The Road South through Ranch Country, Texas (TX 06)

Heading south from Corpus Christi, two main roads lead through the lonely countryside to the Rio Grande Valley. You can drive US 281 south from Alice or US 77 from the western outskirts of Corpus Christi. We drove south on 281 and returned north via 77. They lead you through seemingly empty terrain with few towns and, from what I could see, not many cows. This was King Ranch country. What happened to the cows?

No gas here, Omega Mart, FM665, Petronila, Texas (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens)

Farm on FM665 east of Alice, Texas (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens, 1/60 ƒ/8, yellow filter)

The countryside becomes rather empty east and south of Corpus Christi, but there are gas plants, pipelines, and some pumping machines. 

The Spot, 281 Business, Alice, Texas. No coffee at this spot (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter)

Heading south out of Alice on 281, you drive and drive. One of the towns along the way is Falfurrias. No coffee shop there, either.

Christmas store, St. Mary's Street, Falfurrias, Texas (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter, 1/250 ƒ/5.6)

Duplex, St. Mary's Street, Falfurrias (Jupiter-8, yellow-green filter, 1/250 ƒ/5.6)

Felfurrias had some creative and very colorful artwork on some of the buildings. Here are a couple of examples from my Samsung phone.

Falfurrias Chamber of Commerce

Falfurrias Chamber of Commerce

I took the black and white frames on Fuji Acros film with my 1962 Jupiter-8 50mm ƒ/2 lens. It is a Soviet adaptation of the pre-war German Zeiss 50mm Sonnar lens. Mine is fully coated, and Brian Sweeney adjusted it to work correctly on Leica cameras. Leica lenses were based on a slightly different focal length standard than Soviet lenses, so most Soviet lenses need minor adjustment to focus properly on Leica thread-mount bodies. I like the results from this lens. Camera people write about the special magic of Sonnar lenses. For my type of documentation, I am not sure if I see any unique magic. But regardless, stopped down to ƒ/5.6 or so, it is high resolution and renders very well.

The Soviet Sonnar-type lenses were once incredibly cheap, but they have become coveted for their optical properties, and they are no longer cheap. Early 1950s examples use original Zeiss glass that was brought from Germany to the Soviet Union as war reparations. 

Next article: the Rio Grande Valley

The Football Scenic Road, central North Carolina (Abandoned films 08c)

North  Carolina Scenic Byways (from NC Department of Transportation)

Introduction

The State of North Carolina has a network of scenic byways that cover many of the historic and scenic parts of the state. If you go to the Department of Transport web page, you can download a book of the byways and look at an interactive map. You can also request a printed copy of the book.

The screen capture above is the online map on the NC-DOT web page. The blue line in the west is the Blue Ridge Parkway. Long-term readers may remember that I have driven much of the Parkway in 2017 and 2018. I have also driven the Nantahala and Fontana (Rte. 28) Byways. It is beautiful terrain in the west. 

For the urban decay photographer, the state is a treasure trove of old farmhouses, mills, factories, and quiet little towns that look like time passed by. 

The Football Road (west of Chapel Hill)

The DOT calls the route between Chapel Hill and the outskirts of Greensboro the Football Road. I do not know why it has this name. But it goes through nice farm country and avoids the boring Interstate 40. Part of it is Old Greensboro Road and then becomes the Old Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road.

Barn on Old Greensboro Road, near Chapel Hill

Farm house, Dawson Road near Chapel Hill

Farm, Old Greensboro Road near Chapel Hill

Barn, Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road near Snow Camp

Farm, Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road near Snow Camp (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter)

Happy cows, Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road near Eli Whitney

The Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road winds its way past farms and woods. An occasional car or tractor passes by. I was surprised that many of the silos consist of concrete tubes reinforced with exterior steel bands. It is a cylindrical version of a barrel. 

Fixer-upper house, Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road, near Snow Camp

Snow Camp

Historic school, Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre, Snow Camp

Restaurant next to Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre

The Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre is at 301 Drama Rd. (great name!) in Snow Camp. The site was empty when I visited in October, but in-season, the semi-professional company has been presenting plays for over 40 years. The restaurant next door will not be providing any meals for a long time..... 

