Black

When I feel the need for some inspiration to get my photography moving I often look to a small 1967 Aperture Monograph entitled "Paul Caponigro".  Caponigro focused on a great variety of subjects, but the book I own is mostly closeups of natural forms.  I wrote here before about his picture from that book of an apple which seems to transform into a abstraction encompassing the Universe.

What most stood out to me this time in looking through the monograph's images was Caponigro's use of black as a compositional element.  Sometimes the deep black areas in his prints serve primarily as a background to forms and patterns.  Often, however, the black areas are patterns which become a principal compositional element. In either case the visual impact is achieved primarily through careful exposure control and a balance between the the prominent blacks and the nuanced full-spectrum tonalities of other compositional elements.

Caponigro was also a skilled writer and teacher. While browsing the web material on him today I came across an interesting snippet in the Lumierepress Archive of his work with his assessment of Adams' Zone System for calculating exposure. I am inspired to look at more of his many books to gain more insight about his distinctive style and techniques.

Another photo artist I need to spend more time with who made effective use of dark to black tonalities is Brett Weston.  I have several of his father's books, but none from the famous son, though I did get to see a fine exhibit of his work several years ago at the New Mexico Art Museum in Santa Fe. The White Sands series provides a unique view of that place.

Celebrating SF 2926

The SF 2926 locomotive has been on a siding about a mile from our home under restoration for the fourteen years that we have lived in Albuquerque.  I have visited the site many times, but on this Saturday there was a special open house to mark the completion of the project.  All that is left to do now is to get through the bureaucratic processes to get onto the tracks.

There was free food and free drinks for the whole crowd that showed up, along with a brass band and a jazz group for entertainment, and plenty of memorabilia for sale including posters, books and t-shirts.

The SF 2926 sat rusting in a city park for many years, but now it looks much as it did when it was carrying freight all over the country.

Around the House

 I haven't been getting out much for a while, so when I noticed some nice early morning sunlight in the house I decided to finish up a roll of film that has been sitting in my Minolta X-700 for quite a while.  

The film was a roll of Agent Shadow 400 that Jim Grey passed along to me some time ago.  I don't know who actually made the film; it is repackaged by Kosmo Foto.  I processed the roll in HC-110b for seven minutes at 20C. I thought the grain and tonality looked pretty good.  I'm still struggling a bit with VueScan and GIMP on my IMAC; I probably need to spend some time with the manuals.

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The New Mexico Film Photographers got together on the 17th in Tiguex Park.

photo by Shane Ramotowski

Yashica Lynx-14

I decided it was time to get back to my Yashica Lynx-14.  It is one of the most interesting and unique cameras of the late rangefinder era.  There were a lot of fixed lens rangefinder cameras in production in 1965 when the Lynx 14 appeared on the market, so it took some innovation to get noticed.

Yashica's bid for popularity was primarily grounded in the massive 45mm f/1.4 lens with seven elements in five groups.  The camera was very well constructed and it also had a number of other features that made it competitive at that point.  The CdS light meter was coupled to the aperture and shutter.  The viewfinder had auto-parallax correction with the bright line frame moving as you focused.

My example is very well preserved, with no dents or scratches, and all the controls work very smoothly.  The shutter is quiet and seems accurate at all speeds.  The light meter is reactive to light, but does not read correctly.  The meter is adjustable by disassembling the lens, so it could likely be restored to proper operation.

The viewfinder is adequately bright, but the focus patch is small and lacks contrast.  When I got mine, I put a piece of reddish color film leader in front of the viewfinder window, and that did improve contrast somewhat.  When I took the camera on this last outing to Old Town Albuquerque I left the red film in front of the viewfinder, but I decided by the time the roll of film was used up that the slight improvement in contrast was not a good trade for the dimmer image in the viewfinder.

The last picture of the chess match at the Blackbird was a hipshot with estimated focus and framing.  I had to crop a bit to get the composition right, but I was pleased to get most everything in focus while using the maximum f/1.4 aperture.

In reading online sources about the Lynx-14 it seems that even when the camera was new the rangefinder patch may have been insufficiently contrasty to use the camera effectively in the low-light situations for which the camera was designed.  A bigger focus patch or a viewfinder diopter would have been nice additions.

Low light issues aside, the big Yashinon-DX lens is very sharp and contrasty and it can produce very pleasing images.  The f/1.4 aperture and the auto-parallax correction offer the possibility of exploring the potential of images with very limited depth of focus.