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Geez!

 
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78ltd



Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 62
Location: Texas

PostPosted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 10:07 pm    Post subject: Geez! Reply with quote

This conversation makes me glad that I already have a Medalist Ektar fixed and board mounted. And a 107mm Ektar. And a 101mm Ektar. And a 100mm f/3.5 Tessar. And a 101mm Velostigmat. And a 80mm Heligon. And a 105mm Xenar (both f/3.5 and f/4.5).
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Dan Fromm



Joined: 14 May 2001
Posts: 2118
Location: New Jersey

PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 8:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

How do you choose which to use?
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78ltd



Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 62
Location: Texas

PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 11:34 am    Post subject: Whichever One I Want To Reply with quote

Just whatever I feel like using at the time. I have 55 lenses. I'm a sucker for cheap glass. Most expensive lens I have was $199 (a mint 180mm F/4 Tele-Arton). The cheapest ones were given to me for free. I was dangerous when I drove long haul. I could and did stop at MPEX every time I went thru Columbus. In fact, between March 94 when I bought my Century from the original owner until I stopped getting thru Columbus in 2001, I spent $5,556 but I have over 100 items. Of course I also bought stuff from Arlington Camera in Arlington, TX, KEH when they had their store in Dallas from 1990-2000, and Columbus Camera Group.
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Dan Fromm



Joined: 14 May 2001
Posts: 2118
Location: New Jersey

PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 12:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

55 lenses? That's not many.

But seriously, which of the 55 do you carry with you?

My solution to "more lenses than be carried" was to have some shootouts and to think hard about which focal lengths made sense. My travel kit's still too big, but its almost manageable.

You bought from CCG? Amazing. I've never found anything there that seemed worth their price. I must have been lucky.
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78ltd



Joined: 04 Sep 2005
Posts: 62
Location: Texas

PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 2:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The only thing I bought fom CCG was a RH-12 Insert (just the insert, not the complete holder) for $49 on 08/10/99. 55 lenses not much? I didn't include the 46 35mm lenses I have. I usually don't take my Graflex with me in the truck. I just use it locally. When I do take my Century with me, I just take one lens and RH holder. It all fits in a small hard case that way.
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vitaly66



Joined: 08 Apr 2009
Posts: 44
Location: tirana

PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 3:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gentlemen, I beseech thee: please show a little pity for those newly arrived Graflex enthusiasts in your midsts!

Some of us will never be so fortunate to have acquired such a large cache of equipment as yourselves. It may be that we have not the resources, or simply sufficient hours remaining in the brief slice of life alloted to us, to obtain and trial a sample of each and every lens ever produced during the past 100 years.

Oh, but from your own vast and varied experiences we could learn so much!

If only you would please share with us just a sampling of your own images that you consider special, or important, or pleasing. Or simply fun! Help us who are now blind to glimpse among those troves you possess which of these lenses you personally consider to be most the joyful and desirous, and why.

Help us to make informed decisions. Help us so that whatever meager pittance we do have may fall in wise expenditure. Help us to preserve and sustain your own hard-won Graflex traditions for the sake of future generations of film photographers, the world over.

Whatever you can offer, even just an image or two, even just now and then. Any and all would be most helpful, and definitely appreciated!
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Dan Fromm



Joined: 14 May 2001
Posts: 2118
Location: New Jersey

PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 4:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Vitaly, I keep a lens diary. All being well, it will eventually be published in French and English on the French LF site. The text is ready and I've sent a pile of photos (taken on film, then scanned) of some of the lenses. I'll inform you when it is published.

At one time Emmanuel Bigler, who translated my English into French, and I contemplated including a series of shots taken with some of the lenses in the article. We've given up on this.

Emmanuel didn't like the first series I offered him, taken in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. He said that they weren't distinctively American, could have been taken in France. He didn't say, but could have, that a good lens used well takes a technically good picture, end of discussion.

The second series, distinctively American, showed only that lenses that are good enough shoot well. I'm sorry, but I have a strong prejudice against sample shots taken with lenses. Good lenses are good and there's little basis for choice among them.

In a way I've taken direction from my late friend Charlie Barringer. Charlie was an enthusiast of all things Zeiss but also collected lenses that were "extreme," the more extreme the better. Hence his 44/5.6 Super Aviogon and his 80" Zoomar Reflectar. Wide angle lenses are good, the wider the better, and so are long focus lenses.

The important lesson you should learn from my adventures is that taking pictures is more important than accumulating lenses.


Last edited by Dan Fromm on Thu Sep 23, 2010 5:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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vitaly66



Joined: 08 Apr 2009
Posts: 44
Location: tirana

PostPosted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 4:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I most certainly agree! Making photographs is the whole point of having this stuff in the first place. (For some of us, anyway!)

I would also say this: *viewing* photographs is also important. We can talk about this lens or that film all day long. But the mere utterances have little value until we are actually able to see the photographs themselves.

I think we learn to make good photographs by seeing good photographs. Not that we see to merely copy or replicate the work of others. But by seeing the photographs of others, we may be inspired, and learn what may work for our own vision and purposes.
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