Schlagwort: Leica M2

The last weeks have really been exhausting, but in a good way. Since we’re doing real projects in classes instead of taking exams or tests, the semester ends with a big bang and everybody is hasting through the labs and hallways on their way to finish all kinds of exhibition stuff, portfolios, posters, web pages, essays, darkroom prints, movies or installations. People are stressed because of tight schedules, frustrated because of problems with computers, printers, programs, enlargers and all kinds of other stuff and at the same time happy because the semester is almost done and the summer season is ahead of us. I will post more stuff i did in photo class and typo class in the next blog for i’m not done with my portfolio yet. So here are some pictures covering the past months from mid-semester until now.

In typography class. In the studio, working on some large format table top stuff. The whole process is sooo daaamn slow, especially when you’re used to shoot rangefinders, but the quality you get of those huge 4×5 negs is just worth it. It was that time of year again. Makes a nice composition.In a bar. 1600 ISO at 2.8, i think about 1/8th. So yeah, i decided to get a Nokton again, i just need those two more stops.OstAnders festival at Studio Eins. Some of us showed some (digtal) prints or illustrations.Anselm approving the setup. Lonely beer bottle.At Neues Museum. „Unschärfe“ (=blur) was an installation inside and outside the museum. I also took a photo of the installation object, a huge room made out of steel grids and used it for a dyptichon for our human rights topic.

This dyptich i shot for the human rights topic. It is in fact a small piece of colour negative film, regularily exposed with a small pinhole camera i made from a 35mm film can (black one of course). The top part is actually shote inside the „Unschärfe“ construction.
Some plants behind frosted glass. Looks haunting somehow but interesting at the same time. So i took a frame at 1/15th or so.
Silly subway stuff. People reading. Another Olympus XA artwork. It seems to have some trouble transporting the film for the first 1-3 frames. Looks funny though.Kids drawing. Thats some HP5+ Stephan lent me btw since i ran out of trix.Cig break.Another election. Discussing who to vote for. Pathetic.The smaller the camera, the harder the focusing. They built a wall around a tree, how nice is that.Jonas and his digital pinhole cam. What a cheater 😀 Guess what, election. This time at the faculty. Some of us volunteered as election workers.Back in photo class. We listened to some lecture about great photographers. Tanja all of a sudden pulled out a blank loaf of bread and a knife and was like „whos hungry?“ and started cutting some slices. What a moment! Olga and i went to the yearly „mobility flea market“ to get a bike for her.Printed this one.Finally, a friend for my old bike. Saturday morning at uni, Fachschaft breakfast time. Andi also brought some board games for the students to play in the community room. Its actually like a kindergarden but with typography and stuff…Beppo and Basti, newly elected leaders of the student council.
Oh noes! Kornmarkt blues.I wonder who arranged this and why. Improvisation.Hanging out after class. Kentmere 100 in Rodinal (Hexar AF). Smooth light that evening. Shot from our bedroom window. What a statement! And such nice structures too. waste removal coming through! Two lovers. Buddy for sale. I thought that was a funny moment. Sometimes i like to take a picture that is nothing special but has a single small detail that makes it less boring.
More Altstadtflohmarkt impressions. Stephan bought this very old portrait. The technical quality of this little piece was just impressive. Some happy people spreading the joy. Basti, Stephans roommate.Inside the comic book store. Back to good old Trix+Xtol. Hanging out at uni, David enjoying his summertime coffee.A poster at the academy of fine arts. Susi and i were there for a lecture about icons in photography. Taking portraits. Benno, shot with the M2 + Xsync-connected lighting.Litte Mike discovered his hand. JulianIllustration exhibition of two great graduation works at Neues Museum. Prof Ackermann holding the opening speech.Great use of space and arrangement of exhib pieces. We went to Kulturgarten later for a beer. Sometimes i does not matter how good you try to hide, you just fail. Basti in busy work mode. That night there was a big storm outside and we watched from the window. I thought why not capture a lightning strike on film, should be bright enought to illuminate the scene. The first frame came out completely dark because i missed. This is the second try. 1/8th of a second at 1.4.Shooting some footage for Cast class at Idas and Sibylles place.Kafka, who was our actor. Killer dude.Thank god the final scene takes place in a Biergarten!Goin‘ fishin‘.More family time in my uncles garden. Looking up. Since i have left some rolls of TMY (= TMax 400), i shot one for fun. This is shot from the balcony, looking down in the hidden garden. A heart-shaped cake for Günter. Best buds?Shitting pigeons. Already printed this one. Well, Tmax definitely has its advantages. A very modern look and just non-existent grain. I still prefer the Trix‘ character though. At the bus station. Shitty weather. Some lines Getting ready for Rock im Park.Machines blocking the way for cyclists. The other day, Olga got sick. Back in the lab! Its Fuji Acros time! Leica M6 and Nokton. Another christian-ish pic of Christian.Franzi and her Pentax ME.Tanja jumping in the frame. Some place at the border of Nürnberg. People running up the hill.People fishing. Some frames from the Volksfest in spring. Especially when shot in bright sunlight, Acros is just superb! More trees for Nürnberg.Duzy hurt his leg.A man enjoying the sun, view from the lab in the little yard. Thanks, i think i get it now!Walking around, taking some pictures.At another market, women hanging up some baby stuff. What a lovely flag. We enjoyed some of the warm days at Naturgartenbad, which is just a great place to relax and spend the whole day at. Shot some Delta 100 too.

