Ewa and I have been married 30 years now (on Wednesday last week). Feels only natural to have a picture of her as my PAW.

Still beautiful.

When I travel back and forth between Odense and Lindome I end up “missing” a connection in Copenhagen by about 2 minutes … sometimes. Sometimes I would have made it but don’t have a booking on that particular train. I book for one that leaves about an hour later.

I could get into Copenhagen a little later so I wouldn’t have an hour wait, but then I wouldn’t be able to buy a 75cl Carlsberg, bag of peanuts and watch the people walk by.

Páll, from Færøerne, felt like talking. He’s lived in Copenhagen for decades now, a painter (the kind that paints on canvases, not walls). He remarked that he really didn’t connect with Danes. You have to belong to their clique to converse. Swedes and Norwegians, he said, were easier.

That kind of surprised me; but again, … there are all kinds.

We toasted,

I finished my 75cl and he gave me his address.

All with a Leica IIIf (Nathan says they are a babe-magnet … I’m waiting …), 50/3.5 uncoated Elmar, Agfapan 400, 1/30 @ 3.5

Tom Fenwick, a quiet member of the Leica Users’ Group and Rolleiusers, tipped me about an English photographer that I had not heard of. We were talking about older lenses and techniques to keep them in line (using a lens shade, basically).

The English photographer was James Ravilious, who died in 1999. For about two decades Ravilious devoted his time to documenting a disappearing form of rural life, the small farmer, around Devon. He developed a very characteristic style of low contrast, detailed photography, all in black and white. One of his techniques was to use old uncoated Leica lenses, well shaded.

I visit his web site, James Ravilious fairly often and under publications I ran across a DVD that has been made by banyak films, narrated by Alan Bennett.

It is a fascinating film about Ravilious. The people he took pictures of are revisited and they reflect back on his visits, many times taking their departure point from a photograph he had taken of them, their barns or their fields.

I recommend it highly. You can order it from Banyak.

I spend a lot of time on trains and in train stations. This is one shot that even I am very pleased with.

Denmark is a very cycling friendly country. The town of Odense is well set up for cycles, with dedicated paths and lanes everywhere you would want to ride.

I spent the week with a IIIf and 50/3.5 Elmar hanging around my neck. Waiting at a stop light, I had to smile:

I put in a bid on a whim for a 50/3.5 uncoated Elmar. I did it mostly because it thought, “if I get it that cheap, I’ll be happy.” I really didn’t expect to win and didn’t even follow the aution. I bid one pound over someone else, still leaving it very cheap, and no one bid over me.

It is in beautiful shape. Clear glass. If there are cleaning scratches, I’d have to pull out a magnifying glass to find them. I haven’t done that, but they’re probably there. Most lenses from this period have them.

An English photographer, James Ravilious turned the characteristics of this lens in contra-jour (against the light) situations into his trademark. While walking around earlier this week, I thought I’d give it a try to see if I could pull out some of the effects.

I have been productive, but not so much in writing, here on the blog.

For some reason that I really can’t explain, and I really don’t care enough to try and figure out, I have been attracted by older, uncoated lenses, Elmars.

This week’s PAW was with one:

That one was something of a torture test, lamp over a table, low light and a slow lens. It was taken wide-open.There is another one of Ewa that I like a lot, taken outdoors:

In fact, the whole shoebox from this week is with the same uncoated Elmar.

It’s the compactness and simplicity that attracts me, I think. I just enjoy making nice pictures with them.

I have seen how photographers I respect have had good things to say about Lightroom from Adobe and I started doing a little research.

In the course of that, I ran into LightZone from Light Crafts. Their webpage is at http://www.lightcrafts.com.

I use Linux and Light Crafts is giving away the version for Linux for free. So there was nothing to lose.

Turns out that there was a lot to win. The program is inspired by the zone system instead of just curves and levels. It offers a more intuitive way to work for a photographer.

What I appreciate is the possibility to mimic split filter printing, that is, one filter to bring out details in the highlights and another to create some deep shadows.

I tried it on a jpeg (I didn’t have the TIFF scan available when I did this test … on the train) that is from a shot I took this week.

First proof with only Photoshop.

I did fairly well (needs some touching up, but otherwise I was fairly satisfied as a first proof.

Then I processed the image in LightZone. LightZone works with layers without pains (and non-destructive editing). When you adjust contrast, you can put in stoppers so that your adjustments only affect a certain part of the scale. So I could work with the highlights and the shadows separately.

An amateur’s first attempt at LightZone.

I think I am going to be able to learn this … and like it.

I’ll be ordering the Windows version and paying, no doubt about it.

Tom Fenwick, a quiet member of Leica and Rollei mailing lists, sent me a combination lens hood for two older lenses I have, the 5cm and 9cm Elmars from Leica. True to Leitz tradition, it has a silly name: FIKUS. It is like a telescopic tube. In its shortest form, it is a shade for the 50 mm lens and in its longest form, for the 135. Inbetween you can adjust it for a 90mm.I usually have trouble getting contrast out of these old lenses. They are not coated so black and white likes to “wash out” readily. The hood helps

That one was taken at 1/15 of a second, wide-open. There is good separation in the darker tones, so the contrast was not created by just boosting it in Photoshop.The 90 Elmar worked better as well. I really wish I could get a good portrait of Ewa, my wife. One of these days …

I liked that one, but the finder I am using with the lens is not very good (it’s a Helios (Japanese) finder with framelines for 35/85 and 135, but it is closer to 40 and 90. But not quite, and when I use it for a 90, I have trouble getting a good composition in the frame.The picture of Ewa was taken with an old black barrel 9cm Elmar. I took it apart to clean up most of the fungus that had started to etch itself onto an internal lens. I picked it up cheap.All film this week was Fomapan 400 developed in Xtol 1:2. The first roll was developed for 14 minutes and the second roll for 13 minutes. I can’t really compare though because the first roll was metered using a Nikon F3 and the second roll was metered using a Gossen Digiflash.

The results can be seen in the shoebox for the week.

The last two weeks have left me run ragged, but I am finally home again and can post a PAW. It hasn’t been only work. Last week-end some LUGers from the Benelux area and I met up in Brussels.

A LUGer is a member of the LUG (Leica Users Group).

But first I was in Oslo. Visits to Oslo have been less and less frequent, and I feel better and better about it.

So I am not hang my hat there very often and calling it home any more:

But the trip Brussels was nice, very nice. There are some shots from the visit at my shoebox for these weeks.

For a week 6 main I chose:

While I was walking around, I came across a group of young girls at the market place looking for people with blue eyes. Now that all the LUGers who could really speak French were gone, I dared to carry on a conversation in French and explained that I might not fit the criteria; someone might say my eyes are green.

They fetched their leader (teacher). She approved of my eyes and the teacher took a picture of them with me as proof. In this shot, we are in the middle of discussions about what color my eyes are:

All of those were taken with a IIIf. The IIIf is an older Leica camera. I like it because it is small and is easy to have along.

The lens in the first one was a Jupiter-12, a Zeiss Biogon copy from the former Soviet Union (FSU), and the other two were taken with a Voigtländer Color-Skopar 21mm.