My very first photograhs

These three pictures were taken from my very first film taken with a plastic 120 film camera when I was about five years old. They are scans of contact prints.

Distribution of views of Blog

This map is from the sitemeter of my blog and indicates the distribution of my visitors.

35/1.2 Aspherical Nokton

Although this lens is not particularly old, it is destined to be a classic. This lens is described here and has been thoroughly tested by Erwin Puts< from the pratical perspective his review can be summed up in two quotes. First, "...the performance at the wider apertures is quite acceptable and quite uniform over most of the image area. When using films like Tri-X, its high acutance and good edge sharpness can compensate the softness of the Nokton edge detail" and secondly, "The Nokton 1.2/35mm Aspherical is a good performer at smaller apertures, but at the wider apertures, it is just acceptable". There is an article about the lens on Luminous Landscape.

I have used this lens on an Epson R-D1 and a Voigtlander R2. I have also placed it on a Leica CL. This latter combination is unweildy. Such a big lens really needs to mounted on a largish body for balance.

I used the lens extensively to produce a series on my fotopage called Edinburgh City of Darkness and Shadows. The lens was mounted my Olive R2 and the film was XP2 Super. The pictures were taken during the festival so there were actually plenty of people about (although I was careful to exclude them from some pictures. I used these to produce a slide show for my friends. I used the program PROSHOW GOLD (I am typing this on a laptop at my parents and do not have the show available but I will put on the web when I get home). Here is an example of the pictures:



Here is an example using it on an R-D1


My view of the lens is that it is good enough in the extreme circumstances that it is likely to be used.

The obvious conclusion is that if you photography is mainly in good light conditions and you wish to travel light then the Nokton is not the lens for you. However, if you work at the limits of handheld available light photography then the lens is a suitable obtion.

My 2007 calendar

Every year my colleagues at work ask meto produce a calendar they can print out at work. A pdf can be found here and it can be previewed on my fotopage here

Viewing my fotopage

In some entries, I suggest that you look at my fotopage: http://jfbell20.fotopages.com . The easiest way to navigate is to use the archive by clicking here

and then scroll down (but there are entries for every day for three years) or use the find function in your browser:



After scrolling down to, for example, Sunrise over Ely Station, from January 2004 as shown here:



You will then be able to view some sunrise photographs taken with a Rollei 35 SE camera. This is one advantage of carrying a film camera (no flat batteries - the curse of digitals) at all times.

Merry XMAS everybody

I hope this gentlemen has brogh all your photographic wants.

Voigtlander Vito IIa

As well as Tudor recreations, they also have World War II reanctments at Kentwell. I went to one such event two years ago. To get into the spirit of the event, I took these pictures with a Voigtlader Vito IIa (the first model of this series was pre-war but this one dates from 1955 - http://www.marriottworld.com/vito_cameras/folding.htm) . Unfortunately the home guard though I was a spy because it is a German camera and I had to say Wolverhampton Wanderers to prove that I was not. I did not use an exposure meter but used the sunny f16 rule. I used efke kb100 film which is a 1950s BW film . It was processed in Neofin Blue. Obviously one pictures was not taken with Vito. There are other pictures of the vent of my fotoblog (http://jfbell20.fotopages.com click on the archive a go down to July 2004). The Vito was bought on Ebay and it came from America. It was owned by a Paul Gaudette who engraved his name on the top. This and some dents put off collectors so it was very cheap.

New links

I have added some links (under Good guys) on the left. They include to UK suppliers of film and chemicals (Silverprint and Retrophotogaphic), a maker of filter (SRB filmservice) and various sources of information about cameras (Cameraquest, Butkus and Marriott - click on articles in the right side bar).

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