's transparencies were challenging and fun. Blue mountains in a few, and Inky shadows on a red rock wall on another.

Speed isn't much of an issue with the Imacon 949 ... It's the fastest desktop unit on the planet ... makes my old Minolta Multi-Pro seem like a turtle.

You guys should've spoke up while it was Winter here in the US ... with me stuck in the house
for 5 months. Now work is picking up and wedding season starts soon, I even have a shoot on Easter morning.

Just installed a Epson 3800 and a RIP for 17" X 22" prints compared to the 2400's 13"X19" maximum print size ... which means I can do 17"X17" borderless Hasselblad prints without going to an outside lab for them. It's actually even better for the Hasselblad H3D/39 as the 17" X 22" print proportions are much closer to those of the sensor capture.

Now what to do with the 2400 and $500. worth of inks I have? Hmmm, I wonder if you can print with 2 printers at once ... I'll have to ask my IT guy about that one.
 
26739.jpg


Well, have a look. This comes from my most favourable lens. Tell me if you can see how to improve the image.

Technical details: Contax Zeiss 120mm f4 at f5.6 1/250s. Underexposed 1 stop Fuji 100 Provia scan at 3200dpi 288Mb file cropped to 165Mb file Save for web Imacon 646 Flextouch 50 , no unsharp mask
 
I wonder if you can print with 2 printers at once ... >

Marc:

I suspect that you can, of course it would be dependant upon the memory capabilities of the printers and file size, perhaps staggering the start time would compensate for lack of memory.

Regards:

Gilbert
 
"Is the Biogon not adapted by Zeiss to make it fit nicely on the SWC?"

Well, no. The SWC was 'adapted' by Hasselblad to take the lens made by Zeiss.
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But i get your point.

My point however was that neither Biometar nor Tele-Votar were designed (as in: originally intended, and with that intention in mind purposely made) to be used on Hasselblad cameras.
Some of them may have been adapted to fit a Hasselblad later, in a change from their original intended use.
Unlike the well-known Hasselblad Ektars, Biogons, Sonnars, etc.

Not a big difference, true.
And it should, of course, not hinder anyone having fun with any lens on a Hasselblad camera.
Nor can it disqualify any lens as someone's favourite lens used on his or her Hasselblad camera.
 
Thanks Gilbert.

I asked one of my art directors and it is indeed possible to print from two printers at once from the same computer. Memory is not an issue, I have 6 gigs of RAM in my Mac tower.

He will come over and set it up as an Eithernet system so I can print wirelessly from my lap top also.

To add onto Q.G.s comment about using one's favorite lens on their Hasselblad camera, the Hasselblad Zeiss lenses are the most adaptable out there having been around since dirt was invented so adapters are quite available ... making them a blast to use on other cameras as well. I've mounted them on a Contax 645, Contax AX and RX, Leica R, Canon 1DsMKII, Canon 5D, my H3D/39, and on a Mamiya 645 AFD-II.

Joseph, no doubt the Contax 120/4 Macro is a real performer. The water in your photo is like flowing silk. My only comment is that the objects in the background, being neither in nor out of focus and blocking up a bit, may distract from that beauty.
 
BTW, I have come to a rock solid choice as to which Zeiss Hasselblad lens is my favorite.

No waffeling, a clear winner, my unwavering and decisive selection is ... all of them ... and I'll brook no arguement on the subject : -)
 
G'Day:

Here's a riddle for a bit of fun (CSI-Photo), rather than a 'rock solid choice' <wink!>.

This picture was made with MY favourite Hasselblad lens. I have only three - the boring 'standard' selection - for my 503CW. The 80 CFE, the 50 FLE and the 150CF - all T*. I used a proshade, no filter, natural window light, one white board reflector to fill, and I had available an extension tube (which I may or may not have used). Camera was on a tripod, and I was not restricted for room - that is, I could move backwards about several yards/metres

The image is squeezed from a 148MB scan off a Ilford Delta 100 Pro negative (my other favourite).

I gave it a sepia tone in Photoshop, and cropped approx. 5% all round the border for composition purposes. (It prints superbly on the R2400, by the way.) I brightened up the lower left bud/flower in PS also for composition purposes. Otherwise, I haven't played with the OOF to cause confusion.

So, please consider all the "distortions" and "bokehs" and other gremlins, and tell me what is MY favourite lens (that I have - not dream about). :)

There may be a nice prize for the most entertaining (and correct) response.

Grab a beer, and check out the bokeh!

PS. Jurgen - I did not use my Diana 120 ... :)

Cheers,

Colin
 
OK OK, so I didn't send the picture ! Couldn't you GUESS! :)

Oops....

Cheers,

Colin

(Sorry that the compression is so great)
26745.jpg
 
Colin:

Nice shot well worth the wait! I like it, so I really don't care what lens, but I'll guess 80CFE.

Thanks:

Gilbert
 
Ulrik, I totally agree with you about scanning. So, for now I have my "regular" scans done by my Fuji Frontier lab at time of film development.

