2025 E. Washington Road Trip 05 - Farms and Basalt Country in B&W

The big open country of Eastern Washington invites black and white photography. It is a relatively new photographic terrain for me, although long-term readers may remember that I took a September 2024 trip to eastern Washington. Here are some scenes from my 2025 trip.

Spokane 

Centennial Mill (50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/8)

This immense concrete monolith is the former Centennial Mills on East Trent Avenue, built in 1940. After several mergers, Centennial became part of part of the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) corporation. The mill is now unused. It dominates the skyline east of downtown. What a view you would have from that tower.

Reardan

Reardan (50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens, dark yellow filter)

Here are more of the silos that dot the skyline throughout eastern Washington. Most now are made of concrete or steel. The wood silos from the early 20th century have mostly succumbed to fire. 

Davenport

Farm off Rte. 2, Davenport (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/5.6)

Davenport is in open farm country. This farm still had a traditional wood barn with shingle roof. But many farms now have modern steel buildings, which I find are not nearly as picturesque.

 

Grand Coulee

Midway Avenue, Grand Coulee (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, 1/250 ƒ/8)

Beer store, Coulee Boulevard, Electric City (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens)

The towns near Grand Coulee still have a bit of company town appearance. The dam certainly is a monumental engineering achievement. 

Ancient Lakes 

The Ancient Lakes occupy one of the huge coulees created during the great floods. They are near Quincy, Washington, just east of the Columbia River. The trails are easy to walk. As you enter the valley from the west, the basalt cliffs loom over you. The coulee feels lonely and remote, although the surrounding plateau is farmland and vineyard.

Basalt boulder that tumbled from the nearby cliff, Ancient Lakes Trail (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, yellow-green filter)

Ancient Lakes Trail, near Quincy, Washington (Canon 50mm ƒ/1,8 lens, med. yellow filter)

Basalt columns near Deep Lake, Dry Falls State Park

Mabton

Grain silos, Rte 22, Mabton (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, orange filter, 1/250 ƒ/5.6)

This ends our short tour through eastern Washington in farm and basalt country. I took these pictures on Kodak T400CN film. The film was expired, and Photoland at The Evergreen State College grossly underdeveloped it. Therefore, some of the frames do not have the full tonal range and are grainy. I like C-41 film because the ICE tool in my Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner can clean up most scratches and chemical blobs. But for 35mm film, I will return to using fresh black and white film (such as Tri-X or Acros).

Technical Note

I took most of these photographs with my 1960s Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 Leica thread-mount lens. This is a nice example of 1960s Japanese optical and mechanical excellence. The one had intact coating (rare) and no internal haze (even more rare). When I bought it, the seller disclosed some fungus. Don Goldberg (DAG Camera) cleaned it and reported that it was intact. Unfortunately, many (most?) of these 1.8s are ruined. Some lubricant internally outgassed and etched/hazed the inner elements permanently. Such a pity. The Canon ƒ/1.4 thread mount lenses seem to have survived in better condition. 

The Leica IIIG in Oregon and Eastern Washington (May 2025) (Abandoned Films 13d).

We were restless after a very wet March in Olympia. It was time for a road trip. And I wanted to exercise my Leica IIIG camera and try Kodak T400CN film again. Some of these expired rolls have looked fine, but others have deteriorated. The rolls I used in Greece looked great. I should give up on this long-expired film forever, but thought I would try one last  roll. I loaded a roll in the IIIG for some of the great expanses of Washington state east of the Cascades (plus an overnight in The Dalles in Oregon). 

The Dalles, Oregon

The Dallas (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/5.6)

The Dalles is a busy rail junction. But areas of this rail yard now have bare sections and unused tracks.  Still, an interesting place. The mill became a winery?

Waiting for a horse

Columbia Hills State Park

Cross the Columbia River, drive past Dallesport, and ascent a gravel road up into the Columbia Hills. In contrast to the forested mountains of the Columbia Gorge closer to Portland, these hills are in the rain shadow and are a dry terrain. The area is famous for wildflowers in early spring.

Dalles Mountain Ranch (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, yellow-green filter)

Farmland and the Palouse, Washington

Head east out of Richland, and you drive through miles and miles of beautiful rich farmland. As you continue east, you enter a land of hummocky low hills composed of loess (wind-blown silt). This is the Palouse. It encompasses parts of western Idaho and central east Washington. 

Rail junction, Roosevelt (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, orange filter, 1/60 ƒ/11)

Pasco-Kahlotus Road north of Pasco (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens)

Historic schoolhouse, Pasco-Kahlotus Road (Jupiter-8 lens, orange filter)

Silo, Kahlotus (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter)

Grain terminal, Oaksdale (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter)

The Grain Train, Oaksdale

This roll of T400CN was thin. Once again, it may have been mis-developed by Photoland at The Evergreen State College. I will not use their services ever again. This old T400CN is grainy, probably much more so than when it was fresh. But I still like the tonality, and the ICE scratch removal in my Nikon Coolscan 5000ED scanner is a great convenience. Still, it is time to stop fooling around with T400CN. As a substitute, I can try Ilford XP2, which is the only C-41 black and white film still in production. 

