Old abandoned houses near VSU

I was going through some of my old film scans and found quite a number of things I shot and never posted that were of interest. Almost always when I haven't posted here, I have actually been shooting, but just didn't get around to posting anything. I'm going to try to post some old stuff that I forgot about in the next few weeks.

Back in February I took a few documentary shots of some of the old houses across the street from the Fine Arts building. These houses - and more importantly, the land that they sit on - were purchased by a company to build a complex on with living and retail spaces. There was some outcry to save the old historic homes, so they were offered for only $10 - you just had to haul them away!

No one took them up on that offer, but even now, 7 months later, nothing has been done about them. I'm not sure what is going to happen to them.

Here are a few negatives from my Yashica 124G and Ektar film:

I also took some digital images inside one of the houses - here's three from my D800E, and either 17-35mm f/2.8 or 16mm f/3.5 AI:

Kendrick Johnson Rally - 9/7/13

I took some portraits and documentary photos at the Kendrick Johnson rally downtown on Saturday:

 

 

THE HAPPENING 2013 at VSU

Every year VSU hosts "The Happening," a huge event on the front lawn where local vendors, churches, and campus groups/departments advertise their services/wares and give out free stuff to boot.

I documented some of the goings-on this year with film. I shot mostly a new Linhof Tech IV with 270mm f/5.5 Tele-Arton, and also some with my Polaroid 900 and 135mm Xenotar. Here are the results, on TMX:

Here are two reclaimed Fuji FP-100C negatives. Obviously the first one I messed up a little...but it was good practice as I haven't done this in a while:

Nikkor 18cm f/2.5 short-mount telephoto lens for Nikon Rangefinder system - Part 1

This is a kind of "pre-review" for a lens I've just gotten a hold of, the rare Nikkor 18cm f/2.5. This lens is the fastest 180mm lens Nikon has ever produced. It was one of the varying long telephotos made for the Nikon rangefinder system, to be used with the Visoflex adapter, or later, on the Nikon F SLR with suitable N-F adapter. Like many of the more expensive, professional lenses made during this era, these lenses are fairly hard to come by and generally cost a pretty penny due to their collectible nature.

I was able to procure not just one but two of these beautiful lenses through a liquidation sale of old photojournalism equipment. They were not kept well and needed a complete refurbishment. Sadly one still has some slight damage to the rear element, but I am glad it was at least salvageable.

It's a big, heavy, all-metal lens, the likes of which is not seen in the pro photo gear market these days. This lens itself is much heavier than my 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-S. As such, great care must be taken to ensure a stable mount, or just really strong arms!

I will get more into the specifics of this lens in a future post, but my initial observations are that the lens is extremely sharp, with a bit of spherical aberration from f/2.5 to f/5 (and consequently lower contrast) but absolutely stunning images beyond. It also has that elusive "plasticity" to the images, likely due to its classic Sonnar design and 12 aperture blades.

Here is a couple of portraits done with this lens of Meagan, with a simple 3-point lighting setup. Both were shot wide-open on my D800E, ISO 50:

July/August Showers

Valdosta has been very rainy these last few weeks. So much so that I have not gotten out to shoot much.

I wanted to post something so I will simply put this one photo up that I took a few days ago.

Nikon D800E, Nikkor 18cm f/2.5 short-mount telephoto for the Nikon Rangefinder system on an N-F adapter: