two female Canadian war photographers

Posted on August 25, 2018 by Robert

Whitehead and Lockwood at Buckingham Palace in 1945

Toronto. George Dunbar sent me a note the other day celebrating two Canadians who photographed part of the second world war in Europe. Jenny Whitehead was a  leading WREN in the Canadian Navy while Irene Lockwood was a corporal in the RCAF. The image at top left is courtesy of the Science Museum Group in the UK who hold the rights for commercial use.

The photograph was taken by Esten of the Daily Herald. Lockwood went on to marry Keith Ogilvie. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, she died in Ottawa, Ontario in 2014.

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Auto-Quinon f/1.9 55mm

Posted on August 24, 2018 by Robert

f/1.9, 55mm Auto-Quinon
in an Exakta mount

Toronto.  I chose this lens over a Zeiss Biotar for the standard lens of my late 1950s Exakta-VX IIa. The lens was a fast f/1.9, 55mm lens with full stop click-stops and an automatic stop down to the chosen f/stop and back to f/1.9 after each exposure, ready to view the scene again.

The Zeiss Biotar was a 1928 f/2, 58mm design soon to be replaced by the Zeiss Pancolar lens that was said to be optically better, flatter physically, and had an auto stop down and restoration to f/2 tower much like the one Steinheil used.

I didn’t realize at the time that even “standard” lenses on an SLR may be a slightly longer focal length or slightly retrofocus in design to clear the camera’s mirror. The site shown here covers film plane to lens mount distances for many camera mounts.

The 58mm Biotar and the 55mm Auto-Qninon may be able to focus to infinity using the original none-SLR designs.  The lens mount to film plane distance has to be adjusted for the added distance from the mount to the diaphragm  which is usually placed at the nodal point of the lens. The rear most element may be inside to camera body (like the Auto-Quinon) but must make room to clear the mirror in the SLR at the infinity setting.

The Auto-Quinon started out as a double Gauss design like the Biotar but had its three front elements increased in size. Looking at the lens, the rear element is about right (around an inch diameter) while the front element is visibly a larger diameter. The lens diagram shows a six element design about a central (unmarked) diaphragm. This is the design, chart, and advertising for the year earlier (1957) version of my lens. The price as shown in US dollars as $169 in 1957 and $140 a year later.

Like all lenses of the 1950s, the lens elements were coated with a thin purplish layer that passes more light. A marketing initiative of the time was to boast a lens was great for colour and had special markings to simplify flash calculations. Have a look here to read about the optical house of Steinheil in a post I made in May of last year.

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fans in a flashbulb

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Robert

Gerda Taro courtesy
Fans in a Flashbulb

Toronto. Fans of the late war photographer Robert Capa remember this great man, but what about his companion, a woman war photographer called Gerda Taro?

Like Capa, Gerda Taro changed her name back in 1936. Sadly Taro died the following year, 1937. The web site “Fans in a Flashbulb” offered this Christopher George article on August 1, 2018 (98  years after her birth) as her bio, “Gerta Pohorylle, aka Gerda Taro, was born in Stuttgart, Germany, on August 1, 1910. After attending the Königin-Charlotte Realschule in Stuttgart, the Internat Villa Florissant in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Höhere Handelsschule (Business College) in Stuttgart, and the Gaudig Schul in Leipzig, she had to flee to Paris in 1933, where she was first employed as a secretary to the psychoanalyst René Spitz.

“She soon met André Friedmann and started photographing; in the spring of 1936, they reinvented themselves as Robert Capa and Gerda Taro. From August 1936 on, Taro became a pioneering photojournalist whose brief career consisted almost exclusively of dramatic photographs from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. Her photographs were widely reproduced in the French and international press.

“Taro worked alongside Capa, and the two collaborated closely. While covering the crucial Battle of Brunete on July 25, 1937, Taro was struck by a tank and died the next day. She was the first female photographer to be killed while reporting on war.”

My thanks to member George Dunbar for suggesting this wonderful website! The site uses WordPress to create the various posts, many on famous photographers – take a browse.

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Leica M10-P

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Robert

Leica M10-P from
Leica Camera USA

Toronto. Nearly 50 years ago I bought my first Leica. It was an M4 with a 50mm Summicron (f/2) lens. After the 40th anniversary of the original M-series (M3 prototype in 1952, marketed in 1954) in late 1994, I did a presentation on the famous marque and in the ensuing Q&A, I casually said the Leica name would probably disappear since at the time the company was in a huge upheaval.

Yet here we are in 2018 and Leica Camera USA has just announced the release  of the Leica M10-P with a special 24 MPX sensor – even quieter than any previous model – film or digital. The body-only is a jaw dropping $8,000US.

While most M-series bayonet mount lens can be used, most current lenses (using familiar names like Summicron) are prefaced with the term Apo – for apochromatic. Far better than lenses of a half century ago, they are astoundingly more expensive (although if you factor in inflation and exchange, the price today for camera and lens is actually comparable to 50 years ago; it’s just that good alternatives are far cheaper today).

The M10-P press release states, “”The Leica M10-P has emerged as the embodiment of all of the stealth technology Leica has gathered over many years of producing inconspicuous, unobtrusive cameras.

“It’s quiet, that’s for sure, and it’s easier to use than traditional rangefinder Leicas because of the focus assist functions. Photojournalists, street photographers and others who are currently using Leica M cameras—digital or film—will find the new M10-P the perfect partner for their M-series lenses.”

Check out the website for the American Leica organization at Leica Camera USA. My thanks to editor Bob Lansdale (another Leica user) who emailed me the reminder yesterday.

