76 Year Old Lens

[Lesley Jones]

I scanned another one from the old Leica tonight. Taken in Rye about six years ago, so that makes the 5cm Summar lens 70 years old at the time. Cleaned up due to bad processing and slight improvements made to contrast with a little final sharpening. This is the full image...

... and this is a tiny section with one of my favourite whiskies

 

[Beth Carter]

wonderful tones. i like the old, textured look.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Thanks Beth! I know what you mean by the textured look, but as it only happens with some film I can only think it is bad processing. I had literally hundreds of specks to remove as well as a few drying marks and scratches. Other film has grain, but although it is well defined, it has a kind of softness about it. I'm sure this look doesn't come from the old lens

 

[Brian Moore]

Very nice, Lesley. Good glass is good glass. Do you recall what film it was?

 

[Lesley Jones]

It would have been Ilford Brian and from the look of the crop, my guess is FP4. I'm going batty at the moment with my scanning because I keep forgetting to change the film type. Forcing dates and times into Bridge to get the ordering correct is also a challenge...

 

[Pete Askew]

Lovely stuff Lesley (the image, not the smokey whiskey!). I really like the grainy detail shot.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Sorry @Pete Askew - I think I confused everyone. The detail shot is only a crop of the original. I wanted to show how much you can read on the bottles. We were standing on the other side of a narrow street

 

[Pete Askew]

No, I realised it was crop Lesley. I do like the graininess that has resulted though.

 

[Pete Askew]

I guess that should be enlargement rather than crop really!

 

[Lesley Jones]

Whatever you say Pete - I'm rubbish with words