This is probably the third article I’ve written about the Contax T, and hopefully the last. I scrapped the others because they simply didn’t live up to the camera. I wrote one article comparing the T to an Olympus XA. This makes a lot of sense to me – both are aperture-priority (only) manual focus rangefinders with nearly identical compact dimensions. But this article was unfair – I own two Ts and zero XAs. I have used an XA, and have pretty clear memories of the things I didn’t love about it, but until I buy another one for the purpose of comparing to the T, I don’t think it’s quite right to base an article upon said comparison. I do plan to do this, however, as the T seems very strongly influenced by the XA, so I guess my earlier statement that this will be my last article on the T was a lie.

In truth, though, it would also be unfair to the T to lead with an article pitting it against another. The T doesn’t solely exist as an alternative to the XA, the T stands strong on its own. These days I’ll carry any number of rangefinders with me into DC, but I have to consider how much pedestrian traffic I’ll be subject to (or, how sardine-like the Metro will be), how much bulk a given camera will add to me, and how sturdy said camera is, just in case. On days when I don’t want to deal with this decision, or nothing seems like a great idea, the Contax T comes with me. More often than not these days, unless I really feel like shooting something else, or I have something specific in mind for medium format, the T is the camera I want by my side anyway. This is largely due to its lilliputian yet sturdy nature. I can keep it in a small pocket in my messenger bag (rather than strapped separately around my neck), not notice a major weight increase, and trust that it’s not constantly on the brink of being crushed.

a diptych showing some decent separation via depth-of-field with the 38/2.8

Of course, aside from being sturdy and small, a camera needs to be good at taking pictures. And it needs to be good at working with its operator, which of course means something different to everyone. For me, the T works out quite well on both counts. The lens, a five-element 38/2.8 Zeiss Sonnar T*, is a stunning chunk of glass in a small barrel. Of course lenses are more than just their optics, and this is where things get a bit more interesting. The focus feel is amazing, better than most larger lenses I’ve used, and the best I’ve ever felt in something so compact. Unfortunately, there is no focus tab, so you are stuck handling a very tiny ring. Focusing is tricky in a package this small, as blocking the rangefinder in the process is pretty much inevitable. Compounded with the tiny aperture ring inexplicably stuffed behind the focus ring, and the lens is not really the most ergonomic thing to use.

This is an important point to note, because the camera is manual focus only, and aperture priority only. The user will be spending a lot of time with these rings. If you want to blow it all to the wind and rely on hyperfocal, this is indicated with f/8 in green on the aperture ring, and a green dot and DOF scale on the focus ring corresponding to hyperfocal at f/8. Aside from these controls, the user is granted a +1.5 EV exposure compensation button on the top deck, as well as a self-timer switch, and of course the shutter release. The release itself is an unnecessary touch for the luxury market – a synthetic ruby designed by Kyocera’s Advanced Ceramics division. As this was Kyocera’s first creation under the Contax name, it’s understandable that they wanted to go all out. Understandable, but still a bit humorous. Anyway, the ergonomics of the camera are not the best, even for my tiny pixie hands. I can’t even begin to imagine the sort of person who likes to slap gigantic battery grips on their already massive SLRs handling one of these petite cameras.

out of focus areas get a little bit edgy at times, but images are crisp.

The aforementioned +1.5 EV compensation button is the only real control over exposure that a T user gets. However, the T does not (thankfully) rely on DX codes to set the meter ISO, so as long as you’re mindful of what you’re doing, you can adjust ISO for whatever compensation you need. ISO readout is on the back of the camera, adjusted by pressing a button on the back and rotating the outer ring of the rewind knob. Metering is not TTL, but rather via a sensor on the front of the lens, immediately above the front element. The lens is not threaded for filters, but if one was to find slip-on filters that would fit, they would (thankfully) be over the meter sensor as well. Using common sense to compensate for backlighting via the +1.5 EV button, and otherwise trusting the meter has yet to let me down. The camera will warn you with an over light if you’re working outside the range of capable shutter speeds, but thankfully it will not prevent you from shooting it anyway. An overexposed shot is, after all, better than missing the decisive moment. There is no AE lock, which is a bit of a let-down.