Unoccupied farm, Holman Mill Road, Snow Camp

This ends our short excursion on the Football Road in central North Carolina. The time was late and I had to return to Chapel Hill.

These photographs are all on Kodak BW400CN film from my little Leica IIIC camera. I used my 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar and 50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lenses, often with a yellow filter to enhance clouds.

Last Time Ever: 135-size Kodak Panatomic-X (Abandoned Films 05b)

Dear readers, this is it, the last time for 135 size Kodak Panatomic-X film. I exposed my last roll in and around Vicksburg and will likely never use any again (although I still am using 120 format rolls for medium format cameras). The Panatomic-X from eBay sellers is usually older than the rolls I used, and they almost never have information on how it was stored. Here are some examples from this last roll of the famous Panatomic-X. I exposed it at exposure index (EI) = 20 and sent it to Northeast Photographic in Bath, Maine, to develop.

 

Vicksburg, Mississippi

Cherry Street bridge, Feb. 16, 2021 (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter, 1/30 ƒ/8)

This was one of our two unusual snowfalls in February.

Kroger supermarket, Pemberton Blvd. (Leitz 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens, deep yellow filter, 1/100 ƒ/4)

This is the site of the short-lived K-Mart store, which was poorly run and seldom had customers. This is a new building because the Kroger company tore down the K-Mart structure.

Pemberton Blvd., Vicksburg (Leitz 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens, deep yellow filter)

Parking lot north of Bunge terminal, Levee Street, Vicksburg (Summitar lens, ½ sec ƒ/11.5)

Kansas City Southern rail yard, Levee Street (Leitz Summitar lens)

"America" moored at the Vicksburg Waterfront, view down Grove Street (Leitz Summitar lens)

Kansas City Southern rail yard, Levee Street (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter, 1/20 ƒ/11)

Port of Vicksburg

Vicksburg Forest Products (formerly Anderson-Tully)

Vicksburg Forest Products, view north (Jupiter-8 lens, deep yellow filter)

Ergon Bio-fuels, Haining Road (Summitar lens)

DTE PetCoke company, 745 Industrial Drive

DTE is at the north end of Industrial Drive. I often bike there, and one of the ladies who works at DTE has given me bottles of chilled water on hot days. DTE stores and handles pulverized petroleum coke.

Falco Lime from Port Terminal Circle (Leitz Summitar, 1/60 ƒ/5.6)

Louisiana

Port of Lake Providence, Louisiana (Jupiter-8 lens, deep yellow filter)

Former cotton gin, Tallulah

Barn on Rte 602 near Tallulah (Jupiter-8 lens)

Po-Boy Don's, Louisiana Rte. 602 near Tallulah

Summary

 

This ends my Expired Film Treasures (Films from the Dead) series as it pertains to 35mm size. This has been a fun exploration, but I want to concentrate on contemporary films.  

• Panatomic-X was a beautiful film and very characteristic of the 20th century black and white aesthetic. 
• The last two rolls of Panatomic-X that I used were more grainy than I remember. Possibly this is a result of development, but more likely it is a result of the film being 30 years old.
• Today, Fuji Acros, Ilford Delta 100, and Kodak TMax 100 have a higher and more convenient film speed. They are finer grain and higher resolution, as well, showing the benefits of several decades of photo-chemical research and development. 
• Once you scan film and display it on the web, honestly, it is hard to distinguish different types of black and white film.
• Some of my pictures had out-of-focus areas. There may be a lens alignment problem with my Leica IIIC, and I sent it to DAG camera for a check-up. (Update: the camera is back and I need to test it.)
• I recommend that you do not seek out Panatomic-X film unless you can be sure that the rolls have been frozen all the years. Even then, having been discontinued about 1991 or 1992, it is bordering on being too old, although some bloggers say it has almost indefinite keeping properties.
  

Thank you for reading. Keep exploring your world and take pictures of things, people, or scenes that move you.

Optical Treasure: 1960s Jupiter-8 Lens from the Soviet Union

This will be a short review of my new/old Jupiter-8 50mm ƒ/2 lens from the Soviet Union. It was made for use on Soviet thread-mount cameras, like the FED, but uses almost the same 39mm thread as the original Leica bodies as well as most Japanese post-war rangefinder cameras.

