A quiet Tuesday morning, my grandpa's old camera, and a roll of Kentmere 100

I share my house with a cattle dog puppy. His name is Ruckus, and his namesake is incredibly fitting. He has a lot of energy, and if you don’t burn off his energy he is an absolute menace to live with. So Tuesday morning I decided to take him for a long walk around town around sunrise to burn off some of his early morning energy and maybe get some respite from his craziness later in the day.

And what better time is there to grab a camera to bring on the walk than sunrise on a beautiful fall morning? I decided to grab my grandpa’s old Minolta XD5 and the 28/2.8. I shoot my Leica(s) a lot but my M mount 28 has a maximum aperture of f5.6 so it seemed like the faster 28 on the Minolta was a better choice. And, sometimes using an SLR is an interesting changeup.

I grabbed a roll of Kentmere 100, in part because I have a bunch of them and I’m trying to shoot through it. I haven’t enjoyed the 100 speed version of Kentmere as much as the 400 speed variant but that’s a topic for another article, perhaps. All that aside, I ended up rating it at 400 in order to get some decent shutter speeds. I opted to stand development in Rodinal, 1:100. You can almost never go wrong with Rodinal and as much as I’m not a huge fan of the grain structure of Kentmere 100 the results were pretty workable.

Enjoy the rest of the gallery below!

Shooting a $50 lens on a $3,000 body. A Soviet classic on the M Typ 262

After recently shooting a roll through the old Zorki 1 I was reminded of my love for the rendering out of that old Industar-22. It’s commonly referred to as a Leica Elmar clone, which is somewhat accurate. It, especially the old Industar-10, copies the physical form factor of the classic Leitz 5cm f3.5 Elmar, but the optical formula mimics a classic Zeiss Tessar. The confusion is understandable, the lenses look very similar, and like the Leica, the Zeiss optical formula is another 4 element/3 group lens design.

My first introduction to these lenses was the original Leica Elmar that came on my old Leica IIIa, and I have always been enamored by its rendering. A clean sample produces a remarkably “transparent” rendering. It’s hard to describe. It is beautifully sharp without being clinical, it imbues a certain lifelike quality to the images, as though the camera is seeing as we might.

All this having been said, and my recent spark with the Tessar rekindled, I opted to throw it on the M262 this afternoon for an after-work walk to see how it turned out.

Now, I must say that my Industar-22 is not up to the same standard as my old Leica Elmar. There is a bit of decentering, so the focal plane is not uniformly flat across the image. This combined with poorer corner performance lends itself to a drawing that is a bit more “characterful” than my Elmar. But, that being said, even with its shortcomings it still manages to deliver a good dose that beautiful Tessar rendering.

Shooting the Industar on the M262 is a fun setup. The Industar will collapse in to the M262 making for a very compact and borderline pocketable (the M262 is probably a bit too thicc to really pocket) shooting setup. The immediate feedback of digital also allows you to work around some of the propensity for flaring you get with the Industar. I’ve also worked out how to shoot it on my M4-2 without damaging the interior of the camera when collapsing the lens so I’m looking forward to running some rolls through the M4-2 with the Industar. Here are some additional images from the walk, thanks for reading!

A late September walk with an old camera, or, strolling with the Zorki again

September 18, 2024: A walk in a local trail network a short drive from the house. The northern section of the trails are a popular destination for mountain biking but the southern end makes for some nice walks through the forest.

I recently purchased a half case for my old Zorki 1 so I could carry it with a strap. The camera came with the original Soviet leather case but I’ve always found it cumbersome to have to unbutton and open up the case to be able to shoot. It was nice to use that camera again and I’m always amazed at the results that come out that old Industar-22. I think there’s something about those simple lens designs that make for a very “transparent” rendering. I had the same experience out of my old 1930s uncoated Leica Elmar 50/3.5.

Film was Kentmere 100, developed in D-76 stock.