I mentioned the overexposure light, one of four LEDs inside the finder to give you an idea of the shutter speed. The shutter ranges from 1/500″ down to 8″, with indicators for ’1/500″ – 1/125″,’ ’1/125″ – 1/30″,’ and ’1/30″ – 8″.’ You never know exactly what it’s doing, but you get a sense, and can judge whether you’re in hold-your-breath or I-really-need-a-tripod territory. The finder is bright, has good eye relief, though is a bit small and only ~.75x. The rangefinder spot is a yellow diamond, a nice throwback to Yashicas past. No parallax compensation is provided, not even a frame indicator. No aperture readout, but the aperture adjustment happens in even clicks of full stops, and can thus be adjusted blindly with ease.

the t’s compact size means i always have a camera with me in the district.

Loading the camera is a bit of a trick. Release a latch on the bottom of the camera very carefully (this latch is a common point of failure) The entire back and bottom plate are a single shell which is removed, much like on a Leica CL. Also like on the CL, once opened, there is a swing-down pressure plate on the body side of things. Unfold this, and open up the camera (not doing so reportedly can strip some gears). Get the leader into the takeup, make sure the sprockets are engaged, shut the pressure plate, and wind on a bit. Make sure advancing is smooth, make absolutely sure the sprockets are (still) engaged, and that everything is tight. Frame tolerances are incredibly tight on this camera, and if loading isn’t spot on, overlaps are bound to happen. Put the rear shell back on, and (again, carefully) latch it up.

Just in loading the film, I pointed out two ways in which these cameras die. Despite being made of titanium and tough alloys, despite being designed by FA Porsche, they are somewhat fragile. I have two, and one works perfectly. The other, my day-to-day, is physically beat up on the outside and has some internal issues as well. I’d hazard that the gears have stripped a bit, because I really need to make absolutely sure that the sprockets are perfect, or else it just seems too weak to advance. Fixing this is likely impossible. My latches are fine – if yours are broken, one hackish solution is to keep the body together via a bolt (or similar) in the tripod thread. The meter on my beater is always on when the body is open – my other one works properly and as most cameras do, with a half-press of the shutter button. Sometimes the meter just doesn’t come on, and I have to waste a frame – advancing/recocking the shutter always gets it back in order. Even with these issues, I trust it to be reliable enough to use as a daily user. I understand its failures, and haven’t had new issues pop up. Another issue I have heard of is the velvety ‘bellows’ that permits the lens to fold and unfold leaking light. Users have successfully rigged up their own replacements.

i thought i missed this (personal, important) shot by hitting the end of the roll. fortunately the t’s very tight frame spacing means you consistently get extra frames. also notice the ringy out-of-focus point lights. all rights reserved (not cc-licensed) on portraits inc. this one.

Few final notes to end on. Film advance is manual, with an advance that folds flush (and is metal and fairly sharp, I have cut myself popping it out!), but the film counter is electronic and only readable with the camera open. Beginning to advance the film can trick the counter into advancing, my counter often reads high because I accidentally ‘bump’ the counter into advancing when I’m popping out the advance lever. I think the counter goes up to 74, I guess for those old Ilford long rolls. There’s a small hole in the center of the rewind knob, this can be used to visualize that film is actually advancing. There’s also a flash unit, dedicated and with variable output based on the camera’s meter. I have one for each camera, but have not used them much at all. The original case has a long flap and two snaps – it fits the camera either with or without flash attached. No remote release, self-timer is your only option to avoid shake during long exposures.

The Contax T is a really quirky camera, there’s no getting around that. It’s also pricy to acquire one just to find out whether it works for you or not. For me, it was love at first fondle, and I snatched up the next one I saw as well. I keep mine with me most of the time when I’m not carrying something larger, and I keep it set at its labeled hyperfocal setting for quick deployment. Even with its shortcomings, it’s a camera that has yet to disappoint me with its excellent optics, great feel, and compact size.

The Polaroid SX-70 was a groundbreaking camera in 1972. Edwin Land had already impressed photographers with his film that didn’t require a trip to the photo lab. This was still a tedious process, however, requiring the photographer to time out development, stop it by carefully peeling apart the film, and probably get covered in chemicals in the process. The Land Cameras themselves were relatively compact folding rangefinders (or viewfinders, depending on the model), a trend that was losing favor in the rest of the photo world as SLRs became more accessible and popular. The SX-70, then, was impressive indeed – it retained the compact collapsible nature of earlier Land Cameras, but was a true SLR! And more impressive yet, it used a brand new integral film system which removed any chance of operator error during development, and kept the photographer’s hands clean.

manipulating impossible project fade to black film

SX-70 film also had the interesting characteristic of an emulsion that could be physically manipulated to achieve painterly effects (see Kathleen Carr’s work, such as Polaroid Manipulations for good examples and instruction). This was great for artists, not so much for casual consumers, I suppose, and eventually with the immensely popular OneStep cameras came the less manipulable and more quickly developing Time Zero film. After that, there was no SX-70 film at all, and people took to crazy hacks to get 600 film in their SX-70s. After that, there was no Polaroid film at all.

very expired time zero that i found in a model 3

Now, after all of that, we have The Impossible Project, a new era of Polaroid film in both SX-70 and 600 speeds (as well as other formats), and a return to the Polaroid as an artist’s tool. This is the main reason you buy an SX-70 today, because without the limited selection of film from Impossible, you have a funny looking paperweight. But if you’ve decided to go down the path of shooting Impossible integral film, you still have far more camera options than just the classic SX-70 folding SLRs. You can save a lot of money and get a OneStep or one of the many 600 models with single-element plastic lenses. But in my opinion (and I am not alone here), the folding SLR SX-70 is the definitive Polaroid camera.

Folding SX-70s (note: I refer to folding SX-70s, but this info holds true to the later folding 680 and 690 SLRs, which are essentially the same cameras, meant to handle 600 film) were the last mass-market Polaroids with really decent optics. The lenses (116mm/8) are four element designs, made of coated glass. Later, lesser Polaroids generally use plastic optics, of three-, two-, and even single-element designs.

model 1 and model 3 – notice the viewfinder of the scale focus model 3

The folding aspect may seem like a gimmick at first, but much like simpler folding rangefinder designs, it really is a worthwhile space-saving design. The folded up package feels sturdy, and slips easily into a bag (likely into large cargo pockets for those who are so inclined), or hangs nicely around the neck if you’re lucky enough to score an Alpha 1. Small packages are nothing notable – if you want a tiny camera, get an Olympus XA, or go all out and grab a Minox III! But to get medium format prints out of something so portable is definitely a convenience, and while the folding mechanism could have been a horrible, tacked on design, it is not, and works very well in practice.

quite a contraption.

Finally, unlike most later Polaroids, the SX-70 is actually an SLR (note that the Model 3 is the exception). Excepting very early versions, these SLRs even have horizontal split-image rangefinders to assist with focus. This is useful, because the maximum aperture diameter (f/8) is larger than, and the closest focus (~10″) is closer than any Polaroid to follow. With few exceptions (Pronto! Rangefinder and Captiva SLR come to mind), future Polaroid models are either hyperfocal/focus free designs, or rely on the user to scale focus. Being an SLR also means that there are attachment optics available for telephoto and close-up work, and since the photographer can see through them, these are actually useful.

b/w conversion in post

Using an SX-70 has its ups and downs. Again, it’s manual focus, which is a plus for most creative photographers (even the later AF models have manual focus override). Focus is a convenient wheel over the shutter button, which is smooth and pleasant to operate. The shutter release itself is a soft-touch rubber button, which while lacking the satisfying clunk of an old mechanical release, does have a reassuring resistance and a good (albeit unique) feel. Where the camera is lacking to the creative photographer is in exposure control. The SX-70 follows another trend of the time – program line exposure mode. Unfortunately, the SX-70 offers only program mode, with no ability for the photographer to choose shutter speed or aperture. Even worse, the photographer also has no indication of what shutter speed/aperture the camera is wont to use. Limited control for backlight compensation, &c., is afforded via a knob to the left (from the user’s perspective), though not labeled in EV. This compensation knob automatically resets to ±0EV when the camera is folded. Metering is decently accurate (they were apparently ‘calibrated’ at the factory by dropping different levels of ND in front of the meter cell), but is not TTL.

