After years of tinkering, finally, yesterday, I, more or less, perfected the prototype, swing/shift/tilt, platform for digital, mirrorless bodies

Based on a Leica M Bellows, disassembled, and carefully hacksawed, a Novoflex Castel Q focusing rail, 2 Chinese Rotating quick release clamps, and both Really Right Stuff and Chinese quick release plates. The device goes together and comes apart in a minute or two; and allows for swinging and shifting both lens and body, and tilting the lens; to achieve changing the plane of focus on the sensor. Here we see the platform with Leica M 240 body and a 1970 Leitz Wetzlar 1:3.5/ 65 mm Elmar. The next 2 photographs show the results.
(click photo to view larger)Test Photo 1 – The flower image below was taken without swing or shift and wide open @ f:4. You can see the everything behind the point of focus quickly falling out of focus. Test Photo 2 – By swinging and shifting the lens you can see, below, those elements, behind the point of focus coming more into focus, even including some of the distant, sunlit background. The camera did not move. The aperture did not change its only the effect of swinging and shifting the lens. This “look” can only be achieved “optically.” It cannot be achieved digitally in post processing. Here we see the degree of swing and shift used to achieve the look in Test Photo – 2.

Today I also checked to make sure the contraption will work the Leica SL body.Below we see the result achieved with this body, and same 53 year old Leitz lens, on the platform; with a bit more time spent considering composition . The result of a threesome:
a Leica SL digital body,
a 1970 Leitz Wetzlar 65mm lens,
and a contraption I’ve
been developing over years;
just to stay in touch with
“the optical bench”
that was the “view camera” experience.
The 65mm Leitz Elmar sits among the ‘bokeh’ royalty; in my occasionally humble opinion.

Lost in the Beauty Full Mysteries of Attraction

How many billions of leaves lay on the forest floor?
I’m attracted to one of them. Why?
I pick it up. Gingerly. It’s dry and fragile. I put it in my pocket.
And hope that it does not turn to dust there.
It joins other found objects brought home to ponder.
Bones, bark, stones… attracted to their hue, texture, form, hidden stories…
Over days, weeks, months, years, I watch them.
They seem to my eyes as songs to my ears.
We change together. I see them differently. As I hear songs differently.
As the light changes, or the point of view changes.
As I change.
Do they continue to attract my attention? Why? Just me? or You too?
Universally attractive?


(click images for larger view)

No time like the present to yield to desire…

For reasons unknown
I’ve wanted to creatively engage with a “bonsai tree”
most of my adult life.
I’ve been gifted with 2 or 3 over the decades.
The little super market varieties. Pretty much destined to die.
Sooner rather than later.
I did manage to nurture a wonderful bonsai box elder
which seeded itself in a beautiful, ancient, landscape rock, at the Mequon Road House.
I moved that rock and little bonsai tree to the Wasaukee Road House in 2014.
But was unable to move it; or remove the tree from its rock; when forced to sell that home in 2022.

Today. My final attempt, to engage in a creative encounter with a bonsai, arrived in the mail;
along with instructions, proper soil, pruning shears, shaping wire, fertilizer, and an $8, on-line, video class, access code.
This Juniper is old enough to withstand some minor mistakes on my part.
Yet not so old as to be unaffordable.
So. Repotted as instructed. A bit of minor wiring and trimming… and we’re in a relationship.
Sort of like my new “adopted” bird friends:

(click images for larger view)

Friday: about flowers and lenses

So I “needed” a backup… second body to photograph an upcoming wedding. I scanned eBay over a month or two to get an idea of market prices; finally went for a kit which included what appeared to be a low mileage 5D body, genuine Canon Backpack case, a few batteries, charger, a remote timer/trigger, some miscelaneous filters, including +1 and +2 Hoya Closeup lenses, an next newer version of my 580 speed light, with IR trigger unit, and a very inexpensive, though relatively well reviewed, Quantaray 19-35mm f:3.5-4.5 lens. All this for the super righteous price of $450. The lens sells, used, on eBay for $46 – $90; which is remarkable because it sold new for $150 a half dozen years ago. So on to testing this mildly used equipment to find out if I received anything that I can actually use for this upcoming wedding. It all works perfectly; as designed. The lens actually performed shockingly well.

(click photograph for larger view)

Canon 5D, Quantaray 19-35mm with Hoya +2 Closeup Lens attached

Friday’s flora, fungi and old stuff

This past week /
i reflected on past times /
as i repaired a 100 year old fountain pen /
with flexible 14 k gold tines /
and a sac gone brittle into dust /

img_0438(Settles Supremacy Pen, photographed with iPhone 6s, iPro S2 Century Macro)

Then, on this overcast, chilly, fall morning /
I pickup a lens made in 1970 (Leica made 1,000 of them that year) /
and attach it to a Visoflex III, made sometime between 1961 and 1984 /
and attach all that to a full frame digital Leica /
that only makes black and white image files /

and in doing all of that /
i actually seem to ‘connect’ /
with a younger version of myself /

(click photograph for larger view)

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(Last flower and Shaggy Ink Caps, photographed with Leica M Monochrom, 65 mm Elmar on Visoflex III)

img_0440(Leica Monochrom, Visoflex III and 65 mm Elmar, with ink on a page, photographed with iPhone 6s)