I’ll try to keep this simple. Ross No. 4 lens (15″ FL) from 1860′s + Calumet 4×5 Camera + 2 tripods + some “interesting” rigging = how I got the pictures above. I don’t recommend this set-up for ease of use, but it did it’s job. Explanation of what is going on: The dark cloth was rubber banded and pinned for use as bellows material, the bracket on the tripod was made for my diy tilt shift rig that I never got around to using, the black rubber band is actually an old bike inner tube that I use for purposes just like this, the towel is cotton, and the duct taped folded wheel protector cardboard has black felt taped onto it for use as a lens cap/ shutter. The film was well expired Polacolor 64 with around a 3.5 to 4.5 second exposure. By the way, that’s not a light leak; this particular box film had the same line on almost every sheet of film and the other film I used had no similar quirks. Take it or leave it, this was a fun little one night project.

Didn’t come out at all, pulled off the negative with emulsion and placed it back on the image for the 2nd transfer

These two were with very expired (92) Type 59 Polacolor ER 4×5 with a 545i back.

My cold is finally almost completely gone. My headaches are hopefully on their way out as well. The Holidays (though they were great) are over and it’s back to work. 2011 was a good year. Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, 2012 will be as well. Here’s hoping the best to you and yours. -Jon

The images below were my first few attempts at setting up and using the camera. I’ve learned a decent amount already with the whole hour and a half I’ve messed around with it (3 lunch breaks), but I still have a ways to go. My reason for only taking pictures of my 5DII is…well I don’t really have one, it’s just what was out and available. These were done with Polacolor 64 with a 150mm Caltar at 5.6 with only the shutter speed and distance from subject changing.

Attempt #1. Possible light leak and underexposed. Metered with the 5D, exposure a good 3 stops off.

Attempt #2. Tried covering the camera better (though I saw no light leaks when I checked the shutter, bellows, etc.) but the light leak was still there and still underexposed.

Attempt #3. Changed the polaroid 545 back to a 545i back. No light leak (?) and a decent exposure; used a small amount of swing and tilt to bring the whole body into focus. I might have to underexpose another image to re-check for the light leak.

The 180mm Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 2.8 lens isn’t a lens that I use often, but it is a joy to use when I need it. It’s a beast to hand hold and unfortunately my copy doesn’t have a tripod mount, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to use. Now when I say fun, I mean it’s a pain. The lens weighs almost 3 lbs and the focus ring (largest part of the barrel) adjusts the lenses relatively slowly when compared to newer models. If that were all I was interested in though, I would be missing out on what the real qualities of this lens are. At 2.8 the depth of field is super shallow and with the Jena’s 180mm focal length, the field compression and bokeh are outstanding. Like most Zeiss lenses, the contrast and sharpness are well balanced as all good lenses should be. I use the Canon Eg-S Super Precision Matte Focusing Screen to help me tame that shallow depth of field as easily as possible since there’s no focus confirmation (fully manual).

One other quick feature that I think is neat is the aperture stop for stop down metering. Like all manual cameras, you normally focus with the lens set to wide open (say 2.8 in this case) and then stop down the aperture until you have the depth of field you need (lets say f8). You then meter the scene and take the image. Keep the shutter speed set the same and as long as the scene stays relatively the same, focus at 2.8 and stop down to f8 for correct exposures. On a normal lens, you can memorize the click stops or have the camera mounted on a tripod so that you can look at the lens and see what f-stop you’re stopping down to. With the version I have of the 180mm Sonnar, you can actually set a separate stop ring on the front of the lens to the desired closed down aperture setting (f8 as above) and the lens will only stop down to that setting and no further! While this isn’t rocket science or brain surgery or talking to women, it just makes sense to me and I wonder why more lenses didn’t have this feature.

Most of the 180mm Carl Zeiss Jena lenses were designed for use on a medium format camera and then adapted to fit onto 35mm bodies straight from Zeiss (think Contax or Exakta). The mount on my version was made for a Pentacon 6 (P6), but came with an EOS conversion mount which I use on my Canon 5dII even though I wouldn’t mind using it on a Pentacon 6 should the opportunity arise. The filter thread size is 77mm so even though the one I purchased didn’t come with a hood, I bought a generic version off bay for under $10. I got lucky in that my lens came with a 77-82mm filter thread adapter and an 82mm lens cap. To mount the 77mm hood, I removed the filter thread adapter and attached the 77mm hood. It just so happened that the hood didn’t come with or list what size lens cap it needed and it turned out to be 82mm. Now isn’t that convenient.