Jupiter-8 lens mounted on my 1949-vintage Leica IIIC camera

Coated front element of Jupiter-8, probably 1962 construction (note: scratch-free and clear)

Many film photographers love the rendition from the classic Zeiss Sonnar 50mm ƒ/2 lens. Dr. Ludwig Bertele at Zeiss Ikon, the German optical giant, first formulated this lens in 1929. The name comes from the word “Sonne,” meaning Sun. Zeiss sold it with their magnificent Contax rangefinder camera in the 1930s and later. This competed with Ernst Leitz's popular Leica thread-mount cameras when equipped with their 5cm ƒ/2 Summar lens or the later 7-element ƒ/2 Summitar lens. 

After WWII, the Soviets packed up and moved remnants of the Zeiss factories, tools, machinery, glass, and technicians to the Soviet Union and painfully began to rebuild their home optical industry. They largely copied the Zeiss optical designs but made minor changes over the years and coated the glass surfaces to reduce flare. They renamed these new lenses Jupiter (ЮПИТЕР). The 50mm ƒ/2 version is the ЮПИТЕР-8. They produced these lenses from the early 1950s until about 1991, when the Soviet economy collapsed. The Jupiter-8 was the standard lens on many Zorki, FED, and Kiev cameras, which were made in the millions. The Soviet lenses had aluminum mounts instead of the superior brass/chrome mounts of the older German production. The Internet is full of detailed reviews of the Jupiter-8, so I will not repeat the same material. 

Recently, the Lomo company reintroduced the Jupiter-3, which is the 50mm ƒ/1.5 model. Note that Zeiss still sells a modern ƒ/1.5 Sonnar lens, an amazing testament to a long-lasting design (but the current lens is significantly different then the original).

Eighty years after the original design, photographers still like the way the Sonnar reveals details on film. Original 1930s and 1940s German examples are seriously expensive. As an alternative, I decided to try a Jupiter-8 and found one from a seller from Arizona. He said he bought it decades ago along with a set of Soviet thread-mount cameras. Arizona - that suggests dry and no fungus. This one was a Version 2 (design PT3060) from 1962 production (earlier is better for Soviet optics). The lens was clean and the coating almost perfect, but it was need of re-lubricating, as do almost all of these old Soviet optics; after all, they are 50+ years old. 

This lens uses a filter mount thread of 40.5mm. This was common for German lenses in the post-war era. I already had a 40.5mm Series VI filter adapter, allowing me to use my Series VI filters. Note that some Japanese lens makers used a filter diameter of 40.0mm for their ƒ/2 or ƒ/2.8 rangefinder lenses. Why did they do that? Was it to sell brand new filters and accessories to buyers of Japanese lenses? Yes, of course!

Here are some Jupiter examples, both when mounted on a digital camera and when used with film on my Leica IIIC and Leica M2 cameras.

Fuji Digital

I attached the Jupiter-8 to my Fuji X-E1 digital camera using a Leica thread mount-Fuji-X adapter. On all of these scenes, I set the Jupiter at ƒ/5.6 and mounted the camera on a tripod to eliminate vibration. This digital camera has an APS-size sensor, so a 50mm lens provides a field of view similar to a 75mm lens on a 35mm camera. Click any frame to expand to 1600 pixels wide.

 

Approaching storm, Kansas City Southern rail yard, Levee Street, Vicksburg (ƒ/5.6)

After the storm, Levee Street, Vicksburg

Kansas City Southern rail yard from the Yazoo Canal levee, ƒ/5.6

Washington Street view north

Pine Street cottages photographed from Belmont Street

Shed on Yazoo Canal levee (no longer extent)

Panatomic-X Film 

I loaded Kodak Panatomic-X film in my Leica IIIC. I thought it appropriate to expose an old-fashioned film in an old camera body mounting an old lens. The package proved to be compact and convenient to use, but I do wish the Jupiter had click-stops on the aperture control. I exposed the Panatomic-X at EI=20, so most photographs required a tripod. I used a Gossen Luna Pro Digital light meter in incident mode for most measurements.

