Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Teaching the Old Dog a New Trick



July 1, 2009.

Day one of my Blogging experience. Wherein I shall share miscellaneous trivia and ramblings from my world.

You may be wondering about the title, "A Year With Bigfoot and Bubba" ©. Simple. Bigfoot is the firat Leica M5 body that I purchased in 2006. I liked Bubba so much that when Sonny Carter offered his M5 for sale, I bought it. Coming from the South, and Bigfoot's younger sibling, Bubba seemed appropriate.

That explains Bigfoot and Bubba. The Year part is a personal photographic project based on two things:

1. "You will want 35, 50 & 90." Advice offered by the one and only Leica rep. I have met and spoken to on the occasion of my first rangefinder camera purchase in Lafayette, LA circa 1967.
2. Mike Johnson's advice to spend a year with one Leica and one lens and black and white film.

Having already spent more than a year with a single camera and lens, I combined #1 & #2 and came up with "A Year With Bigfoot & Bubba" ©. When I began to purchase rangefinder cameras ans lenses in 2006, I didn't give much thought to the long forgotten advice of using 35mm, 50mm and 90mm lenses with a rangefinder body. As a result, I bought several lenses. Too many in fact. When Mike Johnson's article came to my attention, I remembered the kindly old Leica man's words. I decided it was time to put the lens trio to the test. I even had the luxury of multiple candidates. I settled on the following:

35mm/2.0 Konica UC-Hexanon
50mm/2.0 Leitz Dual Range Summicron
90mm/2.8 Leitz Elmarit

Over the last few years I have accumulated a motley assortment of expired and fresh B&W film. I have a couple hundred feet of bulk Ilford PanF+ and a few rolls of ancient Delta 100. Complimenting the Ilford films are 10 fresh rolls each of Arista Premium 100 & 400. Xtol and Rodinal are my developers of choice today.

Ironically, I don't have Bigfoot, Bubba or the lenses with me today. A scheduling snafu left the cameras at home and me in Houston. No worries. I shall have everything in place on Friday the 3rd.

Hopefully the coming year will open my eyes. Foster some changes perhaps. Find any skills I may posses.




2 comments:

  1. Wow, you have a blog! Next thing you know you'll be twittering....

    ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Go figure. It's like I joined the 21st Century.

    ReplyDelete