Minolta Autocord TLR for Street Photography

 

Rolleiflex Medium Format cameras have been in extensively used in photojournalism since the 1940s. They are small, relatively light and can be preset (if needed) to an approximate focusing distance for quick snapping.  Most importantly, since the TLRs have a waist level focusing screen, one can identify the subject without the latter knowing that you are taking a photo. That makes for candid shots.

I have used TLR cameras in street photography since the 1980s. While I have a number of them, my three favorites are a 1948 Rolleiflex, a 1966 Minolta Autocord III, and the Yashica 124 also from the 1960s. For studio portraiture, I use a Mamiya Professional with bellows and a Minolta Autocord CDS which has a light meter but is too bulky for hanging around my neck.

Here are the Rolleiflex, the Autocord CDS and the Autocord III. Note the modifications I have made for quick photo taking -- I have added longer plungers to the shutter button, replaced the hood on the CDS with a Yashica hood and internal fresnel for a brighter viewfinder, and made a hood on the III using three metal rings from old filters:

 

While all three of them have delightful lenses, the Autocords have an elliptic sliding focusing system with a knob under the lens compared to the left hand rotating knob on the Rolleiflex and Yashica. With some practice, one can hold the camera in the right hand, slide the focusing knob right or left with the middle finger for the perfect focus, then press the shutter with the index finger.

The concept was not new. In the 1950s and 60s, Meopta, a Czechoslovakian company, made a TLR called Flexaret that was widely used during the Soviet days. It was the first TLR to use the sliding focusing mechanism. But the aluminum bodied camera did not have professional features nor the endurance for heavy use.

Here is a close-up to the Autocord sliding focusing design:

So, I do not need my left hand to go through these steps and take a photo. Unless I am holding the leach of my dog with my left arm!

And that is what I did last weekend. I knew the downtown was getting ready for an open air art show and my dog needs his daily early morning walk. So, there I went trying to control a 106 pound Akita who pulls like a pony on the first day of spring, and hoping to snap a few photos with my Autocord III.

It was soon after sunrise when we got there. The tall trees around the town square filtered the early rays making me choose an aperture of 3.5 and a shutter speed of 1/60^th second.

The photo at the top of this page is what a medium format film delivers – the wide opened lens blurred the background smoothly and the subject, a cowboy taking a break is in focus surrounded by a tonal range progression that fits his pensive mood. I did crop the photo, especially the top of the chair on the left to give contournal contrast to the smooth lines. Also the top of the trees were amorphous and distracting.

A few minutes later, I notice a man helping a Western dressed woman unfold a blanket. With my dog pulling enough to un-steady my camera holding, I tried to capture that movement. The man is at the front and left of the woman, his legs showing, but most of his body and face are covered under that blanket. Interestingly, the folds of the blanket give a resemblance of a funny face almost where the head of the man is supposed to be. Here is the ghostly illusion I noticed when I printed the photo:

Here is the full photo, this time with an almost Sonnar like background swirl!

I like the movement in this photo, as the woman and the water fountain in the background give the contrast of immobility.

As with all mechanical cameras, taking a photo makes the photographer one with the tool. Now add to that a massive Akita on his first morning walk not eager to stop walking, and a TLR that had to be held in one hand to focus, click the shutter and rewind the film!

But when I look at the photos, I know why I still love the challenge of TLR photography and the joy of having my fourth dog in the past 40 years dragging me in the streets!

 

October 9, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021

Fitting a Soviet Lens on a German Leica – Is it Worth the Effort?

 

 

When in the 1990s digital photography allowed everyone to “take pics”, the market for mechanical cameras, lenses and other paraphernalia became inundated with classics no one wanted anymore. At some point, one could get watchmaker quality professional cameras from the 1950s and 1960s cheaper than the film needed to shoot them. And online selling gave the chance for all those Soviet cameras and lenses, many in inoperable condition, to be available to those of us for whom photography was all about using light and shadows as we wanted it, rather away from Artificial Intelligence and software caprices.

