Month: August 2012

Saturday August 11, 2012

WARREN CONNECTICUT – A quote from the Warren Congregational Church website:

Field of Flags Service
at the Warren Congregational Church

All are invited to this special service to honor those who lost their lives
in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, their families and friends and all our
service men and women past, present and future!!!

There will be a pot luck dinner after the service

The Field of Flags is a silent, patriotic and poignant reminder of the cost of war. Each flag represents not simply one casualty, but the family members and friends who have been touched by that life now gone. They represent our respect for those who have served and are currently serving in the military and our hope for peace in the future, for a time when no one is called upon by our country to give the greatest sacrifice

Images of the field of flags taken with my Leica M9 and 50mm Noctilux lens and 18mm lens.

On this day one year ago: Union Square.

Tags Congregational Church, Warren

Landscape Urban

Friday August 10, 2012

Post author By Woody
Post date Thursday August 16, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I took a walk along upper Fifth Avenue on this rainy day with my Leica M9 and 50mm f.95 Noctilux lens. Since I’ve calibrated the rangefinder on the camera (and switched shooting eyes from my astigmatic right to my good left eye), I’ve been getting uniformly interesting results with this lens, which has the ability to render the mundane as poetry. Some examples:

On this day last year: Trump.

Tags Construction, Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York, Statuary

Landscape

Thursday August 9, 2012

Post author By Woody
Post date Wednesday August 15, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I shot a lot of film today with my vintage Leica. I’ll post as it comes back from processing and I have time to scan. In the meantime I need an image for today so I took my Leica M9 and 50mm f.95 Noctilux to dinner at La Pizza Fresca restaurant, which you might mistake for a hole in the wall, but actually has some of the best brick oven pizza in New York and a truly remarkable Italian wine list. Here’s the chef at work:

On this day one year ago: Alpa TC. This was a desperate day – I resorted to taking a picture of a camera.

Landscape Urban

Wednesday August 8, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I met a friend for lunch at Cafe Centro – it’s located at 200 Park Avenue (which is the building that used to be called the Pan Am building, which is next to Grand Central Terminal which serves a railroad that used to be called the New York Central). This area is haunted by corporate ghosts. Anyway, I brought my Leica M9 and Noctilux and captured a few images. I shot more with film, which I’ll post on a later date.

On this day one year ago: Healey on steroids.

Tags Grand Central Terminal, Manhattan, New York

Landscape Out my window

Tuesday August 7, 2012

Post author By Woody
Post date Monday August 13, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – A bit of repair and maintenance today. The rangefinder on my M9 has been slightly out of alignment for a while which has made it hard to focus in demanding situations. Horizontal alignment is easy, but vertical alignment requires peeling the Leica red dot off and using a special tool through a keyhole that the red dot hides. The special tool arrived from China today, so I peeled the red dot off (making a mess in the process) and fiddled with the tool for 10 minutes or so. Weirdly, unexpectedly, after ome trial and error I got it just right. I ordered a replacement red dot online and covered the hole with a little patch of duct tape as a temporary measure so I’m ready to roll. Most people would have sent their camera to Leica for calibration but I use mine every day and can’t really be without it for the three week round trip to Solms.

The focus issue had prevented me from using my Noctilux .95 but since I’ve fixed it I’ll be shooting a lot with the Nocti. It’s a magical lens, imparting a poetic quality to the most mundane objects. Here’s an example:

This morning I had a chance to get more use out of the Perer 35mm lens. Here’s a picture of it, mounted on my Leica M9, taken with my iPhone.

Lovely sunrise light this morning taken out my window with the Perer 35 and my M9:

On this day one year ago: Gil.

Tags Cameras, New York, Sunrise

Culture Landscape

Monday August 6, 2012

Post author By Woody
Post date Sunday August 12, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – A new lens arrived from Japan today: MS Super Triplet Perar 3.5/35 Mark II. I heard about this forum that I subscribe to and through the miracle of the internet got to the site of the Japanese company that makes them, ordered one and PayPalled some Yen to Japan, and voila the lens appeared a few weeks later via Japan post.

This is a fun lens. It’s tiny – very cool looking – I’ll post a picture tomorrow. The tiny controls and eccentric form facto take some getting used to. Rendering is very, very contrasty. Resolution is ok but pretty soft in the corners wide open. The triplet is a typical 1930s optic (the Cooke triplet is a famous large format lens) – back in the day these lenses were uncoated so the small number of elements and air-glass transitions was important. The Perar is completely free flare – the glass modern coatings.

For some reason it tends to show off spots on the sensor.

Some examples on an M9 from an urban walk about. I’ve done a great deal of lightening shadows and spot adjusting to compensate against the contrast. A little more veiling flare might not be a bad thing. All taken with my M9.

On this day last year: Still life.

Tags Clouds, Manhattan, New York

Family and friends Portrait Transportation

Sunday August 5, 2012

Post author By Woody
Post date Saturday August 11, 2012

FISHERS ISLAND SOUND, CONNECTICUT – Here we are on the ferry back to New London. We arrived separately over 24 hours. We’re all on the 3:30 boat back to terra firma. Taken with my Leica M9 and 28mm Summicron lens.

On this day last year: West Hampton. Early August is clearly our time to visit friends at their weekend places (we are actually quite begrudging in missing weekends in Warren.)

Tags Boats