Kodak T400CN Film in Athens, Nov. 2024 (Abandoned Films 13c)

Here are some more examples of the long-discontinued Kodak T400CN black and white film in Athens, Greece (also see the previous article on using T400CN). Being long expired (the film, not me), I exposed it at Exposure Index 50 in my Leica M2 camera. It is a bit limiting in dark places, but I was careful to hold steadily, so even exposures of 1/30 or 1/60 of a second look fine.

Athenas Street with Monasteraki Square in the distance (Leica M2, 21mm ƒ/4.5 Zeiss Biogon lens)

Mrs. Poppy's souvenir store in the Plaka (21mm ƒ/4.5 Zeiss Biogon lens)

Anafiotika kitty (below the Acropolis)

Kitties in the twisty winding alleys below the Acropolis are a thing. I saw two photographers with big lenses concentrating on cat portraits.

Anafiotika artwork (21mm Biogon lens)

Anafiotika artwork (21mm Biogon lens)

First Cemetery, Athens (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

First Cemetery is the resting place for generations of prominent Athenian citizens, including politicians, poets, authors, and even Heinrich Schliemann.

Seattle Sonics having a coffee at carpo, Psychico 

Beetle in front of traditional villa, Psychico

I remember when Psychico was a quiet town of traditional 2-floor villas. My parents rented one in the 1950s. But now, and quickly, Psychico is becoming a suburb of apartment buildings. 

Northeast Photographic in Bath, Maine, processed the T400CN film in standard C-41 chemistry. I scanned the film with a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED scanner, controlled by NikonScan 4.03 software. The digital ICE system effectively cleans spots and blemishes.

Kodak T400CN Film in Greece - Success! (Abandoned Films 13b)

Film Background

Dear Readers, I did it again. The previous roll of long-expired Kodak T400CN film was only partly successful. But this time, it worked.

T400CN was a black and white film designed to be developed in C-41 chemistry, the same as popular color print films. The big advantage for me is that if I scan the film with my Nikon Coolscan 5000ED scanner, the digital ICE infrared function cleans scratches and dust. It is so effective, it seems like magic. But this only works with films that use dye clouds, meaning color print film or black and white films like the T400CN. The ICE will not work with regular black and white films, like Tri-X. I like traditional silver-based film, but the extra step of cleaning dust flecks adds a lot of extra time in front of a Photoshop screen. 

This film was originally rated at exposure index of 400. For the previous roll, I used 100 because of the age. But the negatives were desperately thin. Come to find out, the laboratory at Evergreen College probably made a mistake with timing or chemical mixture. Regardless, I decided to use EI = 50 in Greece. The film went to Northeast Photographic in Bath, Maine, and came back rich and full tone. It is fine-grained and high resolution.  

Here are some examples from Messolonghi in western Greece. Click any picture to see the frame at 2400 pixels wide.

Messolonghi

Salt production (Leica M2, 90mm ƒ/4 Elmar lens, deep yellow filter)

Salt mountain (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Messolonghi is surrounded by shallow lagoons used for salt production and fish farming. Hellenic Saltworks S.A. fills lagoons with salt water and then lets them dry over time. They pile the salt into these impressive mountains for final drying.  

Chapel wall at Etoliko, surrounded by salt lagoons (90mm ƒ/4 Elmar lens)

Unused municipal office next to the Garden of Heroes (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

Tourlida village with wood cottages supported on stilts (21mm ƒ/4.5 Zeiss ZM Biogon lens)

Traditional fishing boat, Klisova Lagoon (90mm ƒ/4 Elmar lens)

All in all, I am pleased. I will use my remaining rolls of T400CN at EI=50. It is a bit slow but quite manageable in normal daylight (but maybe not for a gloomy winter day in Olympia). Stand by for more examples in the future.

Informal review: Zeiss ZM Biogon 21mm ƒ/4.5 Wide-angle Lens in Olympia (Oly 16)

21mm ƒ/4.5 Biogon lens with hood. The Leica M2 body is from 1967.

My New Biogon Lens

Dear Readers, once again, I failed to curb my GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). I bought a Zeiss ZM* 21mm ƒ/4.5 C Biogon lens for Leica M mount. 

Decades ago, I had a 20mm ƒ/5.6 Russar lens, a pioneering optical design from the Soviet Union. It worked well, but I sold it in the early-2000s when I was reducing my photography stuff. 

