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