So I bought many cameras that I could not afford before ranging from a few Leica IIIF, Rolleiflex TLRs, a Hasselblatt, A couple of Mamiya 645s, lovely Nikon Fs, Minolta Autocords, Canon rangefinder cameras and of course Soviet cameras from the 1950s and 1960s. The latter came with bagfuls of lenses the sellers enticed camera buyers with “Contax copy” and “Leica copy” aluminum bodied gems. And that gave my curiosity a new opportunity, which was learning how to make one good lens out of parts from 3 or 4 others!

Then came a new temptation – could these practically free lenses, with amazing glass and all metal bodies be fitted on cameras for which their original lenses cost more than all the equipment I had in my darkroom?

And I was not alone. Photographers and engineers from around the world started posting on the Web about their experiences with modifying amazing Soviet lenses from the 1950s and 60s to fit German and Japanese classic cameras. Of course this was before today’s hi-tech adapters that allow approximate fitting of these lenses even if often do not focus at infinity.

I have read most of the postings over the past 20 years. Even after significant effort to make a Soviet lens focus perfectly on a Leica (or a Leica mount Japanese camera like Canon rangefinders) most of the resulting photos are “soft”. In technical terms softness is the result of the lens focusing in front or behind the subject.

Why? First the construct of the lens differs from Soviet to German. Specifically, Soviet rangefinder lenses have a round cam while the Leica lenses have flat cams. That makes a difference in the trajectory of the cam when the lens focusing ring is rotated. Second, the internal construct of the lenses vary using one or more helicoids, making the linkage between the cam movement and the actual focus adjustment vary between the lens and the camera.

The best explanation, for those who are technically inclined, is by Dante Stella here:

https://www.dantestella.com/technical/compat.html

 

Knowing all this, why did I try to adjust a 1960s Yupiter-9 (Jupiter-9) Soviet 85mm lens to my Leica IIIF? Delusional thinking perhaps, but also because I wanted to see if the incorrect focusing can yield uniqueness in street photography.

First, here is the Yupiter on my Leica. Aesthetically, and with the round auxiliary viewfinder atop the camera, I think it looks like a time machine! If my approximate calculation is correct, there are more than 550 individual parts between the camera and the lens. And the purple, thick Soviet glass looks wonderful…

I did disassemble the lens and adjusted the shims. To my surprise I could see the Leica focusing what seemed perfectly between 2 meters and infinity.  I had to test the new arrangement by taking it along to a Classic Corvette car show downtown. My goal was to take photos where there were people at different distances in one frame. Such as folks on the foreground at about 10 meters, then others between 10 and 20 meters, and the last group 25 or more meters or almost an infinity setting on the focusing ring.

After a while three cowboys arrived to check the corvettes. It was a perfect moment when one cowboy was at about 10 meters sandwiched between folks in the foreground and those 25 or more meters behind him. I focused on the cowboy and was eager to develop the negative (I had rolled a short negative strip of about 5 frames just to test the lens.)

When I looked at that frame take shape on paper in the developing tray, I knew how many before me had felt! Yes, it looked like perfect focusing in the viewfinder but that is an illusion. As Dante Stella said, the Leica now was focusing perfectly on the background not the subject, the cowboy, I had focused on.

The printed “experiment photo” is atop this page.

 

Yet, in the past I have had excellent results with a 1950s Industar on this Leica and a 135mmYupiter-11 on a 1954 Canon L with good results perhaps because it is a much simpler design lens than the 85mm Yupiter-9. Here is the 1950  Industar lens which I also sometimes use on my enlarger which has a Leica mount.

 

 So, again, why try to fit a lens on a camera that was not made for it? Simple – because those of us, who still use film, love the sound of a 60 year old mechanical camera’s shutter and work in a darkroom, we love surprises! Just like after 50 years of B&W photography, I get delighted to see a photo take shape in the developing tray, under a red light.  Thus while I know the construct and calibration of a Soviet lens is not supposed to allow a Leica focus correctly, I still like to tinker with the lens or try multiple lenses hoping that the lax Soviet quality control of the bygone years may have produced a lens that could focus well on a Leica.

The only time this has worked was in using 50mm Industar lenses from 1950 (uncoated) and one from 1964 (coated). I have even displayed such shots at photo exhibits surprising photographers who use Leica lenses. Here is that lens:

 

 

And, to my delight, sometimes these lenses produce unpredictable but lovely effects. Here is one with a 1970s Industar. I focused on the dog lens wide opened (f3.5) and got this dreamy background blur.

 

In conclusion, I would not advocate pursuing  such Frankensteining attempts between a Leica rangefinder camera and a Soviet rangefinder lens if my goal was to take predictable photos. But, for those moments when I feel like playing with the unknown and ready for surprises, it is perhaps an experience every photographer should indulge by losing all control over focusing or telling the story I had in mind.

Now, there will be a new story to tell.

 

September 27, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021

 

Tonal Range in B&W Photography: Shades of Gray or Atonement?

 

“You still use film?”

I had found a shady spot under a cottonwood tree to change film in my 1970s Yashica 124 TLR camera.  An older gentleman stopped to see the challenge loading film presents.

“I used to have one of these years ago. Fun to use but you have only 12 shots. And the lens used to flare like a desert thunderstorm at midnight!”

When I was done loading the film, I explained that digital “picture taking” has never been attractive to me as I like taking “photos” and working in a darkroom.

“But you can do so much more with digital” he said, “and you do not need to inhale the Stop Bath fumes!”

So, I gave him my card and said that I will try to write something up on my blog if he is interested, but that I had to catch up with the people in the street for a few more shots.

He took my card and promised to read. So, here is why I like film photography.

 

First of all, I enjoy using mechanical tools, and in the case of cameras be that a 1940s Leica or a 1950s Kiev, I still get excited when tiny wheels, springs and levers move in concert at the pressing of a finger or winding for the next shot. In some ways the photo-taking is more of an adventure than the resulting photo.

Projecting the developed negative under the enlarger makes one find out how the old camera worked, if the lens was closed or opened appropriately to invite the wanted light, and if the shutter speed was chosen correctly. I do not use light meters and rely on my experience with the Sunny 16 rules.

Then, the surprises I have seen almost 60 years ago in the developing pan when a plain paper slowly becomes that moment I froze still amazes me.

Finally, using my hands and home-made shading gadgets, when I dodge or burn for a few seconds under the enlarger light, the moment I froze on film takes a new character. It becomes what I wanted to see when I framed that negative.

So, playing with software on a computer just does not do it for me.

 

Now, there are some visual characteristics that film captures which are quite unique. It is usually called tonality or tonal range. This is the range of tones (or range of gray shades) between the very dark and the very light elements of a photo.  The tonal range can be wide (very dark to very light) or narrow (a transition between shades of gray). Further, the tonal range transition can be abrupt (few shades of gray between the darkest and lightest elements) or smooth (a wide spectrum of grays).

I know there are many ways software driven editing can play with the tonal range. But as a purist and one who only uses B&W film, the challenge of creating a tonal range under the enlarger using dodging and burning remains the true artistic touch during darkroom work.

 

To illustrate, I chose three photos I took with 35mm and 120mm film.

A.    Whistler Mountain, Canada.  I took it in late morning light with a 35mm Nikon F. Then, given the wide range of tones (snow, light reflections on the lake and the shade of trees surrounding it) wanted to create a midnight scene. How could I not with two young women in the middle of the scenery?

Spot dodging and burning took a while, but the final photograph was what I had in mind when I tripped the shutter of that 1969 camera.

 

A.    Big Ben and a pigeons, London. On that day I had a 1953 Kiev A 35mm rangefinder camera with me. The evening sun was soft and bright, and pigeons were flying over us. I waited till one flew over the head of a young boy hopping to catch the sun through the bird’s feathers.

Again, there was enough to experiment with the tonal range.

