Moments from the 2024 Memorial Day Art Show Through a Fungus Infested 1960’s Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Camera Tessar Lens. Prescott, AZ

 

 

Background to the story

A neighbor sent me a note that he had old cameras and wanted to see if I would be interested to add to my collection. So, I dropped by to check.

There were a couple of 1940’s Kodak cameras his parents owned and a 1960s Zeiss Ikon Contaflex. The Kodak would be a good addition to the collection, I thought, but the Contaflex may be usable, although the lens was almost obscured by decades old fungus infestation.  So, I gave these cameras a new home.

I have two Zeiss Ikon cameras, all given to me by folks who did not want to keep them. Interestingly, I was able to get them work again, but they are too cumbersome to use, as vintage German cameras were over-engineered for the basic functions they carry out. When they brake, no one would touch them to repair. Yet, when they work, only those who enjoy the sound of dozens of springs working in harmony to trigger a shutter will still use these vintage cameras.

I am one of the latter. I do enjoy learning about historic developments in camera design, and I never minded spending hours figuring out how to replace a rusted or broken spring. However, I had never cleaned massive fungal infestation in a lens!

So, it was a new experience, and I decided to take upon the task of figuring out how to open the Tessar lens and clean the fungus.

With guidance from other people’s experience (which mostly was “do not try it!”) I found where the cement had eroded and fungal spores had probably gotten in, when the camera was stored in a humid environment.

I cleaned it diligently, and put it back together using epoxy instead of the historic Canada Balsam that Zeiss had used in the 1950s and 1960s. Here are the before and after pictures of the lens:

The previously gifted Zeiss cameras I have represent different decades of German engineering during the golden years of photography:

And the restored 1960’s Contaflex I recently received from my neighbor:

 

Using the Contaflex for street photography on Memorial Day in Prescott, AZ

As on every Memorial Day weekend, there is an art show on the city square providing opportunity to both discover new artists and, for a street photographer, to look for a few moments and capture them on film. This year was special for me since I had no idea if the Contaflex was working correctly, or if my first attempt to clean the fungal growth from its lens was successful.

So I tried various light-environments to see if the coupled selenium meter was reliable enough to allow the automatic shutter priority system to choose the right f-stop.

A. Photos taken in semi-shade with 1/30 or 1/60 second shutter speed

The photo atop this page shows why in the 1940s the Tessar lens was called “adler auge” or “eagle –eye”. It had the simple construct of 4 elements in 3 groups, but was among the sharpest lenses of the time. Today, it is the “character” of the lens photographers would speak about, not its sharpness. And I chose the photo of a photography kiosk to capture that character. I took the shot from less than 5 meter distance, so the sharpness is quite noticeable in the center of the frame. But it is the “bleeding of the shadows” and the smooth transition from light to darker shades that makes this shot a good representative of what the lens can still do based on its simple design from the 1930!

 

While the wave of visitors was in constant flux around the kiosk, I noticed a man taking a nap in the shade of a tall tree. The white cowboy hat was a natural contrast for all the shades of gray in the composition. In the printed photo, the tonal transition is smooth and the camera focus seems to be working quite accurately.

 

 

This photo of a kiosk displaying Native American artwork was taken at a shutter speed of 1/60 second. I focused on the two-headed pottery and the two people were just a couple feet behind that artwork. The depth of field is very shallow and the window in the viewfinder indicated that the camera chose f5.6 for the aperture. I would have chosen f4, but that is very satisfactory from a 64 year old camera…

 

This shot, also taken at f5.6 and 1/60 second shutter speed perhaps best demonstrates what a simple lens design first introduced in the 1930s can still deliver that dreamy feeling when light and shade co-exist. Indeed, modern lenses, although amazingly sharp, may sometimes be “fooled” by the quick changes of light, even when today’s advanced meters (or sensors) are used. The woman was throwing a baseball to the kid and the sun was intermittently covered by tree branches due to the high wind.

Still, one can see the ball reaching the boy, and the tonal transition is delightful.

 

B.     Photos taken in strong light with the speed shutter set at 1/125 second

 

This is where the fun started!  The next photo was a perfect natural set up moment where a man wearing a kilt was next to the statue of a famous local law officer from the territorial days of Arizona. A contrast in cultures, attires and posture. I had a split of a moment for the shot and I forgot to change the shutter speed from 1/60 seconds to 1/125. So, the statue is dark, the man in kilt is ok, but the Court building is washed out.

What is more interesting is that there should have been enough direct light hitting the selenium meter’s panel  that one can see a large section of the building covered in bright circles. Here is a cropped section showing those circles:

 

These are either remnants of the fungus that I did not see when I checked the “cleaned” lens, or is microscopic damage the fungal infestation did to the glass over decades. And both issues would affect the photo only when bright light fall upon the lens at a certain angle. Often a lens shade (which I used) can minimise the effect, but it did not in this case.

So, the fungus issue is not fully resolved…

 

Finally, here is a photo where objects are in bright light that did not show the fungus effect because I was in the shade of the trees and no sun fell upon the lens. However, the camera’s automatic aperture mode did not work well. I would guess that it got set to f8 when it should have been f16.

Concluding thoughts

The 1960s Zeiss Ikon Contaflex is a watch making engineering delight. The ergonomics of preview Contaflex cameras are perfected and the all steel and leather machine still works after sitting idle for more than half a century on a shelf. Even the selenium meter works, although it is off by a stop or so.

But, it is an over-engineered and complex camera. I do not think anyone is out there who would even attempt to fix anything that goes wrong mechanically.

