The Long View and some GAS: 250mm Sonnar Lens for the Hasselblad

Dear Readers, a confession: I suffered from GAS a few months ago. No, I did not eat baked beans or cabbage; I had Gear Acquisition Syndrome. All photographers suffer GAS to some degree or another, especially the ones who deny it! Last year, a friend let me use his 150mm Sonnar lens on a Hasselblad, and I enjoyed the longer reach compared to the 75-80mm lenses from past experience with my Rolleiflexes. Afterwards, while perusing eBay (a dangerous habit), I saw a 250 mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens for $87, bid on it, and, amazingly, it was mine. So, for about $100 total, a magnificent Zeiss lens from the best of 1967 West German craftsmanship took up residence in my camera bag.

This is one of the chrome-plated units with single-coated glass, as opposed to the contemporary Zeiss T* multi-coating. Multi-coating has its greatest benefit in reducing flare in complicated wide-angle lenses, especially if they have large front elements, but usually has less noticeable effect with tele lenses. These Zeiss lenses were always built with baffles and edge paint on the elements to reduce flare, so they always performed well, even in glarey light.

But regardless of coating, you should always use a hood, and this is true for any lens. In this case, a Hasselblad Bay 50 hood cost half as much as the lens did. As the years go by, accessories become rare and the prices go way up. Decades ago, real camera stores often had drawers full of camera and lens fittings, filters, and accessories, often at reasonable price. Where have all these things gone? Were they mass disposed in dumpsters over the years or hoarded in cabinets of eBay customers?

The shutter speeds on this old-timer sounded good, although 1 sec. may have been a bit slow. But with some exercise, it smoothed out and appears to be fine as per correctly exposed negatives. The coating was pristine.

Clay Street, Vicksburg, Kodak Tri-X 400 film

Old Courthouse Museum, Vicksburg. The old Clay Street YMCA is on the right. Kodak Tri-X 400 film

Here are two examples taken with the 250mm Sonnar from the 4th floor of the Relax Inn in Vicksburg. The proprietor generously let me go to the balcony with my tripod. The light was misty, accounting for the soft contrast.

Washington Street view north, Vicksburg, Fomapan 100 film

Kansas City Southern (KCS) tracks view east from Mission 66 bridge, Vicksburg, Fomapan 100 film

Yes, it does occasionally snow in Vicksburg. We had two snowfalls this winter. It is such an unusual event, I could not resist recording the scene.

KCS tracks from Baldwin Ferry Road, Vicksburg. Fomapan 100 film

KCS tracks and rail yard from Washington Street, Vicksburg. Fomapan 100 film

So far, I have used the 250 lens on a tripod, thereby letting me stop down to f/8 or smaller. It is sharp, and contrasty - what is not to like? (To see more detail, click any picture to expand to 1600 pixels wide). Next bit of GAS: some Bayonet 50 filters, and maybe one of the 120mm lenses.

Hasselblad advertisement, Popular Photography, March 1981, p. 72.

UPDATE May 2021: The 250mm Sonnar continues to serve well. It is a spectacular lens.

Vicksburg in the Fog/Mist 2018 (Tri-X film in Hasselblad)

Walnut Street with St. Paul's Catholic Church and USACE Mississippi River Division office, 50mm Distagon lens.

Old Court House Museum from Relax Inn 4th floor, 250mm lens.

Winter is the best time to wander around Vicksburg and take photographs. The light is soft, the temperature reasonably comfortable, and the results look different than the normal bright sunny day snaps with harsh shadows. One misty day last January, I loaded some Tri-X 400 in the Hasselblad and wandered around town.

Walnut Street, view north from Relax Inn, 50mm Distagon lens. 

The manager of the Relax Inn generously let me take my tripod and camera up to the 4th floor balcony. There is a good view of the Old Court House Museum from there, and I was testing my new/old $87 250mm Sonnar lens. For the views of Walnut Street, I leaned out over the edge of the balcony wall and held the camera sideways. With the Hasselblad's waist-level finder, you can still see the ground glass while holding the body out to the side.

