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
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