Small Towns in Mississippi: Holly Springs

Holly Springs is the county seat of Marshall County, Mississippi. It is near the border with southern Tennessee and is southeast of Memphis. It is in the hill country east of the Mississippi Delta, but its early history was intertwined with cotton cultivation and processing.

Holly Springs Depot, from Cooper Postcard Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The post card from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History shows cotton bales stacked near the railroad depot.

The depot, with its distinctive towers is still standing and in good condition. I was there late in the day and the building was empty; I am not sure who uses it. The 1800s brick shed still has railroad equipment in and around it.

Mississippi Industrial College, from Cooper Postcard Collection, Mississippi department of Archives and History

For years, I had wanted to visit Holly Springs to see the remains of the Mississippi Industrial College. According to Hill Country History:

Mississippi Industrial College was an historically black college founded in 1905 by the Mississippi Conference of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church under the leadership of Bishop Elias Cottrell (1855-1937).  Bishop Cottrell’s goal was to create a college for African Americans and provide them with liberal arts education and industrial training. Mississippi Industrial College’s campus was located on a 120 acre lot, across the street from Rust College, a competing historically black liberal arts school.

Classes began at the College in January of 1906, and in May the school already had over 200 students.  By 1908 Mississippi Industrial College had 450 students.  Mississippi Industrial College was one of the most important black colleges in Mississippi for many decades, until the end of segregation resulted in increasingly low student populations. The college closed in 1982 and remained empty.  During the 1990s, the Holly Springs Police Department and other businesses moved into the newer of the buildings, but they eventually abandoned the property as well.

The once-handsome buildings at the College have been deteriorating for three decades. One of the more modern structures housed the police department and some other city offices for a few years, but I think all campus buildings are empty now.

Preservation Mississippi wrote about the deterioration of the Carnegie Auditorium in 2010. Consider, at one time, the auditorium could seat 1000 people. In a small college in a rural area! The builders had lofty ambitions that they could bring the arts and culture to their students and members of the surrounding community. As of 2018, the building is structurally unsound and dangerous. (The color image above is a digital file.)

Sadly, there is not much left to explore at the site. The historic buildings are unsafe. Notice the stone slab steps.

On Rte 7, we came across an old-fashioned Texaco station, complete with its horizontal stripes on the roof above the pumps. Someone is using the property as a repair shop and storage depot for old trucks.

That is all for Holly Springs. The town was not too inspiring photographically. It suffers from serious poverty and decay. And the historic college is is very poor condition. The black and white photographs are from Kodak TMax 100 film, exposed at EI=80 and developed in Xtol developer. I used my wife's 1971 Pentax Spotmatic camera and scanned the negatives with a Plustek 7600i film scanner.

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:

• Decay with the Leica
• Decay with the Rolleiflex
• Kodak Panatomic-X film
• Decline of an industrial empire, Eastman Kodak Company
• Leica IIIC camera repaired and perfect
• Another look at the Leica IIIC camera
• 1950s 50mm Dual-range Summicron lens
• 135mm Takumar lens
• Olympus Trip 35 compact camera
• Another look at the Olympus Trip 35
• Fuji GW690II camera ("Texas Leica")
• Yashica Electro 35CC compact camera
• Kodak BW400 film
• Kodak Ektar 25 film
• 250mm Sonnar lens for Hasselblad
• 35mm Takumar lens for Pentax
• Fomapan 100 film
• Kodak Technical Pan film
• Quick test of a Leica Monochrom vs. film

Photographic Bargain: the 135mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens

Background

The 135mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar (or the almost-identical older Super-Takumar) lens for M42 screw-mount cameras from Asahi Optical Company of Japan (more recently known as Pentax) is one of the great bargains for film photographers and some digital photographers.

The 135mm focal length was popular through much of the 20th century. Leica and Zeiss sold 135mm lenses starting in the 1930s. During the single-lens-reflex boom of the 1960s and 1970s, all the Japanese companies made 135 lenses for their respective cameras. Often, that was the second lens a budding photographer bought, until the marketers convinced amateurs that they "needed" the off-brand 80-210mm zoom lenses (i.e., more profit margin for camera stores).

Honeywell Pentax advertisement, Modern Photography, June 1968.

For more information about the wonderful Spotmatic cameras, Casualphotofile wrote an excellent summary in 2017. Mike Johnston wrote about the Spotmatic in Theonlinephotographer in 2017 and explained why the Pentax 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens was one of the finest 50s in the film era. The table below lists the various Spotmatic models.

