NEW YORK NEW YORK – I dropped Francesca off at Hospital for Special Surgery to get the bones in her foot screwed back together. carrying my Leica Monochrom and a 50 mm Summilux lens. Remember this thing records only black and white and offers more resolution and better high ISO performance than the Leica M9.
From the hospital:
Ladderman
Walking back, two frames stitched:
East River
On the East River:
MeetingPower
A test shot taken out my window with an orange filter in front of the lens.
Out my window
On this day one year ago: Pizza. a lonely guy moment.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – It’s a relief to be back home. Salt Lakers (and people from almost anyplace else in the country) find it hard to understand how New York can be home. It’s hard to explain but browsing through these pages may give you a sense. I celebrated my return by seeing a Yankees game with Alexander. That’s my fourth baseball game for the season – an unprecedented level on interest for me, driven more by the strong sense of place that Yankee Stadium (and Fenway) have, than an abiding curiosity about the game.
So here’s a street scene and Yankee Stadium, taken with my Leica M9 and a 12mm Voigtländer lens. As a non-fisheye this wide it’s amazing that it even produces an image. It produces serious color shifts with digital cameras, shifts that I correct for by “developing” the images in C1 with an llc correction. No veiwfinder is necessary – I just assume that it takes in everything in the general direction of the front of the camera. Focusing is redundant because of the long depth of field. Results can be weird and unpleasant because of wide angle geometric distortion – I tend to get a lot of junk with it but also an occasional gem.
The news meets weeniesYankee Stadium
I got film back today so I’ll be including a few film images each day until I run out of them. Generally taken with my Leica M4, Ilford Delta 100 film, and a dual range Summicron lens.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spent the day exploring the Lower East Side block by block, packing my Leica M9 and 24mm Summicron lens, and my M4 loaded with Neopan and a 50mm Dual-Range summicron. Editing has proven tough so pardon the number of images.
Manhattan BridgeManhattan BridgeCremerieMarble CemeteryBond StreetSmile
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:
Construction sitePoliticianUS
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.
44th StreetGrand Central Terminal
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.
