Nobody Puts Ruckus in a Corner
Ruckus, the resident menace, recently had a certain procedure performed that many male dogs experience when they reach a certain age. On December 3rd his manhood was taken from him in the early hours of the morning. He’s now “fixed.” He had a rough couple of days with some bad reactions to medications but this morning, four days out, he’s feeling quite a bit better and it was becoming increasingly obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to handle the inactivity for much longer. So we got ready in the morning and set off for a local wooded park to get him a short walk.
We left the house a little before sunrise. I was worried it’d be too dark to shoot anything so I grabbed the M262 and the 40mm so I wouldn’t have to worry about pushing film and then not finishing a roll and being stuck with having to finish a roll pushed to 3200 or some nonsense like that. The weather has been interesting the last couple days, with a lot of fog settling in to the valley and temperatures dipping below freezing overnight causing a lot of ice and frost on things. It can be pretty beautiful and atmospheric, albeit treacherous if you have to drive on it. Thankfully this morning it was just beautiful, a dense fog hanging over the landscape giving way to fog and hoarfrost the higher you climbed in elevation.
Selling the 40mm?
In my 28mm article I mentioned that I had been planning on picking up a 40mm due to the interesting qualities of the 40mm focal length. Basically, it sits about equidistant from 28 and 50, the two focal lengths I have really come to enjoy shooting lately. I’ve had the 40 for a bit now and have used it on quite a few outings, and while the 40mm Heliar is indeed a beautiful little lens, and I do and have always enjoyed the 40mm focal length, I really struggle to use it on the M system. There is just enough inaccuracy in the framing with the 35mm lines to make it just a little off. I find myself frequently checking framing and composition on the back of the camera when shooting the 40 in a way that I can’t stand. When a tool injects itself in to the workflow on a regular basis I find it really bothersome and the framing issues trying to shoot the 40 on the M system is one such instance.
I’ve also found that it suffers from the 35mm effect, being in that kind of weird no-man’s land between the standard feeling 50mm and a real wide angle like the 28mm. I had thought that it might be sufficiently different from 35 to feel a little less wishy washy but so far I haven’t found that to be the case. So I end up with a lens that is clunky/intrusive to use on my M cameras and has some of the same qualities that I don’t like about 35mm lenses. Shooting 40 on an SLR feels very different, it’s a great focal length on an SLR but on the M I struggle to get along with it. I suspect I will be putting it back up for sale soon. If you read this and are interested in an LTM 40mm Heliar let me know. Like I’ve said, it’s a fantastic lens. It has a beautiful rendering, sharp as hell, and the focal length is one I usually love. Just not on an M camera.
My ramblings aside, here is a small gallery of images from the morning
