Observations

My Leica iii/Jupiter 8 is the best camera for black and white, but terrible for shooting color. 90% of the color film run through it looks like crap, while 90% of BW looks great.

Conversely, the vignetting and extreme sharpness of the Olympus XA works well for color, especially very saturated color, while that doesn't work that well for BW.

Here are some photos from the Leica, tell me what you think!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39324697@N03/sets/72157621900481373/

Over the years I have learned that the more equipment I carry, the less I shoot.

cknapp1961 said:

Over the years I have learned that the more equipment I carry, the less I shoot.

Click to expand...

Same here. Nowadays I only carry a Leica with a 50mm, or a olympus XA around.

Ive packed 4 cameras on the trip I'm on now...but I only carry 1 or 2 (and they're all hand holdable) when I"m actually doing anything. So, what cknapp says!

I have run a couple of colour films through my FED3 Jupiter 8 combination. The look is different from my Nikkors, shall we say more pastel? But I think that I may like it. A couple of years ago I tried a Zenit SLR which gave a similar effect. Maybe something with soviet lenses?

I would love to see your results from colour film and Jupiter 8, Marko, to compare with mine.

I don't have that kind of problem, I only carry my Minox!
lol

There is (there was a url link here which no longer exists) in the enlarging subforum about dramatically different tonal renderings from prints enlarged from the same negative using different enlarger lenses. It seems the lenses with better corner-to-center sharpness, such as the APOs, produced projected images higher in contrast and therefore of a more compressed tonal scale, making it more difficult to get good mid-tones and highlights in the finished print. Conversely, older, less well corrected lenses seemed to produce projected images that, while less sharp, had a more pleasing tonal range when printed on silver paper.

I wonder if a similar effect is happening in your comparison of old Russian rangefinders versus Japanese cameras; perhaps in order to get more pleasing tones from silver gelatin film we require lenses that sacrifice overall sharpness for a softer pallet, excess contrast being the death-knell of a good silver gelatin print, in my experience.

~Joe

Erik Petersson said:

I have run a couple of colour films through my FED3 Jupiter 8 combination. The look is different from my Nikkors, shall we say more pastel? But I think that I may like it. A couple of years ago I tried a Zenit SLR which gave a similar effect. Maybe something with soviet lenses?

I would love to see your results from colour film and Jupiter 8, Marko, to compare with mine.

Click to expand...

Sorry, Industar 61, not Jupiter 8 on my camera.

My FED2 / Industar 21 produces spectacular B&W's I have never tried color with it. I also have a Zorki 4 w/ Jupiter8 and it to produces outstanding B&W. Again I have never tried color film. I usually use one of my Nikon film bodies for color.