The Work of Jim Galli

[IanBarber]

I really do like the look of the work that Jim Galli produces. There is something about the lower contrast looking photographs that do appeal to me.

Not really knowing much about lenses, would it be possible to use an old low contrast lens on say a Chamonix 045N-2 4x5 camera

[Ken Lee]

If the lens is mounted in a shutter, there's no problem as long as it isn't too large of heavy. If you want to shoot barrel-mounted lenses, you have a variety of options, some more convenient than others.

[IanBarber]

Thanks Ken for the information

[HiHoSilver]

'Never liked soft-focused anything. 'Pinholes, Holga. Yuck. Then I saw Jim Galli's work.

[chassis]

Ian, I have an 11 inch meniscus from Jim. It is mounted in a Betax shutter, and I use it on my Toyo 45AII. Great lens for its soft effect and focal length on 4x5. Here are two example images with this lens and the Toyo, both with TXP 320.

https://c7.staticflickr.com/6/5532/30464746934_2e183f147f_c.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/Nq4MTu)
American Holly (https://flic.kr/p/Nq4MTu) by _uplift_ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/65283600@N07/), on Flickr

https://c6.staticflickr.com/6/5731/30562275101_ac4cb539eb_c.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/NyFDBB)
Lamp (https://flic.kr/p/NyFDBB) by _uplift_ (https://www.flickr.com/photos/65283600@N07/), on Flickr

[IanBarber]

Ian, I have an 11 inch meniscus from Jim. It is mounted in a Betax shutter, and I use it on my Toyo 45AII. Great lens for its soft effect and focal length on 4x5. Here are two example images with this lens and the Toyo, both with TXP 320.

These are beautiful to my eyes, this is exactly the look I am striving for. I have searched eBay but to be honest not really sure what i am looking for but the look you have in these photographs are certainly what I am striving for

[Emil Schildt]

These are beautiful to my eyes, this is exactly the look I am striving for. I have searched eBay but to be honest not really sure what i am looking for but the look you have in these photographs are certainly what I am striving for

If you look at the bay again, Theres a couple of Dallmeyer Patent landscape lenses.... if you unscrew the lens and use it in a shutter you can get very nice soft tone images...

[IanBarber]

The only issue I would have with no shutter is judging the exposure time properly although as I use slow films Fomapan rated at EI50 I might be ok on these dark winter days

[chassis]

What about contacting Jim directly and asking him to make you a lens in a shutter? Is he still doing this?

[IanG]

Shutters are easy to find for brass and other old lenses. The most common in the UK are ThorntonPickard roller blind shuters, I've just fitted one to a Wista/Linhof size board so a member of this forum can use a Dagor on a field camera, they can also be front mounted on a lens which I do with a 10" Petzval I restored although larger TP shutters are harder to find.

Other alternatives are Luc and similar front mounting shutters, a Focal Plane back, a Packard shutter, Norka etc there's plenty of possibilities. Look up Guillotine shutters they are quiet easy to make, in fact I'm sure Jim Galli has written about using them.

I deliberately missed an easier option which is to find a Speed Graphic, or an MPP MicroPress, these have focal plane shutters and can be used with any focal length lens that will fit with or without a shutter.

Be aware that not all old uncoated lenses are low contrast, Dagors, Protars and similar have excellent contrast close to coated and even multi-coated modern lenses because they only have two internal air/glass surfaces. The more internal air/glass surfaces the greater the internal flare and the lower the contrast.

Ian

[IanBarber]

Be aware that not all old uncoated lenses are low contrast

Is there any easy way to identify a low contrast lens by simply looking at a picture of it

[Randy]

A modern'ish alternative is a Wollaston meniscus lens from Reinhold Schable (http://www.re-inventedphotoequip.com/Lenses.html) On 4X5 I love the 190mm lens. Very affordable and well made. The only problem is figuring out how to mount in shutter. I use mine on my Graflex Series D, that has a built-in focal-plane shutter.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52893762/wollaston1.jpg

[jnantz]

Is there any easy way to identify a low contrast lens by simply looking at a picture of it

hi ian

what lens do you currently have ? have you exposed your film with the lens wide open,
and focused infront of the subject a couple of feet ? have you tried shooting through a plastic bag, or
white or black pantyhose, with a cigarette hole burned in the middle ? or a filter
( plastic or glass ) that you exhaled ( or a smoker friend ) smoke on and poked a clear hole in the middle with
your finger? there are a lot of easy ways to make low contrast images ( including shooting on overcast / low contrast days :) )
you can play with as you look for your lens. you might consider an old 1920s tessar, or rapid rectilinear, they offer a really nice smooth
out of focus area and sometimes are very fast lenses.

