Vancouver Cityscapes and a New Lens /  by Nathan Jones

Over the Easter long weekend, I made several attempts to photograph the setting moon at dawn from the clifftop of our vacation property on De Courcy Island. I haven’t developed that roll because I have run out of C41 colour negative developer, so I don’t yet know how the images turned out. However, I suspect that I will be disappointed—and not only because the sole film I had at the time was the lacklustre Fuji 200. As I made the photographs, I found myself lamenting the lack of a longer lens to bring the moon “closer” and to flatten the image. As all film photographers know, eBay is both a blessing and a curse, and no sooner had I returned to Vancouver than I found myself browsing the site for a 135 mm lens as a step up from the 90 mm focal length that I used on the clifftop. My “new” 135 mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R arrived from Japan earlier this week. The cityscapes in this post are among the first of the photographs that I have made with it.

I am pleased with the sharpness, contrast, and linearity of this lens. I am looking forward to using it to make more photographs of the city, particularly at night.

The photographs of False Creek were made from the roof of the parking lot on Lameys Mill Road, while the long views of downtown Vancouver from the east were shot from the bridge over the skytrain tracks on Clark Drive at 6th Avenue, near the cruciform East Van sign.

All of the photographs in this post were exposed on Fomapan 100 black-and-white film (shot at ISO 80) using a Leica R8 mounted with the 135 mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R lens focused to infinity. In all cases the camera was mounted on a tripod. Exposures were made at f/11 and ca. 1/45 s.

Two Landscapes in Colour /  by Nathan Jones

Long Beach, Tofino, 2022.

Rolleiflex 2.8F, Zeiss 80 mm f/2.8 Planar, Kodak Portra 400.

Here are two landscapes in black and white.

Osoyoos, 2013 /  by Nathan Jones

Rolleiflex 2.8F, Zeiss 80 mm f/2.8 Planar, Kodak Tri-X 400, Kodak D76.

From 2009-2013, or thereabouts, I carried a Rolleiflex TLR camera with me wherever I went. Almost invariably it was loaded with black-and-white film, which I developed in my bathroom at home. A few weeks ago, I began the process of re-examining the archive of my negatives with the goal of producing a photobook that seeks to make thematic sense of my relationship to photography over the last 15 years. The four photographs shown above may eventually be included in this work.

Here is my current selection of photographs for this project.

Here are brief descriptions of my current projects and a list of abandoned/defunct projects.

Another Main Street Portrait, 2011 /  by Nathan Jones

Rolleiflex 6006 Model 1 (equipped with 645 back), 80 mm f/2.8 Planar, Kodak Portra 400.

I love the Nikon F this fellow photographer is carrying. I have added the upper photograph to Candid, a gallery of colour photographs of my family, friends, and acquaintances.

The Leica R7, a Flawed Diamond /  by Nathan Jones

The Leica R7 was the last in the line of electromechanical SLR cameras descending from the German-Japanese collaboration that produced the Leica R3 in 1977. That camera, which shared much of its DNA with the Minolta XE (released in 1974 as the XE-1 in Europe and the XE-7 in North America), was the lighter, smaller, and less-expensive-to-manufacture successor to the famously over-engineered and unprofitable Leicaflex SL2 that was produced by Leitz from 1974 to 1976. The partnership between Leitz and Minolta culminated in the release of the R7 in 1992, twenty years after the two companies had signed an agreement of technical cooperation. In 1996, the R7 was succeeded by the R8, which was designed exclusively by Leica and was a radical break from the R3–R7 line.

Keep reading my review of the Leica R7 …