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B&L BALTAR f/2.3 50mm

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Robert

Toronto. The Leica was marketed in 1925, catching Zeiss off guard. It responded in 1932 with the Zeiss-Ikon Contax. It had to better the Leica in every way possible: faster lenses, vertical shutter (faster curtains), metal shutter, longer rangefinder base, wider range of lenses (Leica had interchangeable lenses and a rangefinder by then), and so on. Unfortunately it was more expensive to make and the metal shutter while seemingly better, was its achilles heel over time. The brass in the shutter strips crystallized while the enclosed silk ribbon wore out causing the shutter to drag, Details of Zeiss are shown in the Zeiss and Photography book by Larry Gubas, and in the publications of Zeiss Historica Society.

In the 1920s, the head of Zeiss optics, Willy Merté, designed the world famous f/2, 50mm  Biotar. I saw one in the late 1950s on an Exakta. For that camera, it was an f/2, 58mm design that unlike the kine and rangefinder versions may have needed the longer focal length or even a slightly modified retrofocus design to accommodate the SLR’s mirror. The non mirror cameras focussed infinity closer (distance from the diaphragm  to film-plane) and had no need to clear the mirror so the original double Gauss design worked without difficulty.

On September 7th, 1928, the original design (100mm focal length in two versions, a 7 element and a 6 element) was submitted to the USPO and patent 1786916 was approved and issued on December 30, 1930. Under the Zeiss licensing process, the Bausch and Lomb BALTAR was manufactured in Rochester using that patent. The lenses came in various focal lengths for 35mm cine cameras used by Hollywood for major motion pictures. My version of the BALTAR has coated lens elements indicating it was made post -war (coatings were not readily available until after 1945). LED reflections suggest that it is the seven element version.

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rapid rectilinear lens redux

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Robert

BECK SYMMETRICAL LENS

Toronto. Turns out the choice of glass plus the lens design makes a rapid rectilinear! Both the two wide angles lenses mentioned the other day predate the release of the Rapid Rectilinear (or Aplanat in Germany). R & J Beck (earlier Smith, Beck and Beck  and later just plain Beck) was a well known British optical house which designed, manufactured and sold microscopes as well as camera lenses. Check Wikipedia entry here. Check camera-wiki site here.

The lens I have is a brass BECK SYMMETRICAL lens, made around 1900, and a popular rapid rectilinear design often found on British cameras of the period (usually Ensign or Thornton-Pickard models). The date of manufacture is a bit vague at best. My lens is about a 10 inch focal length with an aperture from f/8 to f/45.

 

 

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need more cameras in your collection?

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Robert

Ohio Camera Swap

Toronto.  Like they say, “you can never have too many …”. If you ignore the “orange tornado” in DC, the folks in Ohio have two adjacent shows for your consideration.

The OCCS (Ohio Camera Collectors Society) show, and Igor’s “Cleveland Camera Collectors Show” are being held on Saturday September 8th and Sunday September 9th in Ohio.

Click here for all the details. For some reason both images are lost in the browser view. One is the OCCS logo (upper left here) and if you click on the logo you will see Igor’s photo – just saying. The shows are in two separate cities. Drop in on the Cincinnati show Saturday and then the Cleveland show on the way home Sunday.

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rapid rectilinear lens design

Posted on August 18, 2018 by Robert

Rapid Rectilinear lens design

Toronto.After the announcement of photography early in 1839, there was a flurry of competing lens designs across Europe, each design trying to better the resolution and error correction qualities of the other.

In 1866, two Germans, one an immigrant to England (Dallmeyer) and the other in Germany (Steinheil) independently came up with the idea of using two couplets centred about a diaphragm. Dallmeyer called his idea a Rapid Rectilinear lens while Steinheil called his slightly earlier design (literally days earlier) an Aplanat. Dallmeyer patented in Britain an earlier lens as a Wide-Angle Rectilinear design. It was patented a few years later in America (USPO).  It quickly became apparent to Dallmeyer that a slight change would improve his lens and so the Rapid Rectilinear design was born. Continue reading →

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Empire State View Camera c1910

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Robert

Empire State Camera
courtesy of piercevaubel web site

Toronto. Around 1960, I would drive down to Toronto on a Saturday and browse down Yonge Street above and below Wellesley. One one such trip, I discovered and bought an old view camera called an Empire State. It was in an old suitcase but came without a lens or shutter.

Years later in Dorval, a manager in accounting supplies saw me with some old camera brochures and offered to give me two old lenses he had. The next day he dropped by with the pair – including an old lens fitted in a UNICUM shutter and just the right age and focal length for my full plate Empire State camera.

I made a lens board and viola! I had a workable camera. At our June 1977 picnic at Pioneer Village in Toronto I used the combination to take this picture – it is from Photographic Canadiana 3-3, page 15. The journal printing was rather crude in those days with poor resolution and half tones. I used a bleach on the submitted photo, which was much better quality, to whiten the post tops. I had fitted one of the the camera film holders with an adapter to take 4×5 cut film to take photographs. Continue reading →

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sprocket rocket

Posted on August 16, 2018 by Robert

Sprocket Rocket

Toronto. A century ago the panorama print was popular. Cameras like the Cirkut models could turn about the lens nodal point while affixed to a tripod by using gears and a spring wound motor.

This format is common place today. Most digital cameras and smart phones can create an auto-stitched panorama – you slowly rotate the device manually from side to side or top to bottom.

Earlier versions of programs like Photoshop could stitch together film camera sequential shots with some over lapping details. A very few cameras were made with the stretched aspect ratio common to all modest panoramas.

The Sprocket Rocket is the latest model offered by the Lomography organization. It is based on a simple box camera design using 35mm film. A number of frames (2 to 3) are used to create the stretched aspect ratio seen below. The vignetting and sprocket holes just add interest to the print.

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