hydrant, old impossible fade to black

In the end, once you have an SX-70, you want to carry it around. Maybe not every day, maybe not most days, but every once in a while you buy some film and take it out, and it’s still just as charming as it was in 1972. You get used to the decisions it makes, you get used to the quirks of whatever film is being offered at the time, and though it may not be quite like any other camera you own, you love it. You don’t learn to love it, you love it right away, and you love it always. The SX-70 was a brilliant, ground-breaking design on the day Land first showed it off, and it’s still unlike anything else you’re bound to have in your collection. An expensive hobby, yes – the cameras are collectible (though not particularly rare), and the film is pricy, limited production stock made by a small company. But again, there is really nothing quite like shooting one.

buttercups!

For as long as I’ve been interested in photography, I’ve been particularly interested in the aesthetics of high-contrast photography. We were supposed to shoot 400TX in high school, I shot D3200 and made contact prints off of contact prints on the highest graded contrast paper I could find. Now, I find even 400TX to be too fast for my daily pursuits, and I work a hybrid system – developing film, but going digital for post-processing and printing. Digital contrast curves are designed to not be too harsh, but still don’t quite compare to grabbing that contrast in a chemical reaction. So, recently, I decided to try an experiment using lith developer designed for paper on film.

The lith process is a high-contrast process used in the graphics world, for line art and document copy type work. It is a process done in the print stage, using special lith developer, and generally working off of a prepared contact-printed large format lith negative. Lith developers can be rather complicated, coming in as many as five-part systems. Carefully choosing your ratios can dramatically change the end result, which allows for a lot of creative control, but also introduces a lot of room for failure. Moersch makes a two-part lith developer designed to take a lot of the guesswork out of the process, called Easylith. Since these developers are not designed for standard negative film, a lot of guesswork was already going to be involved, so for my experiment, I thought Easylith would be a good start. It’s also rather affordable – $14 at Freestyle Photo works out to just over a dollar a roll at the ratio I’m working in, as a one-shot. And that’s for the smallest (most expensive by volume) set of bottles available.

my first roll was extremely underdeveloped/underexposed.

With no guidance from the internet, my first roll was a failure. Negatives were incredibly thin, and when I was able to pull out an image,there was no major pop in contrast. I shot at box speed, used 5cc each of part A and B Easylith, developed at 25c for 10 minutes, agitating vigorously every 20 seconds. When developing paper in Easylith, one is recommended to extend development times, and agitate thoroughly, something I attempted to replicate on the film side. One shot that I had overzealously bracketed came out with decent density, and showed me that I was on the right track, I just needed to go harder. I shot my second roll at a 2 stop (give or take) pull, and used 8cc each of part A and B Easylith, agitating every 15 seconds. These negatives were very dense, and many of them very usable, yielding just the results I had hoped for.

The ‘give or take’ on my 2 stop pull is an important detail. The meter on the Pentax MX only goes down to EI/ISO 20. I was shooting PanF+, rated at 50, which is about a 1.5 stop pull when shot at EI 20. I compensated manually, but in several cases, had a gut instinct to pull even further, and so I compensated even further. My gut instinct was generally wrong, and many of my negatives were impossibly dense. For the sake of experimentation, this is good. I now know to meter for about a 2 stop pull, and trust that I’ll get an image, even if it doesn’t necessarily have the characteristics that I want.

contrasty scenes like this backlit playground equipment really bring out the developer’s properties.

