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I recently bought an old lens of the Petzval design from Andrew Plume who has been very helpful. It's quite a different experience to the sharp modern lenses with their flat planes of focus. It's also far more absorbing than using a cheap plastic lens or bit of bottle glass because the focussed areas are sharp - in fact remarkably sharper than I anticipated. I tried b&w film which gives an interesting olde worlde feel and noted the very low contrast. So I thought, I'd give E6 a go and also C-neg film. The contrast in colours adds a lot in my view. The glass in the lens has a definite colour of its own which I have cancelled out in both the following examples.
The first one is taken on Velvia 50. Vignetting is due to the considerable movements I applied. There is a bit more picture on all sides, but the Epson film holder clipped them off - they can be retrieved with a better scan.


The second picture was taken on Portra 160NC. The mixed lighting was interesting... Orange and green overhead, blue from outside; the lens is slightly yellow; and conversion from neg gives a cyan cast.


Any comments? Improvements? Suggestions on how to develop this aspect?
Does anybody have any experience of selling this type of picture?
Regards,
Charles

It's something I've wanted to play with for a while, just been trying to find out how to get a good lens for it (might have to just try samples from ebay and then resell if crap).

Have you taken a straight shot wide open (i.e. no movements) - I'd like to see one taken in the woods to see how it swirls.. (three dimensional branching structures make nice swirly shapes).

Tim

timparkin wrote:(might have to just try samples from ebay and then resell if crap).
Tim

Note to self - don't buy a lens from Tim

Charles Twist wrote: Any comments? Improvements? Suggestions on how to develop this aspect?
Does anybody have any experience of selling this type of picture?
Regards,
Charles

Hi Charles...

I particular like the first one, it's quite beautiful the way the lens get almost everything so sharp in the first plane and make a complete "mess" on the backgroung. I would also have done in B&W as in my opinion works better with these kind of lens.

Hi Charles

I prefer your first image - oh and thanks for 'the plug' for me, certainly appreciated

best regards

andrew