So much architecture has been lost in Toronto over the decades. I am glad the Broadview hotel was spared, and rehabilitated!
Leica IIIa, 25mm/f4 Snapshot Skopar lens with red filter
Rollei Retro 80s film
Tag: Leica
By the Beach
This image is from about a week ago, at the Beaches. I shot this with my Voigtlander Bessa R body and Leica 90mm/4 Elmar lens, a short telephoto that I should really use more!
The Walkway
Another image from the old railway station near Yonge/Summerhill in Toronto. I love what the 15mm lens does for scenes like this!
Leica IIIa, Voigtlander Helios 15mm/4.5 lens,
Tri-X developed in Pyrocat-HD 1+1+100 for 16 minutes @ 20 C
Commonplace
An abandoned shopping cart is not that uncommon a sight in a large city, but I liked what the combination of the morning sunshine and the extreme wide-angle perspective did to it.
Leica IIIa, Voigtlander Helio 15mm/4.5 lens,
Tri-X developed in Pyrocat-HD 1+1+100 for 16 minutes @ 20 C
Built to Last
This picture was taken last week in Arizona; I used my Leica IIIb, with the Voigtlander Color Skopar 21mm/f4 super wide-angle lens. This picture was taken sometime after I had dropped the camera by accident on a rather unforgiving pavement. Ouch. Luckily, either than a bent filter ring (which I can likely fix), the camera survived just fine. I can’t help but think that if this had been a modern day plastic camera it would have broken into a number of pieces.
Pardon the cliche, but they don’t make them like the used to!
It’s Not Always About Sharpness
This image is of a fellow cast member from Man of La Mancha, taken at a recent fund-raising event. It was shot using my Leica IIIb rangefinder, and an postwar 50mm/f2 Summitar lens. It was not a very bright room, and I was shooting available light, so even though I was using Tri-X (a reasonably fast film) I had to shoot wide open, at either 1/20th or 1/40th of a second. I knew that not much would be in focus, but the face and eyes were, and I was able to capture a lovely expression. The Summitar lens has a reputation for fairly swirly out of focus areas when wide open; some people don’t like the effect, others enjoy this characteristic of the lens, and I am in the latter camp — I like what it adds to the image.
In Perspective
Today’s image was taken recently with my Leica IIIb and Voigtlander 21mm Super-Wide angle lens. Although this kind of lens does not distort an image the way a “fish-eye” lens does, depending on the angle you can still get plenty of distortion. In the image below though this is accentuated by the building itself, Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum. (A very interesting place, well worth the visit by the way.) Its walls have a number of interesting and unusual angles, and in this image it is tricky to tell where the building ends and the lens distortion begins.
Found Surrealism
A five minute walk from our house is a perfectly ordinary convenience store, but on an outside side wall is some plaster, wires and plastic pipes that seems to turn into poles suspended in a sky, clear with one cloud. No post production trickery, just light.
Customer in a Coffee Shop
I took this shot using my Leica IIIb and 50mm Leica Summitar lens. I had stopped into Broadview Expresso, a non-chain coffee shop on Broadview Avenue, not far north of the subway station bearing the same name. I had come in for a coffee, and when I asked if the seat next to his was taken he said go ahead, and started to engage me in conversation. We chatted for a while, and then when I was leaving I decided to ask if I could take his picture (and asking people I don’t know if I can take their pictures is something I rarely do, and definitely need to do more of!). I’m quite happy with how it turned out.
From Russia With Luck
In a recent post I mentioned I had picked up a well-used, but still working 1939 vintage Leica IIIb 35mm rangefinder body; it did not come with a lens, and not wanting to shell out or trade for a genuine (read:expensive) Leica lens, I decided to roll the dice and get a Soviet Russian made Jupiter 8 50mm/f2 lens.
The phrase “Soviet craftsmanship” is not heard often, and I knew that buying this lens would be chancy; these lenses are know for having good glass, but shoddy workmanship. I’m happy to report that mine seems to work fine; a sample image from my test roll is below. I have a 50mm f2 Summarit on its way (I had to trade away “the Beast” Pentaax 6×7 to get it), but for now I will enjoy my Russian surprise 🙂
(Leica IIIb 35mm rangefinder, 50mm f2 Jupiter 8 lens, Ilford HP5+ film, developed in HC-110 dilution H)
My Third Eye 