The Duaflex in Old Town

New Mexico is having an exceptionally warm and sunny winter.  Good conditions for one of my sunny day cameras, the Kodak Duaflex.  I loaded it with Kentmere 100 and took a walk around Old Town.

I processed the film in Rodinal.  That works well with most 100-speed films, but not so much this time.  I had to adjust tonalities significantly in Photoshop.  I am going to try again,  maybe with 400-speed film, along with a yellow filter for the bright sun scenes and processing in HC110.

Sally Mann

I am a long-time fan of Sally Mann, so I was pleased to happen on a link at Photrio to a video of an appearance she made at the Rhode Island School of Design.  She spoke briefly about her latest book, Art Work: On the Creative Life, and she then answered questions from a panel of three RISD teachers.  Mann talked about her long career and her photographic style and techniques, mostly with large format gear.

Mann did a nice job of explaining her creative process.  She admitted that she really often only has a vague idea initially about where her efforts will take her, relying on the pictures she makes to reveal a path toward a theme. She complimented her long-time editor in assembling her projects into book form.

I was particularly interested in seeing that her photography, even though having a spontaneous look, really depends on a lot of staging and direction.  I have three of her books, so I'm a little surprised that I was not more consciously aware of that aspect of her work earlier.  Given the fact that Mann has mostly used cumbersome large format cameras, it is really inevitable that some directorial work is required to produce her images.

I have expressed some distaste for staged work before, most recently in regard to a big show at the Albuquerque Museum of the work of Cara Romero.  I think the difference is that Mann's staging contributes to bringing out the fundamental character and experiences of her subjects, while Romero's elaborately staged and oversized images seem to me to be contrived and lacking in a clear meaning.

Mann's earlier work focused on her family, but she says she now makes no pictures of people and is only doing landscapes. She expressed some positive feelings about the possibilities of digital and said she currently often uses a small Leica digital camera.  At the same time, she also is clearly excited about the opportunity to explore experimental darkroom  techniques such as solarization.

Testing The Limits

While the Anscoflex II offers some control beyond that available from other simple cameras, the possibilities are still considerably less that those offered by more sophisticated designs.  The control features of the camera must also be used with some care and discretion.

What I found while working through the twelve available frames on some Kentmere 400 was that the close-up lens and the yellow filter cannot be simultaneously employed.  So a close-up with the filter compensating for bright sun with fast film is not an option.

I also found with the ruby window removed for improved frame numeral visibility that I needed to carefully avoid exposing the film's paper backing to any hint of direct sunlight.  The first half of this roll of film looked good in terms of exposure, but there were some washed out frames further down the roll.

So a deliberate and thoughtful approach to using the Anscoflex II along with stationary subjects enhance the likelihood of success.  I found that trying to grab shots of our active dog out in the yard was a bit beyond the boundary of success.

Winter Light

The little Nikon EM and its Series E lens gets little love from many Nikon enthusiasts, but it has always performed well for me.

I'm currently using a composite of the above images as the desktop background on my old iMac.

Yashica YE

I learned the rudiments of street photography early in the 1960s with a borrowed Yashica YE.  I thought it might be fun to get one to relive those days. There are quite a few available in Japan, however the uncertainties of what import fees might be tacked on to the price made the possibility seem slim of finding one that I could afford.  Then, I saw one listed in the U.S. at a bargain price, so of course I had to buy it.

The Yashica YE worked well, though the nice qualities of the images are due mostly to the Leica Elmar lens that I had mounted for this first test roll.  It would be nice to find one of the Yashicor lenses that normally came on the YE, but they seem to be priced at about three times what I paid for the camera.

The Japanese camera industry made amazing progress in the 1950s as the country recovered from the devastating effects of WWII.  Nikon lenses became an instant hit after David Douglas Duncan used them in Korea, and the Leica and Contax copies made by several companies demonstrated top-notch craftsmanship.

In the picture to the right the Yashica YE is in the middle, the German Leica IIIa is at the bottom, and the top camera is a Leotax Elite.  The top two are very similar in construction and appearance and demonstrate the Japanese camera companies' effort to one-up the German orginal with the addition of  thumb levers for film advance. While those levers enhanced functionality they also increased the camera sizes, and they introduced some construction complexity which make DIY repairs more challenging.

