Sunday, June 14, 2015

Summer Evening Games - Zeiss SW, Biogon 25mm f2.8

In order to test out a new film, Agfa APX400, that my friend Dennis Gallus gave me, I wandered into this place in Leesburg, Virginia one night last week. The place is called Shoes.
 
 
Literally located in an old shoe repair store, Shoes is now a coffee shop and restaurant. In the summer months, they open their outdoor dining area, complete with a bocce ball court. These nice people put up with me photographing their game as the sun went down.
 
 
 
This last one shows the emotion of that winning moment. That's about as exciting as bocce ball gets!
 
Shooting this roll at the box-indicated speed of iso 400, I found this roll to be mostly underexposed. I had to bring all of these shots up quite a bit, which emphasizes the grain. Now I'm not against grain, mind you. In fact, I kind of like the look.
 
I've now shot a test roll, exposing the film at 100, 200, and 400. We'll see if I can find the right exposure and developing times for this particular film. After all, I have 100' of it to shoot!
 
The beautiful Zeiss Biogon 25mm lens is a perfect mate for the slightly oddball Zeiss SW camera, a 35mm body with built-in meter, but no rangefinder. The SW is designed for use with wide lenses, where focusing is not critical because of huge depth of field. (Click Here) for an article about the SW on Shutterbug's website.
 
You can either just guess the distance to your subject and set your lens focus based on the markings on the lens body, or you can use an auxiliary rangefinder. I guessed. I think the 25mm is about the longest lens I could reliably use in this way, but could do okay with a 35mm in a pinch. It gets much easier when I mount up the Voigtlander 12mm f5.6. That lens has pretty much unlimited depth of field. You can set the focus once and shoot all day.
 
DMC-365.blogspot.com
 
 

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