It was my second time in Istanbul and as I already covered many of the “must see” tourist sights the first time I thought it was a good opportunity to shoot some more film this time around. Being less flexible with film it also helped that I already knew what to expect and where to go.
The Tessar is a very old design (1902), actually one of the oldest optical designs of all consumer lenses. It was produced before WWII for the first Contax rangefinder cameras and early Exakta cameras and post-war both in East and West Germany for several other camera brands.
Fun Fact 1: In 1932, when Leica II by Leitz of Wetzlar was the king of 35mm cameras, Zeiss Ikon of Dresden decided to produce a competitor that would be superior in every way. Thus the first Contax camera was born; the “Contax I”, which was designed to outperform the Leica in every aspect including the optics; thus the first Tessar 50/2.8 for 35mm format was born (a redesigned Tessar to cover 24x36mm negative), from Zeiss Jena.
Fun Fact 2: This lens was famous during its era and was called “Adlerauge” in German, which means “Eagle’s eye” because it was considered super sharp. Let’s see about that further down!
Any film is hard to get these days, but the Fuji films are even harder to get than the Kodak ones here in Germay. Therefore I developed the habit of buying any type of color negative film I haven’t used before for this series – even when it means paying 20€ for just this one roll of Fuji Superia X-Tra 400.
Processing (ECN-2) and scanning was done at Silbersalz35 in Germany.
Continue reading Analogue Adventures – Part 19: Fuji Superia X-Tra 400 ECN-2 processed
Over the decades some exotic lenses saw the light of day that have a bit of a legendary status now and these also happen to be my favorite lenses to review. One such lens is the Contax-G 16mm 8.0 Hologon, an eccentric ultra wide angle lens still made by Zeiss in Germany, when every other part of the Contax-G system had already been manufactured in Japan. The Hologon sure looks cool, it has a history, but is it also still relevant today? We will try to find that out, see how to change its bayonet for M-mount and I will tell you what cameras it can best be used on.
Lens is being tested on 42mp Sony A7rII and 24mp Leica M10
The Zeiss ZM 18mm 4.0 Distagon is the second widest lens of the ZM family and one of the few 18mm M-mount lenses. Is 18mm being an unpopular focal length among Leica users the reason this lens has already been discontinued or is it because of its optical qualities? Let’s find out in this review.
Lens is being tested on 42mp Sony A7rII and 24mp Leica M10
