Leica CL in the park at winter time

         

A while back I wrote about my adventures here in Sunnybrook Park with a Leica CL, a Sony NEX 5n and a pair of snow shoes.  I fitted the cameras with the Voigtlander 21mm f4 and the Sigma 19mm f2.8, loaded some Fuji Neopan into the CL and ventured off.  

The CL is a cool camera.  It's really small, about the same size as a Sony NEX 6/7, and with the compact Voigtlander 21mm lens, it is almost pocketable.  The rangefinder is not even in the ballpark of the excellent Leica M3, but is comparable to cameras like the Fuji GS645S and the Canonet QL17.  With a slow wide angle lens like the Voigtlander, as long as you have focusing approximately right, there won't be an issue as the depth of field is so large.

Like I have written before, the Voigtlander is an excellent lens, and on film offers lovely tonality, commensurate with the Neopan film.  Compared to the shots with the Sony NEX, the contrast is much lower, with many more gradients of gray showing.  I will admit that I had set the NEX contrast artificially high, but I was still surprised to see the difference.

Fuji GA645i

A couple weeks ago I picked up a used Fuji GA645i to use up a bunch of 120 film I have in the fridge.  This is a medium format auto focus camera, that defies description.  It isn't a compact because, well it isn't that compact (though compared to a Hasselblad or a Mamiya RB67 it is), it isn't a rangefinder because there is no rangefinder mechanism and it very definitely isn't an SLR.  It's much like a large Nikon 35Ti or Contax T3.

It does have a viewfinder with a frame outline that automatically adjusts for parallex as you  autofocus and also full automatic and manual exposure controls.

Although well used, this camera came with the original box, hood, case, instruction manual and period brochure for it as well.

A while back I had a Fuji GS645S, which is full manual, but I ended up not using it a lot and sold it.  With the GA645, I hope to take some shots, but having many automatic functions, it won't complicate my life too much like a Hasselblad or Mamiya might.

The lenses on these cameras are known to be excellent, though I wonder if I will get used to having no AF confirmation what so ever.  We'll see, but I think I will like it.

Fuji X100, Ottawa

Medium Format Street Shooter – The Fuji Rangefinder

The camera I most regret selling is a Fuji 645GS.  It’s a very interesting a camera – a medium format rangefinder, with a distinctive protection bar that went around the front of the lens to protect it from knocks.  It was light, slightly more than a Leica M3, and only marginally taller; yet produced astonishing images due to the excellent Fujinon wide angle 60mm f4 lens.  With the negative area almost 4 times the size of a 35mm camera, amazing details are guaranteed.  It was also very quiet due to the in lens leaf shutter, perfect for street candids.  Also unusual is that it takes portrait shots when the camera is the right way up, and landscape when tilted over – the opposite to most cameras.

It is probably the best medium format street shooter you can find, and if you’ve ever tried to shoot street scenes with a Hasselblad or a Mamiya RB or RZ, you’ll know what a pain a big camera can be.

The thing I wasn’t fond of though was the faint rangefinder patch which made accurate focussing a bit of a guess.  A lot of the time I’d leave it on f8, set the hyperfocal distance from 3m to infinity and then shoot away.  This worked fine on a sunny day, but as soon as it got dark, or I wanted to use f4 and blur out the background, it became a bit harder.

On balance though, it was a gem and I wished it still sat in my cupboard.

These two shots were taken in Muskoka at a retreat camp we went to.  It’s a beautiful part of the world there and the scenery was terrific, though not everyone enjoyed the old bulldozer as much as me!