But I missed a really wide view for 35mm and had eyed this Biogon for a while. LensRentals sent an email about a 20% off sale, and they offered one of these lenses. That was too good to resist. The lens looked absolutely new, and, I assume, they seldom, if ever, rented this particular unit. After ordering a 21mm Leitz viewfinder from Tamarkin Camera, I was ready to go. (I recommend both LensRentals and Tamarkin Camera for good condition equipment and honest service.)

Zeiss made two 21mm lenses for the Leica M mount, this ƒ/4.5 C (Compact) model and an ƒ/2.8 version. The C lens is a compact gem and is intended for use on film cameras. It is almost distortion-free, meaning that straight lines remain straight. It takes 46mm filters, which are larger than the 39mm filters for my other Leitz lenses. The rectangle hood clips on the outside of the lens, and if you use filters, they must be the correct 46mm diameter to fit inside the hood.   

Finally, you need a 21mm external viewfinder to see what the lens covers. The built-in finder on my M2 camera has frame lines for 35mm, 50mm, 90mm, and 135mm lenses, but it is much too inaccurate to try to guess the coverage of a 21mm lens by looking at the edges of the viewfinder. The best external finders come from Leitz (Leica), Zeiss, and Voigtlander. The Leica unit was the only one with an offset shoe such that the mounted finder does not overhang the shutter speed dial (see the photo above). 

Kodak T400CN Examples, Olympia, Washington

One October morning with misty light, I walked around downtown Olympia. Here are some examples of how this 21mm lens can take in the big picture. Please click any photo to see it enlarged.

View south on Capital Way (21mm ƒ/4.5 Biogon lens, 1/15 sec.)

Capital Way sidewalk

Art alley parallel to 4th Avenue

Olympia Federal Savings parking lot (1/30 ƒ/5.6). Note the straight lines.

Mid-century architecture, Olympia Federal Savings bank

Olympia has a good selection of mid-century architecture. The city must have enjoyed a period of prosperity after the war, resulting in a burst of commercial construction. Some of this architecture has aged well, but some of it looks dismal.

Legion Way view west (1/30 ƒ/5.6)

Sylvester Park from Dancing Goats Coffee shop

Capital Way sidewalk

5th Avenue

Olympia's downtown core is grungy and dirty. I wish the city would do a serious cleaning, pressure wash the sidewalks, remove graffiti, remove the homeless, and install more effective street drains. It is disgraceful considering it is the state capital. 

Morning on East Bay

Many mornings, especially after a storm, the light on East Bay is just magic. This is my view during my morning coffee.

Fuji Acros 100 Film

Washington State Capitol (May 3, 2024)

State of Washington General Administration office building from Columbia Street SW

This 1956 office building is an example of International Style architecture, emphasizing horizontal lines and severe lack of external ornamentation. 

"The building was designed by prominent Tacoma architect, A. Gordon Lumm, in the International style distinctive for its horizontal cubical form and spare ornamentation. Its exterior minimalist appearance and interior architectural flexibility, including movable aluminum wall panels, demonstrate a growing aesthetic for modular space able to easily accommodate changing space and technology requirements."

This sounds like an early form of the cube farm. The building has been unoccupied since 2018 because the wiring, plumbing, and structure no longer meet building codes. Six years later, I do not see any work on demolition. Some planning documents state it will be replaced by a parking lot and restroom???

1970 (approx.) postcard of General Services Building.

This is a postcard from the University of Idaho's Northwest Historical Postcards Collection. The building did not look too bad back then. 

Summary

I am thrilled with my 21mm Biogon lens. It is high contrast and distortion-free. Resolution is remarkable on fine-grain film. It is compact enough to easily fit in a camera bag with the rest of the Leica kit. You need to be careful in framing to avoid converging lines, such as in the photograph of the General Services building. It is fine wide open at ƒ/4.5. You need the correct 46mm screw-in filters, but the mounts can be regular thickness (slim-mount not necessary). And you need the correct Zeiss rectangle hood. 

Summary: Highly-recommended!

* The Zeiss ZM lenses are made for use on Leica-M mount camera bodies. Most lenses are made in Japan, but a few are from Germany. Many reviewers state that the ZM lenses are as good optically as genuine Leica lenses but are much less expensive. The 21mm ƒ/4.5 Biogon that I bought is out of production, so if you want one, grab one now. 

The 50mm ƒ/1.5 Sonnar is a modern version of the classic large aperture Sonnar lens, first made a century ago. I already have one Sonnar lens, a 1962-vintage Soviet 50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8. These Sonnars produce a different "look" than most contemporary 50mm lenses. 

The Zeiss ZM 25mm Biogon lens has a superlative reputation. But I won't buy one, I promise...... 

(Coming soon: 21 mm scenes in Athens and Istanbul.)