Interestingly the 1950s Jupiter 8 lens had enough sharpness to capture much detail on a flying bird. Here is the cropped portion – the bird was looking at us…

C.      Ferrara, Italy. Given the perspective, it is clear that I was using a TLR camera hanging from my neck. It was my 1970s Minolta Autocord medium format camera which makes street photography “easier” as people do not see me placing a camera in front of my face.

I have done little editing on this photo. It already had the dark lines and the blurred (bokeh) lighter background. The composition of this photo captured natural the tonal range.

 

So, would digital picture-taking produce photos with these classic tonal ranges? Perhaps. But for sure it would not be as much fun (at least for me) as using a 1960s Hansa Pro enlarger, Ilford Multi Grade IV paper, and Kodak chemicals in my darkroom!

 

September 10, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021

The Wolf, The Lamb and Harmony in Black and White Through Classic Lenses

 

 

A Renaissance-man friend, who harmoniously navigates between medicine and the arts, sent a picture of a water colour nude painting his elementary school art teacher had given him as a present. He commented “I love the richness and warmth of washes of colors”.

Although I started with water colour, most of my painting is in oil and acrylic. The attraction of water colour remains that of the unpredictable for me. The way colours could run, mix, and escape what the painter intended to achieve. When using oil, especially acrylic paint, the artist remains in full control.

But what makes a water colour work most attractive to me is the harmony that the unpredictables achieve.

So, this morning I was thinking about the science and poetry of harmony.

Of course, as a photographer, I cannot think about harmony without recalling Newton’s seminal work Optiks where in the 1660s, he carried out experiments of sun rays’ reflections and refractions through prisms. This is how we know about rainbows as he identified the ROYGBIV colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). He stated:

“…if the Sun’s Light consisted of but one sort of Rays, there would be but one Colour in the whole World”

But a rainbow, or harmony in colours, is never exclusively a scientific observation. Indeed, Goethe, as a philosopher, suggested that observed colour was not simply a scientific measurement, but a subjective experience perceived differently by each viewer. He stated:

“Colour are light’s suffering and joy”

Interestingly, the discussion of colour preceded both Newton and Goethe, as Aristotle tackled the theory of colour by bringing in religious interpretation. He proposed that colour came from heaven and that all colour came from darkness and lightness or black and white. In some way, Aristotle addresses colour as if a reflection and refraction of the human condition, or perhaps vice versa.

(A good discussion of the above history can be found on this Smithsonian library page “The Science of Colour” https://library.si.edu/exhibition/color-in-a-new-light/science)

 So, with the scientific, philosophical and religious background to the theory of colour and the concept of harmony, my mind migrated to the Hebrew and King James Bibles. I grew up with the imagery attributed to Isaiah 11:6 where the image of peace, calm and harmony is the lion lying down with the lamb.

Well, a little research let me to realize that neither the Hebrew Bible (The Tanakh) nor the King James Bible mention the lion lying down with the lamb. Indeed The Hebrew Bible says:

And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together

And the same lines in Isaiah 11:6 in the King James Bible (1611) read

The wolfe also shall dwell with the lambe, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calfe and the yong lion, and the fatling together

 

… All this brought me back to black and white photography! In the past 55 years I have, a street photographer captured fleeting moments from around the world on miles of film that probably would cover part of the world at list once. I looked for a couple of shots that may represent harmony in the context of this discussion.

The photo on top is from Santa Fe, New Mexico I took with a 1960s Nikon F fitted with a same era Nikkor 105 mm lens. A man was metaphorically describing harmony through his dog, cat and a white mouse. When I saw the scene, the mouse was on the back of the cat. By the time I clicked, had moved on the neck of the cat expressing the hope that a dog, a cat and a mouse can co-exist without fear. In harmony.

 

Then I thought of a photo I took in a 1880s forsaken Arizona cemetery. The grounds were unkept, overgrown weeds and cactus covering the few gravestones half sunk in the ground under the weight of time. There was a wooden cross, lonesome and without any markings but somehow represented a calm to my moment.

