I brought several of my film and digital cameras with me on my 40th college reunion two weeks ago. Rather than let everybody sit in the car and just go from Albany to Central New York and back, I wanted to give all of the cameras a chance to shine at one point in time or another.
And at the time, I also wanted to test out the distances achieved between two of my recently-acquired lenses, the 80mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar “kit lens” that came with the Pentacon Six, and the new-to-me Meyer Optik Görlitz Orestegor 500mm f/5.6 telephoto that, because it’s so big and thick, I’ve kinda nicknamed it “Johnny Wadd.” If you’re too young to know who Johnny Wadd is, go look up films like Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here. Maybe don’t look that up at work, but hey, you do you.
It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and the Hamilton College Chapel – the iconic three-story prayer house that remains the focal point of college life – stands ready for its closeup…