And since Christmas, I send my best images that require the best scanning for large prints over to Marc!!
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I can thoroughly recommend him.

Marc, you must be a glutton for punishment in your enjoyment of scanning.
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I have one handy Minolta scanner, which I bought so that I could scan any of my films from many years ago - put a wet day to use. But I have to say that after doing one film, I will find it hard to bother doing it again - like you say it has to be done with great care to get high quality results, care that wastes hours and hours!
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Your comment: "all of them" actually reminds me of how I feel when shooting - whichever I am looking through fills me with enthusiasm.

Nice image Joseph - and nice to "meet" someone who shares a favourite focal length (the 120mm) even if the "light boxes" wear different names!
 
Gidday Colin. You drongo!
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(to those foreigners out there, drongo is an Aussie term of endearment - a bit like "dick h..d" is a term of affection here! I was tempted to ask if you were shooting with a half frame Minox!
happy.gif
But I see the image surfaced finally!

Ok, I'll play. I will stick my neck out for the fun of it and in the hope of winning the CFV back first prize. My gues the image was shot with your 50mm FLE!
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I like the image and especially that sepia tonality you gave it - it does something quite lovely to the whites. The lighting worked well. Well done!
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Cheers from another drongo!
 
Simon, see my new thread on scanning.

Scanning puts me in mind of my first days in the wet darkroom. Unbridled enthusiasm meets the stark reality of actually making a print requiring skill and experience. Talk about hours of labor and frustration while climbing the steep learning curve.

The difference now is like night and day. Where scanning your own work really comes into it's own is the degree of control it affords you ... while scanning, and even more so afterwards.
But those are skills not easily won. Like the wet darkroom, it takes time and patience. The kind of patience we exhibit when shooting ... where we will trek out to a beautiful vista and wait until the light is just right.

Here's a whimsical scan I did on my old MF Minolta, and just printed on the new Epson 3800 to 22" wide. It was shot with a 203FE and 50/2.8. using ISO 400 Fuji film. I had this exact car in my youth, and it was a delight to come across it at a local car show.

26749.jpg
 
Simon:

Gidday ... it takes a drongo to know a drongo ... heh heh heh.

BTW, I 'second' Marc about scanning. After a while, like about a year or so ! for me, you seem to get the hang of it all at once. A bit like making your first thousand BW prints in the old darkroom with muddy whites and greyish blacks before you understand that you make the true results in your camera on the film, and in the 'soup'. But of course, you never stop learning. Me, for ex&le, I forget to attach pictures!! (And I have got to get MUCH better at taking a huge .tiff file and making it look OK at ~130kb ~700x700 for this forum and elsewhere.)

Like Marc says, once you get a workflow set up, it is OK. I set up a scan in maybe 30-45 minutes (batch, maybe) and go and do something else, or just use my computer for other tasks while the scan happens in the background. However, one really nice thing about having film to scan from - it is a non destructive process and you always have your film. Native digital images better be backed up x2, because if they are 'gone' they are 'gone'. :) I know this !!! :-(

Cheers, Mate!

Colin
 
Wilko,

From the old days of 1600F and 1000F cameras I like the 80 mm Tessar lens very much.

I took some nice fifties style B&W shots using available light in a large hall where old furniture and antiques were sold.

The Tessar has been superceded by quite a few far better lenses but especially the limitation
of this old design makes pictures with a lot of nostalgia possible.

The 90 mm Kilfitt is a far better lens well suited for Makro.

The 300/4.0 Kilfitt I have to test yet and will compare it with the 250/4.0 Carl Zeiss lens.
With allowance for the difference in focusing lenght of course.
 
Thought it was abou time to share. Other members here have such great shots its a bit intimidaing to show my snap shots but here goes...

This was made with a 50cfi/fle. I had printed this optically as a 16x20" a few years ago and just redid it on the Nikon 9000 as a 30x40". Expected a so-so result but was stunned with the result.

26757.jpg
 
G'Day Victor:

If this is a "snapshot", your real 'keepers' must be "fan-bloody-tastic" as Aussies say! Great picture.

I don't know if this is the correct word, but 'plasticity' comes to mind when I see fine photographs, in colour especially, made with the 50. And in this picture you get outstanding depth in the picture between the foremost clouds and those behind. Nice job!

You told us what lens ... now, for fun, tell me which lens I used for the paperwhites picture. :) Gilbert says 80 and Simon says 50. You??

z04_nic_0075.gif


The grand prize, by the way, is NOT a scanner as Simon suggests, but the choice of a nice book on the Hasselblad system (2nd Ed. 1965) or a mint Hasselblad brochure from the 80s with lots of nice reference information!!

Cheers,

Colin
 
Victor:

Stunning just about sums it up!

My only visit to Lake Superior, was on a dull blue cloudless day and mid-morning to boot.

Thanks:

Gilbert
 
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