The Yashica YE actually started out being produced by Nicca as the Nicca 33, but that company was bought by Yashica which continued making the camera with very little changes.  In spite of the good quality of these Leica rangefinder copies, however, they all soon disappeared from view, eclipsed by the appearance of the single lens reflex designs produced in both East and West.

Becoming A Photographer

Annie Leibovitz - selfie - 1970

Annie Leibovitz At Work is a good sized book, but it is easy reading and I made it to the end in a day. It is a book for people interested in photography, both those who appreciate the art and those who seek to practice it.

The author is generous in sharing the details of her long career including the development of her style and the equipment she used along the way.  I was struck in reading the first pages to find that she and I shared some time and  places as we both began our serious involvement with photography.  

In 1970 Leibovitz returned to her photography training at the San Francisco Art Institute and took her Minolta SR-T 101 onto the streets of the city where she soon found herself making pictures of the demonstrations against the Vietnam War.

I was doing the same with my Pentax Spotmatic.  Our paths quickly diverged from that point. One of her shots of the demonstrators found its way to the cover of Rolling Stone. The next year she again made the Rolling Stone cover with a portrait of John Lennon. Not hard to discern the reasons for the divergence from my trajectory.  She was young, pretty, sociable, smart and ambitious, and she very quickly developed impressive skills with her camera.

Leibovitz's skills quickly got her a regular position as a staff photographer for Rolling Stone and drew the interest of big magazine editors who wanted attention-grabbing pictures of media celebrities. That set the course for most of her career.

She continued using 35mm for quite a while, having moved up to a Nikon F.  Film remained the only option for a long time and the demands of her commercial work moved Leibowitz to take up a Hasselblad and later a Mamiya RZ67 along with developing her skills with lighting, mostly using strobes. The range of portrait subjects is staggering, from William S. Burroughs to the Queen of England, and every famous media personality in between.

Leibovitz provides a lot of excellent insights about how digital technology became the standard for any kind of commercial photographic work.  While the cameras and associated gear were initially quite awkward to work with, it was still a lot faster than anything that could be done with film with the exception of Polaroids that were generally unacceptable for publication.  She reports being especially impressed with the capability of digital in getting good results from color in low light situations.

I an pleased I got past my initial aversion to celebrity photography to look closely at Leibovitz's impressive career, which actually spanned a much broader swath of the photographic arts.  I'm looking forward now to making my way through her long list of published work.

The Ruby Window Solution

At first glance the Anscoflex II may look like a caricature of a camera.  However, it does have a number of unique and useful features.  Most significant of those features is the extraordinarily brilliant viewscreen -- brighter than any other regardless of origin or price.  The Anscoflex II has a two-element lens rather than the single-element meniscus found in many simple cameras.  There is also a supplemental close-up lens which can be levered in position for shots in the 3.5 to 7 foot range.  Another lever moves a yellow filter in front of the taking lens, which adds some control over exposure as well as darkening over-bright skies.

All of the simple cameras with ruby windows allowing proper frame spacing for paper-backed medium format film including the Anscoflex II present a problem for users.  Those ruby windows worked fine when a lot of those simple camera were new.  However, in the intervening years film makers have quit making the numerals on the backing paper with enough contrast to show up well through the ruby windows.  As a result it can be very difficult to see the framing numerals well enough to properly center the frame, and overlapping frames are a constant danger.

There is a simple solution to the dark window problem.  You can just remove the ruby window, leaving a hole in the camera back through which the framing numerals are easily seen.  The ruby coloring was really only an advantage long ago when films were less sensitive to red light.  Letting through the full spectrum onto the backing paper these days is not a problem as long as the length of exposure is kept short.  That can be ensured with a small strip of black tape covering the window except when the film is being advanced. 

 I was pleased to get 12 perfectly spaced frames on this roll of Kentmere 400.  With my simple cameras I most often use 100-speed film for proper sunny day exposure.  In this instance with the faster film I flipped the lever to place the yellow filter over the lens when the subject was mostly in full sun, and flipped back to the uncovered lens for shaded subjects.

Butkus has the Manual.