good luck finding what you can use+afford !

john

ps. i agree with randy, reinhold's meniscus lenses are great !
he also sells a shutter that mounts on the front of the lens if you can't find one ( or don't have a graflex or TP, or a jim galli shutter ( 2 darkslides )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Baa8Bwnn9Sk
:)

[chassis]

Agree with the idea of shooting wide open with an otherwise normal lens. Very pleasing in many cases. There is a thread on this: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?22286-Wide-F***ing-Open!&highlight=wide

[jp]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICLG3HCDlhk

Here's Jim Galli with his Galli shutter doing some fast speeds.
He sell some lenses in shutter from time to time, so get in contact with him.
I use a speed graphic mostly
Shooting after sundown is valid too if you want slow shutter speeds with fast film outdoors.
Reinhold makes good stuff too, I have used his 190mm extensively with my speed graphic.

[IanG]

Is there any easy way to identify a low contrast lens by simply looking at a picture of it

Not really, but knowing how many elements and how they are configured helps enormously, so a Dagor or Protar and equivalent has 4 elements in two cemented pairs so two internal air/glass surfaces, the commonest Brass lenses are RR's (Rapid Rectilinear) again two pairs of cemented cells.

A triplet has 3 separate elements so 4 internal air/glass surfaces as do Tessar and type lenses which are cemented pair and two other elements, Petzval lenses are similar a pair and two other elements.

Lowest in contrast of the common lens types are the Dialytes 4 separate elements so 6 internal air/glass surfaces, there's plenty about in early Dial set Compur shutters - Dogmars, Celors, Eurynars, the 170mm f7.7 and 203mm f7.7 Kodak Anastigmats, etc.

However it's not just contrast, people are usually looking at the character of older lenses particularly wide open and a Triplet will look quite different to a Dialyte which is a much sharper lens design overall, with a Tessar somewhere in between.

Petzvals have a look of their own.

Ian

[Ken Lee]

At the risk of splitting hairs...

As IanG points out, old un-coated lenses with many air-glass surfaces suffer from internal flare. Light bounces around inside the lens. It's a form of noise.

At first glance, flare conveys an overall impression of lower contrast, but on closer inspection it's actually fog. It reduces resolution and lowers effective film speed.

Lenses designed for portraiture have uncorrected aberrations, something a little different. A coated Heliar (http://www.kennethleegallery.com/html/heliar/) or a modern Cooke PS945 (http://www.cookeoptics.com/l/ps945_soft_focus.html) do not suffer from light bouncing around the insides. They are not low contrast lenses and they are not low resolution lenses - but at wide apertures they render highlights and out-of-focus areas with a special glow.

[IanBarber]

At the risk of splitting hairs...

As IanG points out, old un-coated lenses with many air-glass surfaces suffer from internal flare. Light bounces around inside the lens. It's a form of noise.

At first glance, flare conveys an overall impression of lower contrast, but on closer inspection it's actually fog. It reduces resolution and lowers effective film speed.

Lenses designed for portraiture have uncorrected aberrations, something a little different. A coated Heliar (http://www.kennethleegallery.com/html/heliar/) or a modern Cooke PS945 (http://www.cookeoptics.com/l/ps945_soft_focus.html) do not suffer from light bouncing around the insides. They are not low contrast lenses and they are not low resolution lenses - but at wide apertures they render highlights and out-of-focus areas with a special glow.


A beautiful set Ken, this is the look I am looking for

[Bill Burk]

I get a kick out of Jim Galli's dark slide shutter... IanBarber, you can always err on the side of overexposure. What's the worst that can happen? Halation? Loss of critical sharpness? Haaa that's what you're going for in the first place...

[pjd]

Hmm...by low contrast, do you mean soft focus? IanG has made some good points about uncoated lenses above, to which I'd add that some of the theoretically lower contrast lenses (uncoated Plasmats, Dogmar etc) are pretty sharp even wide open - and therefore not very Galli-ish. I'm sure Jim would have some advice for you if you contact him, and maybe an interesting lens to buy - it feels redundant to write this here, but he's a good person to buy from.

If you are looking for reasonably priced soft focus lenses on eBay, good luck with that ;) On the other hand Jim Galli made some appealing images with less expensive optics (think Versar, for example). Maybe you are on the wrong side of the Atlantic to pick up that sort of glass at attractive prices though. There's probably something suitable on ebay.co.uk though. I recently almost had a great deal...I recently bought a box of junky looking stuff with a Lancaster meniscus barrel in there...sadly when it turned up there was no glass in the barrel!

I don't know anything about Chamonix cameras, would it be able to bear the shame of a Chinese pictorial lens? The Chinese pictorials might be a good place to start!