Sondheimer, Louisiana (1/10 ƒ/11.5, medium yellow filter, tripod-mounted)

1101 N. Chestnut Street, Tallulah, Louisiana (1/10 ƒ/8.0)

PoBoy Don's, LA 602 east of Tallulah, Louisiana (1/100 ƒ/4.0, hand-held)

Footbridge from Avenue B over Stouts Bayou, Vicksburg, Feb. 15, 2021 (1/10 ƒ/11.5)

Acadia Place, Vicksburg, Feb. 15, 2021

Kansas City Southern rail tracks at Maloney Circle, Vicksburg National Military Park (1 sec. ƒ/16)

Fairground Street Bridge (¼ sec ƒ8; click to see 2400 pixels)

Fuji Acros 100 Film

Old bus, Moseley Gap Road, Vicksburg (¼ sec. ƒ/16)

Ford Fairlane, Mt. Alban Road, Vicksburg (1/10 sec. ƒ/11.5)

I also finished a roll of Fuji's superb Acros 100 film with the Jupiter-8 lens. Being an ISO 100 film, it is easier to use out in the field than the slow Panatomic-X film (but the examples above are tripod-mounted). 

Kodak BW400CN Film

Tripp's Store, Mount Carmel Road, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Barn off Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road, Snow Camp, North Carolina (1/100 ƒ/11.5, yellow filter)

Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road, near Snow Camp, North Carolina

I have mixed feelings about Kodak BW400CN film. For these scenes, it worked well. At other times, it looks grainy and gritty. Possibly it does not age well. Regardless, I have used up my last three rolls and will not search for any more.

Leica M2

Farm, FM665 near Alice, Texas (Acros film, 1/60 ƒ/8, medium yellow filter)

I mounted the Jupiter-8 on my Leica M2 using a genuine Leitz thread-mount to M adapter. The fit is perfect, and the rangefinder shows infinity exactly when the lens is set at ∞. The lens is light and convenient, and I can mount Series VI filters using a Tiffen 40.5-VI mount. I like the "look," and the background is smooth. This may be the "bokeh" about which so many internet warriors argue. I guess I have sufficient bokeh..... 

Comments and Summary

 

This old Jupiter-8 is a nice lens, and I like the results on both a digital camera and on black and white film. I think it sings with film. I do not see any obvious barrel or pincushion distortion, and exposure is even across the frame. At apertures wider than ƒ/5.6, sharpness falls off at the corners. On the scale of web pictures, the falloff is barely visible. I do not see (or do not know what to look for) the unique Sonnar rendition in these examples, but my photography friend in the UK said the special magic is at ƒ/2. This Jupiter has less field curvature then my 1949 Leitz Summitar lens. 

The Jupiter has an aluminum body, which is conveniently light weight. The finish is not up to German or Japanese standards, but at least on my sample, the numbers are perfectly legible. No issues.

Many photographers have written about focus shift with Sonnar lenses. I have not seen it yet, but have not taken close-focus photographs at wide aperture. This lens and my Summitar both focus perfectly at infinity using the same Leica-Fuji X adapter on my Fuji X-E1. Therefore, I assume that the Jupiter-8 is correctly adjusted for infinity on a Leica thread-mount camera. Close-up, it may back focus a bit, but I will need to test some more (one day in my non-spare time). UPDATE: I sent it to Mr Brian Sweeney, a Soviet lens expert in the USA, for a cleaning and adjustment for correct focus on Leica cameras.

 

I have also used one of the superb 1960s Canon 50mm ƒ/1.4 lenses. The Canon was more uniform across the field and may have displayed marginally better resolution. The mechanical construction was much better, typical Japanese excellence and precision from the 1960s. Its downside for me was the size of the overall optic. It blocked too much of my viewfinder of my little Leica, and the auxiliary 50mm finder was clumsy. 

 

In summary, the Jupiter-8 lens works well and has a nice rendition on film and digital. It is conveniently compact. When I use my little IIIC camera, I just may end up taking both the Jupiter and Summitar 50mm lenses in my camera kit.