Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Poetry’s unnatural; no man ever talked poetry ‘cept a beadle on Boxin’ Day. ~ Charles Dickens.
Boxing Day is traditionally the day after Christmas, when servants and tradesmen would receive gifts from their bosses or employers that were known as a “Christmas box.” Depending on where you live in the world, Boxing Day is a holiday that occurs on December 26th or the first or second weekday after Christmas, depending on national or regional tradition.
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2024 is to shoot more film and and write about it than I did in 2023. I plan to scan the film, work with its pixels in the digital darkroom and keep trying to “save the world, one pixel at a time.”
Many years ago I sold many of my 35mm film cameras. I now realize how this was a dumb move, especially selling all my Contax gear, one of which I have since replaced with this blog’s increased focus on film photography.
The cameras I kept include a Zeiss Ikon SW and Leica M6 TTL because these are such beautiful instruments that I could not bear to part with them. Similarly My Minolta Prod 20 and Seagull TLR have a sentimental attachment as well as appealing aesthetics, although I wished the Seagull worked as well as it once did.
How I Made this Photograph…
…with a Zeiss Ikon SW. In addition to an electronically controlled shutter with Aperture Preferred auto-exposure, to indicate over/under exposure the camera has LEDs on it’s back. The three LEDs specify over exposure (blinking green LED), underexposure (blinking red LED) and shutter speed (various combinations of illuminated, red, green and orange LEDs.) It’s a system that’s easy enough to understand once you remember that as the colors get warmer—orange, then red—shutter speeds are increasing.
The above image was shot with the Zeiss Ikon SW along with Zeiss grip using the superb Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 Biogon T* ZM lens. When I bought the camera. I also picked up a Zeiss 21mm viewfinder that is essential for its use with the SW because it does not have a built-in viewfinder. The viewfinder is also handy when I use this lens on my Leica because the lens has an M-mount. The film was Kodak color negative and the exposure, as they say, was “unrecorded.”
There’s none of that new fangled DX coding on the SW. You have to remember to change ISO speed when you change film types. Film speeds are set using a round knob atop the camera that has a collar that is raised and then rotated to set the film’s ISO speeds, just like the old days. The problem is that knob is just a tiny bit thinner and slipperier than I would like and can be difficult to grip than similar controls found in some of my other film cameras.
The Zeiss Ikon SW is just another reason why this year’s Boxing Day will be special to me. Here’s hoping your day is filled with fun and delights that come in boxes of film large and small.
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