Unkept grounds and unwept cross.

I had a 1955 Soviet/Ukrainian Zorkii camera, a Leica clone I have used for decades. The lens is a 1956 Jupiter-8 marked in Cyrillic, ЮПИТЕР-8, a postwar Soviet copy of the prewar Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/2 for the Contax.

Here is the camera and lens:

 

I like this lens for portraiture as wide open it gives the characteristic Sonnar swirls to the background of the subject in focus.

This time, my subject was the lonesome cross with no markings. And the 65 year old lens gave swirls and light flare that I was not anticipating, as if the running colours in water colour painting.

 

And the circle was completed.

 

July 28, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021

The 4th of July 2021 in Prescott, Arizona

It has been very hot in the Southwest but nothing could stop the gathering of thousands on the city Square. I wanted to capture a few moments of this post -2020 pandemic year 4th of July celebration, but given the heat decided to take my dog for an early walk before the large crowds gather.

This year, my goal was to take photos of the environment representing the celebration, rather than pursue street photography of those present.

So, I took my 1970 Nikon F with same year's 135mm Nikkor-Q Auto lens for a cumulative age of 100 years in equipment between camera and lens!

First, as we were walking downtown, a wild cottontail rabbit ran by reminding me that we were indeed in the desert and that it was already 80 F degrees just after sunrise.

The photo at the top of this page captures the identity of the city -- historically a frontier town of the Territories, where cowboys lived life with seemingly infinite land and big skies. But today, I wanted to capture the 4th of July, so a poster of the Constitution helped me frame the photo with "We the People".

Next, to continue with the theme of identity, I wanted my Nikon F to "see" statues around the square in the early light. Here is part of a Sheriff's statue looking at the boots of a fallen colleague. The writing reads:

                                                            "Lest We Forget"

Finally, the statue of  two soldiers topping the memorial for the local soldiers who gave their lives in Vietnam. Opening the lens wide, I wanted to blur the background but still show the chairs already in place for the day's parade.

By now many of the vendors were opening their tents showcasing sculpture, painting, metal work and food. I found this composition of tonal range and gray shades harmony. A perfect setting for testing my expired B&W 100 film!

We had already walked more than two miles and my dog was ready to walk the last mile and get home where he would eat his ice cubes and lay two feet away from a floor fan. 

So, we passed by an antique store that has been on our daily walk path for now more than five years. But the early light was soft to capture both foreground shades and the eclectic nature of this store. By now I had captured cowboys, Vietnam soldiers, a Sheriff's statue, a woman getting her vendor tent ready, and now a Civil War wagon!

Perfect symbolism for the 4th of July.

But symbolism was not yet to end. Behind a metal fence, someone had piled stones perhaps driven by an artistic impulse. But from my angle and the early morning shades, that edifice, in contre-jour, looked either like a cowboy from the back or three hats piled atop of each other.

Now I was ready to see what would come out of my trusty 50 year old Nikon F that has traveled the globe more than once with me and NEVER stopped performing! In fact it is my only camera, out of a few dozen, that has never been repaired or adjusted after running miles and miles of film through.

Here is my most beloved time capsule of mechanical perfection.

July 3, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021

Early Morning Walk in Taipei, Taiwan

Some of the feedback I received from my June 16 posting was about the photo of Taiwanese military police raising the national flag  The readers appreciated the angle and framing of the photo as all pictures on the Internet seem to show the soldiers equidistant from the flag pole.

So, I went back to my unpublished Taiwan photos and found a few that had special meaning to me. That is, they were taken very early in the morning, during my walks before I started work at 7:30 am.

The first two photos have an additional story associated with them. On that trip, sometimes early in the 1990s, I had taken a Pentax 1000 35mm and a Yashica 124 medium format cameras with me. Given the age of my cameras, I always take a backup. 

That morning, I went to the wet market where animals of all feather and skin are sold along with non-meat foodstuff. It was very dark and humid when I got there and the sellers were getting their stands ready. This photo, taken with the Pentax 1000 and ASA 100 film captures that moment.  

