Showing posts with label Gulf of Corinth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gulf of Corinth. Show all posts

Sunday, December 22, 2019

By the Sea, By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea* (Greece 2019-01)

Stomio, Greece, with Gulf of Corinth in background. Kodak Ektar 100 film, Yashica Electro 35CC camera 
Dear Readers, winter has descended on much of North America. Ice storms covered the eastern states with perfect timing for the Thanksgiving Holiday. People are thinking of Christmas (and another storm). While the snow is swirling and wind is howling, thoughts wander to summer. What could be more summer-like than a vacation by the sea? What could be better than the sea in Greece? This will be the first of a series of posts about my August 2019 sojourn to the 'Med.

Beware: "pretty" pictures follow (I warned you all some time ago that I might start posting more pretty snapshots. But do not despair, grunge and urban decay will be following).
Vouliagmanis west of Loutraki, Greece. Kodak Ektar 100 film, Yashica Electro 35CC camera
Fresh octopus and lemon juice - what could be better (maybe a Greek coffee?)
The Limni Vouliagmani (Λίμνη Βουλιαγμένη Λουτρακίου (Κορινθίας) is called a lake but is really a sea-water bay west of the city of Loutraki on the Perachora peninsula. The bay is almost completely enclosed by limestone cliffs and has a narrow opening facing the Gulf of Corinth. The bay has become a popular destination for Athenians, who come here to swim, water-ski, and eat at seaside tavernas.
If you drive around the head of the Gulf of Corinth and continue along the south shore, you reach the little town of Nerantza. Here the beach is mostly cobble, but there is sand offshore. Time to sit and have a Greek coffee - and read a law book(?).
Lunch at Kogia Restaurant, right at the beach. Yes, the ingredients are locally-sourced. Yes, the chef prepares and grills or roasts everything to order. Yes, it is delicious. No, there is no vile corn syrup or other crap in the food. Why do so many American restaurants serve such offal while the most modest Greek restaurant will prepare a delicious and healthy meal from scratch for you?
Stomio, Greece
Mixed salad (not refrigerated, made fresh), Stomio, Greece
A few kilometers further west along the south shore of the Gulf of Corinth is Stomio. Purely by chance, I stopped at a small taverna after a few hours of exploring and had another superb meal.
This is the Gulf of Corinth from the Monastery of Panagias Korifis, situated on a spectacular cliff overlooking the coastal plain and the town of Xilokastro. The light color water contains silt from stream runoff. So much rain fell during the winter of 2018-2019, streams overflowed and farmers experienced local flooding. The sea inshore was more turbid this summer than usual.

This ends our short overview of summer at the sea. More Greek articles will follow.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Successful Experiment: Pentax Takumar 24mm Lens on my Leica M2

Background

When I travel overseas and need to pack light, I often take my Leica M2 rangefinder camera with its compact 35mm and 50mm f/2.0 Summicron lenses (and light meter, filters, and hoods). But recently, I have been thinking wide, which must go along with my increasing girth. Some options:
  1. New Leica 24mm f/1.4 Summilux-M lens. $7500 in USA. (Wow)
  2. Used (OK, "pre-owned") Leica 24mm f/2.8 lens. About $1800. (Lesser wow)
  3. Used Zeiss Biogon 25 mm f/2.8 ZM lens. About $750.
  4. New Skopar 24mm f/4.0 lens. About $400
Of course the genuine 24mm M lens or the 25mm Zeiss would be best, but realistically I would not use them all that often. But we have a clean Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 24mm f/3.5 lens for the Pentax Spotmatic in the cabinet. It has a longer register distance to the mount than true M lenses, making room for an adapter. So I bought a $20 Fotodiox M42-Leica M adapter from Amazon and did a test run. (Note: all the M42 thread-mount Pentax Takumar lenses are excellent performers on film.)
Chinese specialty companies make adapters to fit just about any older manual SLR lens to most so-called mirrorless digital camera bodies. This gives new life to many beautiful classic film lenses. Most longer focal lengths, around 50mm or more, perform really well on digital bodies. The wide angles sometimes have problems with digital sensors, but in that I was using film, I was going to use a lens designed for film on the correct sensing media.

Results

The good: The optical results were better than I expected. I do not have a genuine Leica 24, so I have no basis for comparison. Sure, it is not as "sharp" as my 35 Summicron, but so what? Sharpness phobia consumes pseudo-photographers on digital camera web pages. For $20, I am pleased.

The clumsy: Framing is a problem. If I move my eye left and right and up and down the maximum extent across the M2's eyepiece, I think I see most of the 24mm coverage. The lens blocks part of the view, and using the genuine Takumar hood is hopeless. To do: buy a 24mm auxiliary finder. Focus is totally manual.

The heavy: The Takumar with its Fotodiox adapter is a bulky and rather heavy cylinder.

