Romanian Railroads 2: Sinaia (Romania 2018-02)

Sinaia, Fujifilm Acros, Leica M2 camera, polarizer filter.

Sinaia is an elegant mountain resort in Prahova County, Romania, about 3 hours drive north of Bucharest. The town was named after Sinaia Monastery, which, in turn was named after Mount Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula (another set of photographs to scan one day....). King Carol I of Romania built his summer home, Peleș Castle, near Sinaia in the late nineteenth century. The town became an elegant and trendy resort for Romania's wealthy, and the windy mountain roads have an impressive collection of grand old wooden mansions and mountain chalets (somewhat like Zakopane in southern Poland).

In the 1800s, traveling to the summer resort meant taking carriages. The 1800s were a great period of railroad expansion throughout the industrial world, the Russian Empire, and the African colonies. But Romania went through significant political changes and turmoil, and the country only gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Major railroad construction probably lagged in Romania but I am not sure of its industrialization patterns.

This plaque shows the builder, but I was not able to find information on who sponsored or funded the project. The line ran north from Bucharest to Ploiești, the major petroleum center, and then along the Prahova River valley through the Carpathian Mountains to Brașov.

This odd sedan was equipped with railroad wheels to run along the tracks.

This line is now electrified (see photograph no. 1) and has regular passenger service. The 1913 station is clean and in good condition. We also saw trains with petroleum cars moving through the valley.

The two black and white photographs are from Fujifilm Acros film, taken with a Leica M2 rangefinder camera. The color frames are digital, from a Moto G5 phone.

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

Romanian Railroads 1: Curtea de Argeș (Romania 2018-01)

Red circle shows Curtea de Argeş, Romania, from ESRI ArcGIS online (click map to enlarge).

Curtea de Argeș is a charming city in south central Romania. It is on the left bank of the Argeş River, which flows southward out of the Carpathian Mountains. The town is near the southern end of the famous Transfăgărășan Highway, Route 7c, which was featured in a Top Gear episode. The town is at the end of a rail line from Pitești.

My wife and I were on the main road heading out of town and passed by the old railroad station. Quick stop - places like this are too good to resist. The first thing I noticed was the unusual dual towers with arched windows, almost resembling Moorish architecture. Also, the facade of the station was covered with a tarp on which windows has been painted or printed. I assume the plaster was failing and the tarps covered the poor surface.

The track side of the station is also covered with tarps. The tracks are in fair condition but rusting. If there had once been rain sheds along the tracks, they are gone now.

The Romania 100 printed on the tarp refers to 100 hundred years of Romanian independence. Does this refer to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918? Romania had a complicated history and was only free of Ottoman (yes, Ottoman) rule in the 1870s. But Transylvania was controlled by the Austro-Hungarian empire. My guess is that this rail line and station were built in the late 19th century, when the empire engaged in a comprehensive rail construction project, like other countries in Europe and North America.

The waiting hall was clean and intact. This is a classic European rail station, and I am glad a preservation effort is underway.

Digital images from a Moto G5plus phone (sorry, no film photographs this time).