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?
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| No gas here, Omega Mart, FM665, Petronila, Texas (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens) |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Christmas store, St. Mary's Street, Falfurrias, Texas (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter, 1/250 ƒ/5.6) |
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| 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.
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| Falfurrias Chamber of Commerce |
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| 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