According to the small amount of information I’ve been able to find about my lens, it was made between 1955-58 in East Germany. Many different websites call this version of the Carl Zeiss Jena 180mm (black) an Olympia Sonnar and while I don’t how true that is, I do know the original 18cm Olympia Sonnars were made for the 1936 Olympic Games (hence Olympia). Those lenses were chrome plated and designed to work with rangefinder cameras via a Flektoskop (similar to what Leica calls their Visoflex systems which I think was introduced around the same time). Whether or not my lens is designed like an original Olympia internally doesn’t really matter to me as it won’t change how it performs now and I’m OK with that.

(As a side note, all of these images were taken hand held and the B&W images were taken from a car while riding passenger on a small road trip)

When leaving the Greenwood Museum in my last post, I came and left using the back stairwell. The only reason I chose to use the stairs in the first place was that the door was open and light was pouring into it from this one window. With the color palette and light seeming to come together I really couldn’t help but take a picture. If I ever end up back there around the same time of day, I’m taking a picture of someone on those stairs if I have to pull them in off the street!

The allotted pre-configured day came quickly and at 2:00 (the workshop started at 3:00) with 15 minutes to spare, I grabbed my camera and went out on the first mini adventure I’ve had in a while now. Turns out you can easily burn through 15 minutes when you’re not 100% sure where you’re going and apparently are also blind. I did eventually find a place to park and made my way to the courtyard beside the “how could I miss this huge” Federal Building. Once there (though I was a few minutes late) I listened to Owen explain some background on the history of photography and wet plate printing as well as the different mediums such as tintype and ambrotype. Right after the intro, it was on to the work of making a photograph.

Owen went through the process of capturing a tintype image using a full-plate tailboard camera (using half plates in this instance) which seems slightly surreal to watch. It almost doesn’t seem possible to make an image when you look at just the base materials even though I mildly understand what happens. (Of course, if that’s mind blowing then converting light to ones and zeros is absolutely impossible.) A few more tintype photographs and one ambrotype made in a 4×5 camera later and it was over. Lots of questions were asked by many different people and Owen even helped 3 different 2 person groups of people make an image themselves from start to finish after the workshop. It was a knowledge gathering experience for most of the attendees and I know I absorbed more information than I initially processed while I was there.

I took a few pictures of my own as a way to remember what happened and what went into the processes that I saw. I find photography can take me back to a place and time much better than my ADD mind has ever been able to accomplish on it’s own. If you haven’t done so before and there are people in your area that do workshops with early photographic processes, you owe it to yourself just to see them in action (especially when it’s free like this one was). I know I’ll have to try my hand at it one day and that’s for sure.

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Reflection of the courtyard in the window of the Countybank Gallery at The Arts Center

Owen explaining the process of and showing how to pour the collodion over the tin.

Owen composing and checking the focus on the first image using the half-plate camera.

Lots of steps are skipped and the image is being captured. I’ll let the rest do their own talking

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As a side note, I also visited the Greenwood Museum as well to see the Click646 Professors Invitational Exhibit and the Scholastic Invitational in the Countybank Gallery at The Arts Center. I must say I really enjoyed viewing the images from our local professors and students in person. It’s not often I get the opportunity/ time to go to any kind of gallery, so it was nice to see these local artist’s work displayed on their actual mediums instead of on my computer screen.
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Links from this article

Owen Riley’s Website
Wiki Collodion Photography
Click646 a photographic collective
Greenwood Museum
Countybank Gallery at The Arts Center

Out of the blue tip for you: If you’ve never used Evernote and you browse the internet daily, you really should check into it.  It’s been out for a few years now and while I jumped on board last year, I haven’t really started taking advantage of it until these past few months.  Evernote is a free “note” making / taking program that you put on all of your personal (not shared) computers and it allows you to sync all of your notes from all of your computers so that you always have them with you.  Now add Mozilla Firefox (my preferred browser) to the mix with Evernote’s Web Clipper add-on installed and you can copy entire webpages with a single click.  If you just want a snippet, simply highlight what you want to save and click the Web Clipper button. A few seconds of magic later and it’s stored in your computer’s copy of Evernote ready to be synced along with a link to the page it was clipped from. I highly recommend this combination.