Yet, it is a camera from the golden years of B&W photography, hence it remains cherished by those, like me, who believe that photography is about telling a story not bragging about how much detail a lens can capture and display. It is about the pleasure of hearing that mechanical shutter when tripped, knowing that there are hundreds of levers, screws, springs and moving parts that have to be synchronized at 1/500^th of a second to match that speed with the opening and closing of thin steel diaphragm leafs.

Eventually, it is about the becoming of one between the photographer and the camera. Not the impersonal relationship with batteries, micro chips or a mirrorless “camera obscura.” In a perhaps strange way, in addition to the engineering quirks, sometimes it is the “scent” of a vintage camera’s leather case takes the photographer into a time travel to the 1930s or 1940s. That is the scent of Soviet cameras many of which have leather cases that have kept that unique scent after almost a century. What kind of tanning did they do?

… And if the negatives come out dark or underexposed, well, so be it! There is always a 1960s Hansa Pro enlarger fitted with a Soviet rangefinder camera lens that will allow darkroom work to compensate for a lazy diaphragm closure or “tired” selenium light meter.

 

May 30, 2024

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024

Using a Vintage 20mm Wide Angle Lens for Street Photography on Mothers’ Day, 2024

 

 

Most photographers will not use such a super wide lens for street photo journalism, and I have never used it. The reason is two-fold: to tell a story, there has to be a specific moment to be framed as the human eye sees it. A 50mm lens fits my inquisitive eye, although others prefer a 35mm. But not a 20mm which captures so much of the setting that the story gets lost. Second, a 20mm lens has too many distortions, lacks sharpness and definition throughout the entire frame, unless it is a Zeiss Flektogon.

But, since I was able to get my 1981 Minolta X-700 restored to function, I wanted to test a 20mm lens that I had owned for 25 years but never used it. It is a Soligor which is not highly regarded and was often thrown in as a bonus when film cameras were sold as absolute with the advent of digital technology. It is a lens made in Japan for an American company and aimed for amateur use.

But like many who use and collect vintage photographic tools, using what is said as “not worth using” is a challenge to take on. And I had yet another challenge in mind: the Soligor, as a manual focus lens, needs to be focus only up to 6 meters. Then you set it to the infinity setting and your cameras becomes a point-and-shoot one. And, given how much “territory” a 20mm lens covers on a 35 mm film frame, I wondered if I can shoot from the hip by pointing the camera in the direction of the story I wanted to capture. This is even better than using a waist viewer camera like a TLR Rolleiflex with which you still have to look down the waist finder and let people realise you are taking a photo. It is better because people then change their behaviour and the moment loses its authenticity.

 

So, I rolled about 10 frames worth of film into an old canister and took the Soligor to the Mother’s Day arts show.

Here is the lens made by Tokina in 1986. Note the lovely period neck strap on the Minolta…

 

It was a new experience, as I was hoping it to be. I ended up having 12 frames on that film strip, and finished shooting in a short time. It was a cloudy day, so I used f5.6, f8 and f11, with the focus set to infinity. But I had no idea what I was getting in the frame! Yet, I knew that people did not get spooked by having a camera pointed in their direction, if they even knew that I was releasing the shutter.

So I rushed back home to develop the film and see what I captured.

 

Since I did not what to expect about the performance of the lens, I was surprised how sharp the results were in the middle of the frame when shot at less than 10 meters from the subject using an aperture of f8.  Par contre, when using an f5.6 at a longer distance, the sharpness was mediocre at best.

So, I chose two photos to describe my experience.

The one at the outset of the page has both a story, and without knowing what I was framing (!) captured the environment of the story. There were two men, in photogenic Southwestern attire on a bench watching the people visiting the art kiosks. One man was smoking a cigar and was perfect for a photo. I was about 10 meters away and dedicated two frames to the moment.

When I printed the frame using a Soviet Industar 61 L/D 53mm rangefinder camera lens on my 1950’s enlarger, I was delighted by the composition. So, it took me a few attempts, using variable exposure times and dodging and burning to get the shades I wanted. Especially of the clouds.

For a comparison, I zoomed into the frame (by moving the enlarger lens higher) to fill the frame with what a 50mm lens would have captured. And that made me pleased of using the wide angle lens because the 50mm perspective captures less of a story.

It is also to be noted that in the above version, the gray of the shade given by the tall trees around the area does not provide the contrast and the focus on the man I had in mind. But the final version, the one atop the page, makes that man the center of the story as the man with the cigar is brighter and there is “sun” around his feet. This is of the because dodging that I did by shading the enlarger light over the man with my fingers for about 2 seconds, which also lightened the area around his feet giving the impression of a ray of sunshine. The entire exposure time was 5 seconds, with an added second of burning to enhance the clouds.

(I assume young photographers have rarely worked in a darkroom with film, so these terms and rather primitive techniques may be unknown to them.)

 

Ok, the next photo was taken with an f5.6 aperture and 1/125 second shutter speed. The woman wearing Western attire was about 30 meters away, and I wanted the dogs to be in the picture too. Again, I zoomed in to print what a 50mm lens would have seen to test the contrast and definition of the 20mm. Clearly, the Soligor is sharper at closer distances.

 

So, was it worth shooting 12 frames to get one good photo? For me it was the experience of using a new tool, the anticipated surprise about the results after shooting “blind”, and as an enthusiast about vintage cameras and lenses, the joy of using a forgotten lens.

Maybe I will try the lens again, now that I know its limitations.

 

May 12, 2024

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024