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Edited version. Untouched raw version from the LS-40 (=Nikon Coolscan IV) + Vuescan. Delta 100 is just good stuff. And seems like it loves HC-110 for development. Oh yeah, after using a dedicated film scanner for some time now, i have this hint for you: If youre struggeling with the quality of your scans, throw your flatbed in the trash (talking 35mm here) and get a real scanner. If your scans are still no good, your process most likely sucks. Check every step, like EVERY step: Camera working properly? Film stored correctly? Chemicals fresh? Dev process going well? How about your temps? Using wetting agent? Please please dont get disencouraged by all this stuff. But theres just some parameters that you should take care of if you want good quality (technical quality) negatives. However, having fun is still no. 1 on the list of course! More hanging out. Olga looking at my grandpas sketchbook from the 40s and 50s. He made the last sketches in this in 2006 which is kinda cool. We spent the next day at Tanjas parents‘ house she was keeping while they were on vacation. What an awesome place with all kinds of trees, bushes and beds. View from the greenhouse on the beds. Mandy, the dog, was exhausted because of the sunny weather. Shes 18.Another frame for the „Metering-on-my-hand“ series.Its beautiful because its in b/w. We also took some portraits for photoclass with the 500CM. For the human rights semester topic, we had to abuse a roll of FP4+ 120 film negatives mechanically after development. I decided to cut up some portraits and mix the parts back togtheer into different portrait-like close-ups. I’ll do a scan of the print to show it in the next post probably.

Before destroying the negs i made sure to do a proper scan of every portait, just in case…

We went to the graveyard later. So i worked on my project for the typography exhibition and cut some posters and stuff. Since i couldnt find a proper mat to cut on, i just grabbed a random magazine and cut on its back. Later i realised it was some LFI issue. Sorry guys.The next day, i decided to take some photographs of the Rock im Park aftermath after work. The weather was perfect for Delta and i found some beautiful stills…The whole area was of course cleaned some hours later, but still.Some guys deinstalling some beams.Beer can art.I wonder what party was going on here a few days ago.The pure joy of nature. Already did a print. Some weeks ago, i bought some packs of very old (30+ years) Tetenal Speed paper from a former photographer. Very nice guy. The paper is quite old and has gotten about 1-2 grades smoother (that makes a grad 4 back then a grad 2-3 today and so on), but all packs were still sealed and stored correctly. Turns out these old packs of Tetenal (24x30cm and 30x40cm) still work nearly perfectly. And also, now that i finally do darkroom prints, it turns out that my negs are already pretty solid for printing, which is great. For example, the print i did of the above frame on some grad 3 speed paper turned out almost exactly like the web version, lookwise. Deep blacks and rich highlights, though theres a lot more shadow detail in the print than in the scan. So im glad that all the time i intuitively edited my scans to a print-ish look, and not to something completely different. Sure, dodging and burning, multigrade and fiber is still to come, but for now i’m perfectly happy with what im getting out of my negatives. On topSome strange people lurking around, looking for empty bottles and all kinds of stuff, gathering all kinds of crap like rats. Kinda interesting.More people enjoying the green fields. Some people looking for bottles on the left side, some weird dude taking a sunbath right in the middle of all this crap on the right side. Man do i love people.
Ok, next weekend. Visiting Olgas family again. (Back to Trix)Happy grandparents.Behind the scene.Back to work.The Designers Night, a huge exhib at campus, was about to begin the next day. The team did some final installation work.We also rent some oldschool couches and armchairs to set up a 70s style „chillout zone“. I wish we couldve kept these forever! Damn fire regulations.Chef 1 and Chef 2.The girls working on their exhibition stuff + Anselm on framing stuff.Who would not want to move in here right away?The WM was about to start.
Designers Night 7 exhib opening.
Beppo, head of team DN7 aka. space design class holding his opening speech.Benno with a print from Lenny’s type/print experiment.Back home, we invited Olgas family to our (not so) new place to have a nice barbecue together.Olgas dad took some shots too! I always find it hard to meter inside tents or bright rooms or such, it is way brighter than the meter says and i often end up with very dense because 1-2 steps overexposed negs. These could be „restored“ pretty good using curves in Lightroom (because trix is killer!) but the overall tonality suffers a lot, of course. The next day, we went for walk outside the city.
What an impressive secluded place. I like to come here every now and then, just the wander around and clear my head.Leftover asparagus.

Neighbours keepin it classy. Shooting some TMax 400 again.„Funny“ postcards. Reminds me that theres actually „designers“ that „design“ this kind of stuff.
Working on our group presentation for idea development class. Michi got himself a nice Rollei 35 from ebay for 25€. What a sweet little thing with a mighty little lens.Lilit and Beppo, doing nothing.Curious tourists. More presentation work. Man skyping with his daughter? (i guess) in the back. Wasting more frames.Whörd subay station, Beautiful light due to some glass construction on top.Basti the thinker. So, nokton wide-open. Bokeh: Depends. Looks disturbing in one shot (above) and perfectly even in the next (below). Sharpness: Pretty good imo. Somebody got a nice present.
Walked around later that day. Not the best weather, but i felt like just shooting some frames. A strange lot of all kind of poles.And some random geometry. Good night!