Prescott, Arizona, is home to one of the most
popular vintage Corvette car shows. Among the reasons is the dry desert weather
that preserves cars from rust and other damages. Also, many of the retired
residents have enough space on their house land to build large garages often
transformed into classic cars restoration. The king of these cars is the Corvette,
a symbol of American muscle cars.
There is an annual Corvette car show downtown Prescott,
and thousands of visitors marvel at the pristine restorations of Corvettes many
more than 60 years old. For me, it is also an opportunity to take a vintage
film camera for street photography.
Yesterday I decided to take one of my 1972 Soviet
medium format Salyut S camera for that sortie. A few days ago I tested the
camera with the 90mm Vega 12-b I had used decades ago, and while the camera
worked fine, the lens was frozen. Thinking that the blades got stuck from years
on inaction, I proceeded to open the lens and get the blades back into action. Unfortunately
it was more complicated than that as the automatic blade control mechanism had
broken.
.. In the 1990s, with the advent of digital cameras,
film and mechanical cameras were sold or even given away as they were deemed
relics of a glorious past. I acquired a number of classic cameras during that
time period, especially focusing on getting two of the same models so I would
be able to perform “organ transplant” since mechanical camera repair professionals
were getting as extinguished as the users of these photographic tools
were. I have two of these Vega lenses,
and I decided to rescue the ailing one:
To my surprise, when I took the rear cap off the
second lens, I realised that I had already, a couple of decades ago, harvested
parts of that lens! As for many vintage Soviet lenses I have, it used to be
popular for whoever repaired or re-calibrated a lens to scratch the new
calibration parameters on the inner metal surface of the lens, and often, with
the edge of a screwdriver, carve their name. I suddenly saw that I had done the
same thing when I repaired that lens decades ago!
Here are the partly dismantled optical elements of
the non-functioning lens and my name carved on the inside of the “donor” lens:
So, at least for now, I will not be able to use that
Vega lens for the Corvette show.
The next possibility was a monster lens not made for
street photography, the Soviet Kaleinar 3B 150mm f2.8. It is a stereotypical
Soviet lens being all glass and all steel. It weighs 1100 grams and fitted on
the Salyut camera (1420 grams) one will have 5.6 pounds of weight hanging from
the neck! What is more challenging though is the focusing – one has to turn the
ring more than one rotation to get into focus, and even then, the weight of the
outfit and the non-friendly pressure the shutter release requires make the
steady holding of the camera impossible.
Here is a size comparison between the Vega and
Kaleinar lenses:
Needless to say, the Kaleinar was not built for
street photography, rather for portraiture on a steady tripod. And I have used
this lens decades ago for portraiture, always handheld, and never in a sunny
setting as it flares easily and loses contrast. But the portraits I took had a
unique charm – a pronounced bokeh even at f5.6, and a “proletarian” feel to the
captured moment, compared to what one got from Japanese lenses of the era. It
was a down to earth capture that did fit the character of most people I
captured on 60 or 100 ASA film.
Ok, I tested the lens, it was working fine and out
to the Corvette show we went.
The photo at the outset of this page is the first
one I took at the lens’s minimum focusing distance of 1.8 meter, the diaphragm
closed to f16 and the speed set to 1/125th seconds. The desert sun
was at its zenith and there were reflections on the glass and metal surfaces of
the 1956 corvette’s cabin. I did not expect much from this shot, but surprisingly, there was little flare and sharpness
and contrast were acceptable.
My second test was at f8 and shutter set at 1/250th
seconds. I wanted to capture the spirit of folks admiring the corvettes and the
head of an alien the owner of this car placed in the cabin allowed to
experiment with lens sharpness and out of focus frame areas. I find this photo
quite delightful.
It was time to test the bokeh of the lens taking
into account the light transition between the foreground and the background. As
I had seen before the Kaleinar exhibits significant, albeit less than smooth
bokeh even at f5.6 which was the set aperture for this photo:
Another test of test was at f11 and shutter speed of
1/125th seconds focusing on an artwork across the street, about 25
meters away. It was the life size sculpture of the most common predator we have
in Arizona – the coyote. We almost see them daily around our houses making
walking a dog a challenge.
The sculpture was made of scrap metal, nuts and
bolts allowing me to test the sharpness of the lens and the contrast it
displays:
So, the performance of the lens and camera were
still very acceptable, and I may use the setup for portraiture again. Most
importantly, I was pleased to have a vintage camera at a vintage car show. In
some way, both the owners of those cars and I have one thing in common –
owning, maintaining and using a tool or machine from a past era makes us
partners in the process, rather than passive users of technology that is
programmed to be predictably functional but often override our desires of the
moment.
.. Talking of functional, I have to decide if I want
to spend hours taking the broken Vega lens apart, just for the challenge of it...
PS/ as always, I was probably the only one, among
the thousands of people, who went to a classic muscle-car show and did not take
photos of the cars.
September 29, 2024
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024
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