So, how then, to encourage that unreal contrast that I so desire? Well, shooting PanF+ was a smart choice, being a relatively contrasty film to begin with. Any of the stranger document films that Adox, Agfa, Rollei, &c. put out should give even stronger results. Shooting contrasty scenes, and in contrasty light certainly helps as well. In scanning, my hardware and software blasted such strong light through the negatives, and tried so hard to make them ‘normal,’ that tweaks were necessary in post-processing to bring back the contrast that shines through so brilliantly on the negatives themselves. Finally, I will continue to tweak the process, based on the effects that such tweaks would have if I were doing a normal lith process. This means messing with agitation (which encourages development of highlights), ratio of dev:water, and ratio of a:b. So far, I’m very happy with my results, and it’s only taken me one wasted roll. If anyone out there tries this process, I’d love to hear/see the results, so drop me a line here or on flickr.

easily my favorite shot off of roll two.

Pan F+ in Easylith on FilmDev.org

There has long been a movement in photography in contrast to the Leica shooters who settle for nothing but the purest glass. These photographers instead opt to embrace the effects of the flaws present in toy cameras with their plastic lenses and light leaks. Some people even put toy camera lenses on their fancy DSLRs. Experimental photographers have long embraced expired film, and processing film improperly (warning, links contain some amount of film snobbery).

When I discovered that I had an old 3R filter (seen above) that would fit on my DP2 (I believe I found the filter years before in a discount filter bin, probably paid about a dollar for it), I initially just cast it aside as a stupid, gimmicky toy. A 3R filter essentially repeats part of an image three times over itself (a 5R five times, a 9R nine times, etc.). To demonstrate further…

…which is, in reality, a photo of one bottlecap. Aside from the obvious tripling of the bottlecap, there’s a subtler tripling of the woodgrain. The wood forming lines through the bottlecaps is even evident (with the contrast pushed rather far).

Eventually I realized that I could probably subvert the 3R and use it as an actual creative tool, albeit an unpredictable one, in the spirit of toy photography. My thought was that by tripling existing, expected patterns (much like the woodgrain above), an exciting illusion can present itself, a convincing fake of a too-perfect pattern. Photos which are, in a sense, simulacra of that which they really are. At first I was lazy about this, but more recently I have tried harder. Lining up the most obvious replications, and allowing the minor patterns to fall where they will. In the above shot, I was particularly careful to adjust the filter (and myself) so that the strong diagonal corner of the rock overlapped itself, leading to a pretty convincing photo at first glance. Only in the details is the repetition made more clear. The cheap optical element, as well as resolution loss due to the prismatic shape of the filter lends so some interesting color, strange blurring, and occasionally exaggerated chromatic aberrations, which help give these photos more of a typical ‘toy camera’ feel as well.

One last photo to point out two more things. First, something which is rather uniform in nature to begin with (such as water) can be pretty convincing without much extra help. Second, the notion of the filter leads to some very interesting shapes in the highlights (see the sparkles on the left), which should mean some interesting bokeh is possible (if you could make a reasonable composition which would also have the opportunity for nice bokeh spots – that would likely be the trick).

haunted sky – click for flickr page.

Above is one of my photos which has drummed up a bit more interest than most of my work. This makes sense – it is a much more interesting photo than my usual fare. The sky is bizarre and enchanted, and why? Are we looking at strange clouds? Smoke from a bonfire? Contrails from an alien craft? The answer lies beneath, another photo from the series:

oil, puddle. – again, click to go to flickr.

The reality was that I stopped and squatted down to shoot the latter photo – just the simple lines of the oil slick. But then I noticed something, the reflection of a fence and some trees. As I got them in focus, the oil streaks cut out into the background, giving the appearance of surreal, dreamlike clouds.

This is all well and good, but the fact is that I only noticed it by mistake. I saw something else, and I got lucky and found this as a result. There’s a lesson to be learned, or perhaps two… Luck is a very valuable thing. I feel like it shouldn’t be, like I should have seen the interesting scene first. But the truth is that had I seen that first, I may still have needed luck to find something even better. I can strive to always spot the most interesting part of a scene right away, or I can just take it as it comes. Sometimes you must realize that you can’t force inspiration, it must come to you. And (to find another lesson learned) inspiration comes from anywhere and everywhere – even the nastiest, oiliest puddle.

