Vintage lenses versus modern lenses. What’s best? I vacillate all of the time on this topic. On most days if you asked me, I would say that I’m a “vintage” guy. Other times, I would say that I like what modern lenses offer. In the end, it’s all about what you want to achieve. Both offer advantages and disadvantages. There is something about the vintage lens “look and feel” that appeals to me a lot. It’s a visual feast when you nail the exposure and allow the optics to sing. Truly wonderful. The modern lenses kind of lack that “je ne sais quoi”. Maybe because they are coated (which can be a plus in certain situations) or maybe because they are too perfect. I’m not sure.
Today, I’m a vintage guy for sure. There was such beautiful light here today. We have a snow storm coming in and it clouded up but was still bright. I love the rocks and trees on our property. I said this before, but I could make an entire body of work and never leave my land. And I just might do that.
I broke out the Dallmeyer 3B, stopped it down to f/5.6, and exposed a Whole Plate negative for 3 seconds. I chose wet collodion because there was some wind kicking up and wanted a tack sharp image. The dry plate would have been at least 8 minutes today. I couldn’t make that happen with the wind. I love the wet process, it does offer much better exposure times, no doubt. And, you can work in light that wouldn’t be optional for the dry process.
A Platinum Palladium print from a wet collodion negative.
A detail (iPhone snap) of the print. It doesn’t do it justice, but you can get the idea.