Clay Street, Vicksburg

Clay Street drops downhill quite steeply from the intersection with Cherry street. The ugly white slab on the right is the Thomas Building, which seems to be perpetually for rent. For some reason, it is a troubled or unusable building.

A two-floor asbestos-clad house sits next to Stouts Bayou at 900 National Street. The house has been empty for years. The open windows are a bad sign.

Vicksburg Southern Railroad tracks at Haining Road, 250mm Sonnar lens.

Vicksburg Southern Railroad tracks view south from Haining Road.

Haining Road leads to the Port of Vicksburg and crosses the railroad tracks at the junction with North Washington Street. The buildings on either side are part of the Anderson Tully wood mill, which now has a new owner.

Vicksburg Southern Railroad tracks view north from Ford Road. (Kodak Panatomic-X film (expired 1989), 250mm Sonnar lens, March 2018).

This is an March view of the tracks north of the Anderson Tully complex.

Grammer Street, Vicksburg, 250mm Sonnar lens

Finally, here are the remaining shotgun houses on Grammar Street. Once, both sides of the street (alley) were lined with these cottages, but most have been demolished over the years. In a previous post, I showed scans of Kodachrome slides from the 1990s and early 2000s.

We will look at more Vicksburg scenes in future posts.

Revisiting the Wards, Houston, Texas (TX 10)

Introduction

The Wards are former political subdivisions of Houston, Texas. They no longer officially exist but still represent approximate regions of the city. Their inhabitants associate with their home ward. 

Houston Wards in 1920 (from Wikipedia, in the public domain)

This 1920 map shows the Wards at that time. Note that Hermann Park is in the bottom center of the map, in the countryside then. A hospital was already at the south side of Hermann Park. Just south of this today is the huge Texas Medical Center, with world-famous hospitals including the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. 

The little rectangle at the lower left is West University Place. The community, first developed in 1917,  never became incorporated into the City of Houston. Today, West U is a fashionable and upper-crust community to call home. 

Fourth Ward

Shotgun house, 1410 Robin Street (Ilford Delta 100 film, Rolleiflex 3.5E camera)

Historic wood houses, 1320 Robin Street (Ilford Delta 100 film)

Much of the Fourth Ward that I remember from the early 1980s has been totally transformed with modern townhouses and condominiums. A small cluster of wood houses on Robin Street is (or was) being preserved.

These buildings are in the Heritage Freedman's Town. This was the oldest African-American part of Houston and pre-dates 1865. A local resident told us that the City was trying to preserve a small cluster of the worker shotgun cottages. She said the local residents were upset because a contractor had been chosen without local input and there had been little or no progress in a long time.

The Houston Freedman's Town Conservancy is trying to preserve the heritage and the brick streets.

Fifth Ward

Locomotive approaching Lyons Avenue (Panatomic-X film, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar lens)

The Fifth Ward was formerly a working class neighborhood, where many of the men worked at the Port of Houston and at associated industries. Several rail lines cross through the Ward (see my previous article on Tower 26), and I saw warehouses, workshops, and other commercial activity.

Brewster Street, view north (Panatomic-X film, 250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens)

Brewster Street cottages (250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens)

Bleker Street (250mm Sonnar lens)

Waco Street (250mm Sonnar lens)

As I wrote in my earlier article, some of the Fifth Ward is really rough. Some blocks of row houses look reasonably well-maintained, but others are horrifying. I did not feel too comfortable exploring on my own and did not take too many photographs. It reminded me of west Jackson, Mississippi.

Third Ward

Restored row houses, Holman Street (Ilford Delta 100, Rolleiflex 3.5E camera)

The Project Row Houses is an art program at 2521 Holman Street. Art exhibits are in some of the houses, while residents occupy others. According to the Row Houses web page:

Project Row Houses is a community platform that enriches lives through art with an emphasis on cultural identity and its impact on the urban landscape. We engage neighbors, artists, and enterprises in collective creative action to help materialize sustainable opportunities in marginalized communities.

