NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Feeling a bid dull today so I did a radical equipment change: I put a 16 mm Karl Zeiss Hologon on my Leica M9 and took it with me as I went about my daily business. This is an odd lens. It was not made for Leica so someone made a custom mount for it. It really isn’t suitable for digital because its exit pupil is too close the the sensor, creating all sorts of problems, primarily vignetting and truly weird color shifts. The later problem means that its use is limited to black and what. It’s pluses are that its depth of field is from real close to infinity – so you don’t have to focus. Because its very, very wide most people just point it without looking through the camera – you pretty much get everything you see. This is a rare enough lens that I’m pretty sure that I’m the only photographer walking around New York with a Holigon attached to a Leica.
Anyway, here we are on the Lexington Avenue subway this afternoon.