Square format photography has recently become a fascination of mine. Perhaps I should have been born in an earlier time, the era of the Rolleiflex TLR, a popular medium-format camera which shot in squares. But alas, these days it seems that 8×10 and similarly proportioned rectangular formats are expected of photographers. Art in general has long fallen back on rectangular formats, squares primarily occuring in the abstracted and nonrepresentational arts. Indeed, in school we were never encouraged to break from 8×10 photographic prints, trimming of the paper only served to repair a faulty crop. In all the art classes I’ve taken in all the schooling I’ve been through, the only squares I remember making were tiles for a high school ceramic class – a classic exercise serving double-duty as decoration for the front of the school itself.

So, regardless of my ability to use cropping Ls to form a square, I never did. It never even crossed my mind until I recently acquired a Sigma DP2, my first foray into digital (another story for another day). Cropping digitally is in many ways less pleasant than cropping in print, but it’s also very quick and therefore allows for quick discovery and experimentation. So, quite quickly, I discovered and fell in love with the square crop.

Why?

I do a lot of textures, especially on old trees. I find the square format works well for this, offering a no-nonsense, in-your-face presentation of a texture. I also like to use a square to frame things ‘square in a square.’ The above image is one of my favorites because it does both. It shows off a variety of tree textures in the square format. In my opinion, the angles and the curves of the bark simply wouldn’t have as much impact in a rectangular format. As for the ‘square in a square,’ I’ve intentionally shot it so that the darker bit of the tree frames the (white) sap-covered bit.

4:5 ratio

2:3 ratio

1:1 ratio

This is not the best example, but it does show off how an image’s proportions can affect the impact of the angles within. The first crop is 4:5, the same as an 8×10 print. It is my least favorite of the group, the angles have no impact whatsoever in my mind. Angles of a lesser degree would give the photo more punch, but would still have less impact than ~45º angles in a square frame. In comparing these three, I’d have to say that the 4:5 has the least interest because it’s almost but not quite a square. In art, you’re either in or you’re out, you don’t come close to being square and then give up once you hit 80%. The second image, 2:3, is the ratio that comes out of the camera. It’s wideness actually gives it a much more dynamic feel than its 4:5 counterpart. Finally, we have the 1:1 image, which emphasizes the ~45º angles in a very strong way, as they cut very neat pieces of the photo off at every slash. This is debatable, of course, but in my opinion, the simplicity of the square frame really lets the content within burst out at the viewer.

Finally, how?

When I first got my DP2, I wanted to turn on guidelines for quick approximation of my thirds. I always liked having a gridded finder when I shot film SLRs – it helps make quick compositions when necessary, and is easy to ignore the rest of the time. The DP2 offers three options – two lines (four blocks), four lines (nine blocks), and six lines (sixteen blocks). The first makes a lot of sense to me, it’s essentially a clearer reticule for spot metering, &c. The second, four lines, is what I was looking for – the lines fall on the thirds. The third, I could think of no practical use for. The lines fall on quarters rather than thirds, and I’m not especially familiar with the rule of quarters!I have since discovered that these lines are helpful for composing photos that I believe will make good 1:1 crops.

If we look at our LCD, broken into sixteen blocks, we can determine that every block is three units wide and two tall (by these numbers, we start with our full crop at 8×12). If we completely disregard the left side of the screen (top if we’re shooting portrait orientation), we end up with an 8×9 image, neatly broken into thirds (on the long axis – the short axis is obviously still broken into quarters, but every little bit helps). It’s not a square, but it’s close enough to get a quick square format crop composed.

The other big ‘how’ is how to know when square format will work. It’s a big decision, as you end up cropping out a third of your pixels! Clearly not every shot needs to be square format, and the easiest way to learn what best fits your own aesthetic is to simply try things. Set your crop to 1:1, and flip through a handful of photos. You’ll quickly see patterns, things that you like. I know by now that if something is relatively square or circular to begin with, that I’d probably like to match it up against my third lines and present it as a ‘square in a square.’ Learning comes quick with experimentation, and experimentation is easy when you don’t have to wait for a print to step out of the bath.

• An article by Gary Mortensen, singing the praises of 6×6.
• squareFormat group on Flickr
• My square photos on Flickr, including the flower and tree seen above (those individual photos link to their respective pages)