Asahi Pentax screw-mount Cameras1
Model2	Date	Features
Original	1957	Modern appearance, right side wind lever, instant return mirror. ≈ $199 with 55 mm f/2.2.
S	1957	Contemporary geometric sequence of shutter speeds.  9 lensesavailable.
K	1958	Semi-automatic diaphragm
Asahi S3 (identical to Honeywell H3)	1960	Fully automatic diaphragm.  $199 with 55 f/1.8 lens.
Honeywell H1	1961	≈ $150;  1/500 top speed.  World's first clip-on CdS meter available ($32).
Asahi S3v (Honeywell H3v)	1963 - 1969	Added self-timer and automatic frame counter.
Asahi S1a  (H1a)	1963 - 1969	Added auto frame counter.  14 lenses available.
Spotmatic	1964 - 1971	Through-the-lens CdS meter.  $299 with 50 f/1.4.  Very popular!  Most chrome, some black paint.  Motorized model made in 1970 (uncommon).
SL	1969	Same as Spotmatic but without CdS meter.
Spotmatic 500	1971	Lower cost, 1/500 top speed, supplied with 55 f/2.0.
Spotmatic II	1971	Added accessory shoe;  sold with multi-coated lenses with extra indexing levers.
Spotmatic IIa	1972	Sensor for automatic Honeywell flash.
ES	1972	First Pentax auto exposure camera with electronically-controlled shutter.
Spotmatic F	1974	Finest manual Spotmatic; open-aperture metering, $375 with 55mm f/1.8.
SP 1000	1974	No self-timer
ESII	1974?	Improved reliability over ES. End of the era for screw-mount bodies.
Notes: 1.  Sources:  “A History of Pentax” articles by W. L. Fadner in Shutterbug (1988) 2.  U.S. cameras had the Honeywell name and logo on the prism.  International models were labeled with the Asahi name and logo. Many servicemen brought Asahi models back from Vietnam.

M42 thread mount

M42 refers to the thread-mount of 42×1 mm used to attach the lens to the camera body. This was a common size in the 1960s and 1970s. European, Russian, and Japanese companies made hundreds of M42 lenses in various focal lengths. Many people consider Asahi Optical Company's lenses to be among the best optically and mechanically in that era. It is common to buy an old Takumar lens that will still operate perfectly, while a drastically more expensive Leica lens of similar age will likely have haze or film on the inner elements and need professional cleaning and re-lubrication. The Takumar lenses have a following among serious photographers today because they can be mounted on most mirrorless digital cameras. The M42 mount lost popularity in the 1970s because it was slow to exchange lenses, and companies like Nikon and Canon used faster bayonet mounts on their cameras.

The 35mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Takumar or SMC Takumar is another under-appreciated gem.  I tested my bargain 35 around town and at the Tomato Place.

Production

Asahi (or Pentax - the names are confusing) made a M42 135mm lens as early as 1957. It was modified over the following years with improved coatings and different cosmetics, but the optical formula remained approximately the same. The multi-coated version I have was, according to one source, in production from 1971 to 1977. It is a relatively simple design of 4 elements in 4 groups.

Advertisement from Cambridge Camera Exchange, Popular Photography, January 1981, p. 164.

Advertisement from Cambridge Camera Exchange, Popular Photography, December 1985, p. 105.

Production of Takumar M42 lenses ended in 1976 or 1977, when Pentax switched to its K bayonet mount. But some of the M42 lenses, including the 135, were available brand new as late as the mid-1980s. In the 1981 advertisement above, the 135mm lens is only $79.95, a bargain even in those days. Today, you can buy them on eBay in the range of $20 to $50.

Coating

My lens has the label "Super-Multi-Coated" on the front ring. This refers to multi-coating on the lens elements to reduce flare. Asahi introduced multi-coating in 1971 and advertised widely to emphasize how it was a unique technology. That is not entirely correct because other companies were already using multi-coating on specific elements in their optics. Asahi did not invent multi-coating, having bought patents from Optical Coatings Laboratories Inc. (OCLI), California. Regardless, Asahi's advertising was effective, and soon customers demanded multi-coating for all their lenses, whether they needed it or not. It tended to be most effective on complex wide angle lenses with many elements. On a simple long lens like the 135, multi-coating would have minimal benefit. Regardless, the best way to reduce flare is to always use a hood, and the 135 Takumar was supplied with a long deep hood.

Despite the obvious benefits of a hood, most point-and-shoot cameras of the 1980s and 1990s did not have any way to attach a hood for two reasons: 1. Users had been told that multi-coating negated the need for a hood (wrong); 2. Casual users would not use them even if supplied (lazy or uncaring).

Examples

Humphreys Street, Itta Bena, Mississippi

Itta Bena, Mississippi (tripod-mounted)

I owned a Leica 135mm ƒ/4.0 Tele-Elmar lens for 20 years but used it for maybe 20 pictures. We just never bonded. This Pentax 135 has been in a cabinet for who knows how long, also unused. But increasingly I am appreciating its ability to compress space, especially for urban scenes and railroad tracks. I am an old geezer now; my viewpoint and photo interests have changed. The two frames above are from Itta Bena in the Mississippi Delta on a hazy, glarey day.

Crenshaw, Mississippi

Crenshaw, Mississippi

Crenshaw is a small Delta town on Hwy 3 a short distance northeast of Clarksdale. Most of the commercial block is abandoned, and some of the shops have lost their roofs. Many small Delta towns look like this.

Webb Mississippi (Kodak BW400CN film)

Main Street, Webb, Mississippi

Webb is off Hwy US 49E southeast of Clarksdale and along the Little Tallahatchee River. It is another semi-abandoned town with most of the late-19th and early 20th century commercial buildings empty. These two photographs are on Kodak BW400CN film.

Farm fields, Rte 32 near Webb, Mississippi

Finally, I want to do some more experiments with trees. So many farm fields have these lone, proud trees rising from the flat soil, apparently immune to lightning and other hazards. So maybe I will start taking "pretty" pictures. Beware.