Goodbye Bessa R2

After having owned my Voigtlander Bessa R2 for almost 4 years, and having put less than 10 rolls of film through it, I decided to say goodbye.  Though not really collectable, it had actually appreciated in value since I purchased it, as there are not very many for sale at the moment.  

The Bessa R2 is a nice camera, but not really special.  It is a low cost version of an M6, with similar operational abilities.  From what I have heard, it is basically a Nikon FM-10 with a range finder, as both are made by Cosina.  Compared to an M3, the rangefinder isn't as good (nothing is, really), it doesn't automatically select the correct framelines and it isn't as quiet as a cloth shutter camera.  However it is much easier to load and the shutter will never need servicing.  The metering though can be easily confused compared to most SLRs.

One of the more annoying things that happened though was when I was getting it ready for sale, I found that it had an almost unused 36 shot film in it, so I had to take some snapshots to finish it up.  Hopefully I have some nice black and white shots of our little girl.

St Lawrence Antiques Markets - Sony NEX 5n w/ Sigma 19mm f2.8

Mt Hope Cemetary

The Mt Hope Catholic Cemetery is quite close to our house, so last summer I took my bike and went for a ride with a couple cameras in hand.  Two things struck me.  The first was the many sculptures on the graves, and second, how all the nuns were all buried in a couple sections of the cemetery.  Here’s some photos in Black and White from the trip.

I can’t exactly remember which camera I used for these shots, but I remember taking two.  I am pretty sure it was the Voigtlander Bessa R2 with the Leica 50mm Summitar.....or was it the Nikon FE2 and the Nikkor 45mm f2.8 pancake lens.   I had both, but the photos have been well and truly mixed up now.  Film needs EXIF data!

Damn cold at Deerhurst

In January, some friends and us decided a winter break would be nice.  After some initial head scratching as to where to go, our minds were made up when Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville offered a special.

When we got there, it was bloody cold; most of the time around -30 degC ambient.  The coldest weather I’d ever been in.  It was, however very beautiful – frozen lakes, icicles in trees, and lots and lots of snow. 

I took two cameras up, the D700 with a standard zoom and a 50mm lens; and a Voigtlander Bessa R2 rangefinder with a Leica 50mm Summarit f1.5 lens manufactured around 1950.  

We all decided to go snow shoeing, and I reasoned that the Bessa would be the go as it is a nice camera to throw around your neck, not getting to heavy on a trek.  I threw in some E6 slide film and off we went.  It started out well enough, but it took only about 20 minutes for the battery to die from the cold, which wiped out the meter, so the rest of the exposures were a bit of a guess.  I based all my assumptions from those first 20 minutes, then adjusted up or down if I could see the scene was brighter or darker.

When I eventually got the film back I found that while my up or down exposure guesses were largely correct, I made the classic mistake of under exposing almost every thing – the bright snow had given a reading of about two stops too bright.  Anyway, I scanned it, and found it was somewhat correctable on Photoshop.  

What interested me though was how sharp the images were, both scanned and looking at it off the film through a loupe.  Admittedly I shot most at f4-f8, the area of best performance for this type of lens, but for a 60 year old lens it was amazing, and certainly a lot sharper than a few new lenses I've used. 

Good people, good fun, good photography = good times!