Leica R8, 60 mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit, Ilford Delta 400 Professional, Kodak D76.
vancouver
Portraits of Jericho Beach under Cloudy Skies /
Coal Harbour, Vancouver /
Leica R8, 28 mm f/2.8 Elmarit, Fomapan 100, Kodak D76.
Vancouver Cityscapes and a New Lens /
Over the Easter long weekend, I made several attempts to photograph the setting moon at dawn from the clifftop of our vacation property on De Courcy Island. I haven’t developed that roll because I have run out of C41 colour negative developer, so I don’t yet know how the images turned out. However, I suspect that I will be disappointed—and not only because the sole film I had at the time was the lacklustre Fuji 200. As I made the photographs, I found myself lamenting the lack of a longer lens to bring the moon “closer” and to flatten the image. As all film photographers know, eBay is both a blessing and a curse, and no sooner had I returned to Vancouver than I found myself browsing the site for a 135 mm lens as a step up from the 90 mm focal length that I used on the clifftop. My “new” 135 mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R arrived from Japan earlier this week. The cityscapes in this post are among the first of the photographs that I have made with it.
I am pleased with the sharpness, contrast, and linearity of this lens. I am looking forward to using it to make more photographs of the city, particularly at night.
The photographs of False Creek were made from the roof of the parking lot on Lameys Mill Road, while the long views of downtown Vancouver from the east were shot from the bridge over the skytrain tracks on Clark Drive at 6th Avenue, near the cruciform East Van sign.
All of the photographs in this post were exposed on Fomapan 100 black-and-white film (shot at ISO 80) using a Leica R8 mounted with the 135 mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R lens focused to infinity. In all cases the camera was mounted on a tripod. Exposures were made at f/11 and ca. 1/45 s.
Another Main Street Portrait, 2011 /
Looking Glass /
As I continue the process of re-examining the 15-year archive of my negatives, I am not surprised to discover recurring themes among the photographs. Occasionally, one of these emergent themes demands closer consideration. To that end, I am now curating a collection of photographs called Looking Glass. In these images, I peer from the street through ground level windows into buildings (and occasionally vehicles) to glimpse the people inside. Often, my reflection is captured in the glass, and sometimes the inhabitants look back, quizzically and disapprovingly. Over the coming weeks and months, I will enlarge this collection as I unearth old photographs from the archives and take new ones on the street.
The photograph above was shot in Gastown, Vancouver, during the summer of 2018 using a broken Voïgtlander VF 135 point-and-shoot rangefinder loaded with Kodak Portra 400 film. I owned this camera briefly: neither the rangefinder nor the point-and-shoot appeals to my way of shooting, so there was a two-fold reason for letting go of it. While I don’t regret selling the VF 135, I regret the loss of its Zeiss 40 mm f/2.3 Sonnar lens, which is sharp and contrasty—as this photograph beautifully attests. It is a surprisingly good lens for such an inexpensive camera.