Here are some examples from Romania and Greece. The film was Fujifilm Acros, exposed at EI=80. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film in Xtol. I scanned the film with a Plustek 7600i scanner using the Tri-X 400 profile (the SilverFast software does not have an Acros profile).
Rooftops, view from Kronhaus B&B, Braşov, Romania, 24mm Takumar lens. 
Room with a view, dormer window at Kronhaus, Braşov, Romania. Leica 35mm f/2.0 Summicron lens. 
Room with a view, dormer window at Kronhaus, Braşov, Romania. Takumar 24mm f/3.5 lens. 
Our room at a bed and breakfast in Braşov, Romania, had interesting views over the old tile roofs in the historic center. The two photographs above show the difference in coverage between the 35mm lens and the 24mm. The exposure is a bit different, and I think the 35mm Summicron does a slightly better job at distinguishing subtle tonal variations.
The view of the upper town and the Gothic tower of the Lutheran Cathedral of Saint Mary in Sibiu, Romania, is from the Council Tower. I used a yellow filter on the 24mm lens to darken the sky. The photograph is through glass, which you see in the upper left.
This abandoned hotel, possibly once called the Angela, is in Nerantza, Greece, a few km west of Corinth on the Gulf of Corinth. I have photographed here in 2011, but the 24mm lens with black and white film gives an appropriately gloomy look to this 1960s hulk.
Never-complete hotel, Nerantza, Greece

Conclusions

The 24mm Takumar lens works well on the Leica M2. Framing is clumsy and you need to guess the distance of your main subject, but that is not too critical with a wide angle lens. I already had the 24mm lens, so $20 for an adapter was a bargain way to get wide angle coverage. A 24mm auxiliary finder would be helpful.

Other photography articles

Please click the links for other articles about equipment, informal tests, and film:

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Decaying hotel, Nerantza, Greece

Greece has attracted tourists for centuries. In the 1800s, well-to-do young Brits visited Greece as part of their almost-obligatory continental tour. Some Philhellenes, like Lord Byron, lost their lives in the revolution when Greece freed itself from Ottoman domination. (From Wikipedia: Philhellenism ("the love of Greek culture") was an intellectual fashion prominent at the turn of the 19th century, that led Europeans like Lord Byron or Charles Nicolas Fabvier to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.) By the late 1800s, foreign archaeologists were combing the countryside, excavating ancient sites.

The early 20th century was rough on tourism. Greece suffered dictatorship, the Balkan Wars, World War I, World War II, and the brutal civil war, during which almost 20 percent of the population perished. Finally, with the advent of the Truman Doctrine and the defeat of the communist forces, Greece slowly pulled itself out of poverty and began to rebuild. Adventurous tourists came in the 1950s, and Greek builders began to erect big box hotels to attract the mass-market crowd in the 1960s.

This example is a hotel in the town of Nerantza (Νεράντζα), a farming and vacation village about 15 km west of Corinth on the south shore of the Gulf of Corinth.


I suppose it was a necessary economic step, but the 1960s and 1970s were a rough phase in Greece's architectural and cultural history. Mass market tourists cared little for archaeology and culture, but were drawn by cheap lodgings, sun, beer, wine, and sex.


The hotel has been deserted since well before 1992, when I first visited Nerantza. A relative remembers when he taught water-skiing to tourists here in the 1960s.


I remember these hotels: drafty, echoey, and charmless. As late as the 1970s, you had to find out when the hot water would be on, but you could always have a cold shower. The bathrooms were a wet mess after a shower. They were damaging to the environment because often they overwhelmed the local sewage treatment systems, and excess runoff ran into the sea. Tourists used far more water than local inhabitants.

This was the kitchen. Breakfast was a boring affair with a mandatory two pieces of bread (yesterday's leftovers?), a piece of pound cake, Nescafe, orange drink, and a certain number of grams of butter. The government must have established this as a minimum standard for all hotels. No delicious, crusty peasant bread at these establishments.

Here was a pool, even though the sea was across the street.

The problem with this hulk is no developer wants to pay for demolition, and the architecture is unsuited for contemporary hotel use. The United States is not the only country where commercial structures are abandoned, leaving the municipality (and taxpayers) to deal with demolition and environmental issues.

Nerantza must have experienced a building boom in the 1960s because there are a number of unfinished concrete frames along the main road. Did tourists lose interest? Was the setting not glamorous enough for a resort? With the completion of the high-speed rail link to Athens, the town is becoming a popular place for vacation and year-round homes. Farm fields are disappearing, to be replaced by concrete.

All photographs taken with an Olympus E-330 digital camera and Olympus 14-54 mm f/2.8 lens.

Friday, December 3, 2010

More Deserted Winter Beaches: Porto Germeno, Attica, Greece


Porto Germeno (also known as Aegosthena) is a quiet little resort in Western Attica facing the northeast Gulf of Corinth. It is about 70 km from Athens and in summer must have a busy clientele on weekends.

December is another story. Most of the tavernas are closed, some sealed up with plastic. The wind howls off the Corinthian Gulf and the place has a forlorn look.


Surprisingly, we found one taverna open. The cook was there alone and he started a kerosene heater in one of the pavilions. We sat around in jackets and mittens, but soon the temperature was comfortable. Soon he served a delicious meal: fresh grilled fish, fried potatoes, salads. How do these Greeks do it, and in the middle of winter in a remote tiny town?

The photograph above gives you an idea why it can be rough reaching Porto Germeno in December. We had to leave the 2-wheel drive car in a village and all squeeze into the jeep. Winter is fun.