Testing my newly aquired gear. Using an M4, a Leica CL, an Hexar RF led me to the wonderful Zeiss Ikon ZM. Functionwise essentially a Leica M7, but with a far better Viewfinder (IMHO when wearing glasses). It has aperture priority exposure automatic (like Hexar and M7), is lighter than an M7 (by substantially 150g). Sharing most merits with the great Hexar RF it distincts by the manual film advance which i prefer.
The Summarit complements my Lux perfectly. It is small, light, easy to operate and has great image quality (tested on black and white film so far). When you want a highly portable and unobtrusive setup, this is my way to go.
some time ago i aquired a dozen of Adox HR 50 because i am curious what resolution is analog be capable of. Now Leica itself launched a film stock very similar to the HR 50. Sun was shining in Frankfurt this day, so i grabbed one from the refrigerator and loaded the Zeiss with it.
Second roll is the legendary Kodak Tri-X, shot at ISO800 and pushed +1 at development. I needed the higher speed because sunset and shooting in the subway station. The Summarit opens just to f/2.4, so this was necessary.
Both rolls were developed with Adox HR-DEV, a developer specially created for the HR50 but also recommended for pushing Tri-X.
Because of the high ambient temperature, i have choosen the recommendation for HR50 of developing at 24°C for 13 minutes resulting in a sligter higher contrast.
For Tri-X i cooled down the developer to the recommended 20°C.
I’m pleased with the results from both film stocks. the results from the pushed Tri-X are a little less grainy than using Rodinal (See my Lisbon pictures).
Scans are made with a Lumix S5II and 100mm Macro on my 3D printed scanner setup. This brings a little more details and is by far faster than my OpticFilm 135.
This are some shots from the Adox HR 50:
The resolution of the HR 50 is remarkable. Also the Summarit delivers, aperture was around f/5.6 to f/8).
The scans were made using the high resolution mode of the S5II with 96 MPs. This is a crop from the clock tower picture (The pics in the gallery are resized to 4K):
Now down to the subway station with Tri-X:
