Photos by Pete Zimmerman
Minox II
"After months of debating whether I should risk my Minox II out of doors I decided to take it out for one day with a roll of Copex Rapid loaded. I chose the film because it's extraordinarily fine-grained and also very tough. That was necessary because of the focal plane lens in contact with the film and the high probability of scratching.
In all my years of Minoxing I have never seen a sharper Minox lens. The contrast is quite high and the resolution probably better than anything else I own. Walter Seibert, the lens designer, was a genius! It is clear why he pushed to try the focal plane lens in series production: even 49 years later, it is a brilliant performer. And a damn shame that there was no way to avoid scratches (yes, I got some. but when I printed with diffusion, they essentially vanished on the print.)"
"The one of the tower is from a 10x14 (full height of Minox head), and the one of the light fixture is from an 8x10. Both are printed straight with a grade 1.5 filter (I'm going to reprint at 0.5 because of my scanner's properties) and without using the Opal diffuser on the enlarger. The reprints will also (at least some) use the opal filter. My scanner stinks; I am going to have to persuade my wife that it's OK to buy one of the new UMAX 300/600 flatbeds so I can scan from a full-sized print and not have things like the vertical lines on the tower take up only two screen pixels each. And so I have some real control over gamma!" Copyright 1997, Peter Zimmerman.
COPYRIGHT @ 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 by Joe McGloin. All Rights Reserved.