On my way out I passed by a small temple in front of which dogs had yet to start their day. The motorcycle represents the most popular mode of transport in many Asian cities, and the combination of shade, humidity that could be felt from this photo, and the dog's posture reminds my of many a morning walk I have taken in that lovely city.

Ok, here is the additional story associated with these photos. The next morning, when I was to reload the Pentax with a new roll of film, the winder jammed and I could not release the shutter. I put it back in my suitcase and used the Yashica for the rest of the trip.

Back to Baltimore, I called a few camera repair places. The answer I got was the same "we do not work on antique cameras." Antique! It is from 1979 and has a light meter! Anyhow, I put it on the shelf and forgot about it.

A couple of years ago, I got the nostalgic urge to use it again. This time I check YouTube for repair advice.  And there it was -- the most common weak point to the camera and its predecessor the Honeywell Pentax, which I also have and has never jammed for the past 40 or so years. And the repair was simple once you take the base plate off.

Now my Pentax is as delightful to use as in the 1980s when I acquired it.

The following picture is from the same trip but with the Yashica 124. I took it on an early climb of the small mountain behind the Grand Hotel where I was staying. There was something anthropomorphic in the posture of these mops, and abundantly Asian.

All three of this photos represent daily scenes from Taipei. But perhaps I was able to capture them with a personal touch and angle.

 

June 26, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021

Unpublished Photos Acquire New Meaning With Time __ Taipei, Porto, Barcelona and Ferrara

It is 104 degree Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) outside and the Southwest is praying for rain. It is a good day to put some order in my studio.

One of my favorite activity is to ope a box written "rejects" on it. These are photos I actually printed under the old enlarger but did not like the result. Often because they do not tell a story or the story has been told in other photos I have taken. I like going back to decades-old photos because during that time the world has changed and even a technically imperfect photo now is a testimony or a testimonial of days irreversible.  For a street photographer that is photojournalism at its best.

I chose four photos that now have a new meaning relative to the moment I had taken them. All four are from the 1990s or 2000, but I have not written the exact dates on them.

A. Taipei, Taiwan. I traveled often to Taiwan as an academic and researcher the entire decade of 2000. Before starting my work days, I used to take my camera and walk the streets just after sunrise. This photo is from the main square and the moment is the flag raising daily ceremony.

Since these days much has changed in the geo-politics of the region. I am not sure if the ceremony continues and which flag is now raised. But this washed-out photo is a frame in a time that has surely changed.

B. Porto, Portugal. An evening shot through the window of a charcuterie. I always used ASA 100 film, so the shadows and some of the focus are unappealing. But it was a time when crowded shops hardly had space for people as all the food was either hanging from the ceiling or piled out in the aisles. And no one wore a mask then....

C. Barcelona, Spain. This is an evening in Las Ramblas. The singers were there for the tourists, of course. As I looked at this underexposed photo, I recalled reading an article about this famous three-lane street in 2020. Residents were almost happy that there were no tourists because of the pandemic and they were quoted saying "Las Ramblas are ours again!". A silver lining in all that befalls upon us.

D. Ferrara, Italy. This photo has a haunting character to it. I took it in the court of the Ferrara Cathedral a magnificently Romanesque style cathedral dating from the 12th century. During all my trips to Ferrara I stayed in a pension across from the cathedral and recall the joy of having espresso on the minuscule balcony every morning.

This photo is of a man dressed as a woman and holding a doll en guise of a baby. "She" had a small pan to collect donations impersonating a homeless refugee. Of course everyone was generously donating till this young boy saw the face covering move and exposing a dark and full beard! I clicked just before "she" covered her face and was asked to leave.

Since that day, thousands and thousands refugees crossed the Mediterannean Sea for Italy, Spain and Greece.

.... I have thousands of reject photos and even more unprinted frames on miles of 35mm and medium format film negatives. I hope the heat and the drought in the Southwest break soon so I do not looking through these next.

June 16, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021

 A. Kazandjian, 2021