[Bernice Loui]

Lens, camera, film, post process and much more results in the style of images by Jim Galli. About a decade ago on LFF there was a thread to share images in Jim Galli's style.

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?42963-post-quot-in-Galli-style-quot&highlight=jim+galli+style


Bernice

[Bernice Loui]

As for the effects of lens flare on contrast, lens aperture on the image. Here is a short video illustrating what happens when a classic Angénieux 25-250mm T3.9, Type 2 mounted on a Canon M3 mirror less digital is subjected to intentional flare inducing lighting. While this is not done on a sheet film camera, the behavior of the Angénieux 25-250mm cinema zoom serves as an example of lens flare under these conditions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5ufNw5Rses

159091

[Mark Sawyer]

While multi-element uncoated lenses may have less contrast due to flare, contrast is primarily controlled during film development. Someone who knows what they're doing can easily make a high contrast negative from a "low-contrast" uncoated Plasmat with six inner air-glass surfaces, or a low contrast negative from a "high-contrast" modern multi-coated Dagor with only two inner air-glass surfaces. And, of course, there is quite a bit of choice in contrast during the printing process.

What high-flare/low-contrast lenses tend to do is muddy the shadows. The random "noise" light Ken was talking about affects the shadows most, where it overwhelms the relatively less "signal", or image-forming light. The highlight areas have received a lot more image-forming light than the shadow areas, so they can better defend themselves against a little random flare.

[IanBarber]

So when we see images like this, are they considered to be low contrast

159112

[jp]

I'd call that low contrast.. You could not shoot that high contrast scene with a cell phone without either no shadow detail or blown out highlights. It's a high contrast scene rendered into a low contrast medium.

Lens has very little to do with this photo. I'd credit darkroom work.

Originally soft focus photographers had a lovely low contrast medium with subtle midtones.. They could do platinum prints or other alt processes in which low contrast was a printing craftsmanship choice. The look continues even when we scan and don't print today. The highlight halation of soft focus lens glow almost demands a low contrast medium so the highlights retain some subtle gradation and you might as well have rich midtones at the same time. Chrome and car bodywork is a great subject for all this (and Jim Galli knows it), even though the original pictorialists were not compatible with modernism and the machine age.

[IanBarber]

I am wondering if I am mistaking images like this for low contrast lens then if it was more of a printing craft

[Ken Lee]

With film it's not just done in the darkroom, but in exposure and development and printing. There's a chain, a series of steps.

(Digital workflow is no different: they are often different steps, but for a scene like that, several steps may be required.)

With film, we expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights, so as JP and Mark have said, a competent photographer can handle a scene like that church and come up with a lovely rendition as you showed.

[Jac@stafford.net]

We can adjust contrast in the darkroom, and in digital but soft-focus is far more complex and in most cases can only be done in-camera. Soft focus is not just about general fuzziness.
.

[HiHoSilver]

So when we see images like this, are they considered to be low contrast

159112

Dang, Ian. That's gorgeous.

[IanG]

I am wondering if I am mistaking images like this for low contrast lens then if it was more of a printing craft

Probably a combination of both a lower contrast lens and technique in this case. Just to give you a rough idea of the difference in contrast with Uncoated lenses here's a sample:

http://lostlabours.co.uk/Uploads/dagor-sm.jpg
Goerz 120mm f6.8 Dagor Compound shutter

http://lostlabours.co.uk/Uploads/tessar-sm.jpg
CZJ 165mm f5.3 Tessar (uncommon f5.3 version) Compur shutter

http://lostlabours.co.uk/Uploads/goerz-ihagee-sm.jpg
Goerz-Ihagee f6.3 DPP Anastigmat (Dialyte) Compur shutter

All three lenses are in excellent condition with very clean optics so this gives you an idea of just how much contrast drops as the number of air/glass surfaces increases. what you need to remember was before WWII it was common to expose and process negatives to to greater densities and contrast partly to help with lens contrast and the contemporary papers of the time matched those negatives.

Ian

[jnantz]

hi ianbarber

not sure if that is low contrast or long scale or both.
if you like low contrast you should try photographing in that sort of
light, or overcast conditions or using a vit c developer
like xtol or others like that, or even caffenol c. unlike what you might have heard,
ansco 130 and dektol give a nice long scale if dilute and used for (sheet) film, either alone or mixed with
caffenol c or development split between the 2 developers ... if you don't mind ephemeral images, put your
film negative in a contact frame with regular old photo paper and leave it in the sun for a few hours
the image that appears will fade but it will give you a nice long scale when you scan it
have fun !
john

[Emil Schildt]

Dang, Ian. That's gorgeous.

yes - Sudek was great... ;)