Project Row Houses occupies a significant footprint in Houston’s Historic Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods. The site encompasses five city blocks and houses 39 structures that serve as a home base to a variety of community-enriching initiatives, art programs, and neighborhood development activities.

PRH programs touch the lives of under-resourced neighbors, young single mothers with the ambition of a better life for themselves and their children, small enterprises with the drive to take their businesses to the next level, and artists interested in using their talents to understand and enrich the lives of others.

Although PRH’s African-American roots are planted deeply in Third Ward, the work of PRH extends far beyond the borders of a neighborhood in transition. The PRH model for art and social engagement applies not only to Houston, but also to diverse communities around the world.

Former local store, Holman Street at Emancipation (Fuji Acros film)

Fixer-upper house, Bastrop Street at Francis (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens)

No more ice cream, Ennis Street

Unity of Color, 3611½ Bennett Street

The Secret Recipe - well, not any more, 3801 MacGregor Way

The Third Ward is a mixture of light commercial and residential, partly decayed, and partly reviving. 

North of the Gulf Freeway (I-45), the area now called East Downtown has become very sophisticated with restaurants, town houses, and garden apartments. Brass Tacks is a very nice coffee bar and casual restaurant. I biked there several times on the Columbia-Tap Rail Trail.

Further south, the scene becomes a bit more earthy without as much redevelopment (yet).

This completes our short and semi-random tour around three of the Houston Wards. There is plenty more to see. Next trip. Thanks for riding along.

From the Archives: Tourist Pics of Vicksburg, Mississippi 1985-1992

While looking through a box of old negatives, I saw a film from my 1985 job-hunting trip. At the time, I lived in Houston, Texas - absolutely flat and topographically boring. But Vicksburg was an interesting place, with its history and its setting on the bluffs above the river. Not knowing if I would move here, I took snapshots around town. This will be a quick tour of some of the places a new resident might see. 

Driving from the east, many visitors first see the Big Muddy from the Mississippi Visitor Center. The scene is timeless - these photographs could be 1985 or 2019. I had driven here from the west and had therefore crossed on the I-20 bridge from Louisiana. In the late-1980s, the old bridge was still open to car traffic.

Walking on the Old Mississippi River Bridge, Kodak Stretch camera

By 1990, as I recall, the old bridge had been closed to traffic, but pedestrians could walk on it. This is a negative from a Kodak Stretch, which was a single-use (i.e., disposable) camera which purported to be a panorama format. That was deceptive: it had a 2-element, 25mm f/12 lens lens that projected onto a narrow strip of the 35mm frame, about 13×36 mm. However, I am surprised how well the Kodak Gold 200 film did with this crude lens. The APS film system also tried this fraud: the so-called panorama was just a thin strip in the middle of the frame. The entire frame was exposed but the processing lab automatically printed the thin strip.

Mississippi River north of the old bridge, Kodak Stretch camera

Mississippi River Bridges, Vicksburg, Fuji GW690II camera

The view from the overlook north of the Visitor Center is different now because the Ameristar Casino is in the foreground at the river's edge.

Mississippi River, Kodak VPS film, Rollei 35S camera, 40mm Sonnar lens

This is the bend in the Mississippi where the Yazoo Canal comes in from the north.

June 1991 view of former Vicksburg Hospital, Fujichrome 50, 4×5" Tachihara camera, 180mm ƒ/5.6 Caltar IIN lens

View north from Vicksburg Hospital, Ektar 25 film, Fuji GW690II camera, 90mm lens

In the 1980s, the old Vicksburg hospital was a concrete shell, standing where the police department is now located in a modern building. The view north to the City Hall and Post Office was rather boring. The architectural abomination on the right is now BancorpSouth Bank, but I am not sure what it was called in the 1980s.

Continuing north, this is a view of Clay Street at the intersection with Monroe. The Aeolian Apartments in the upper center were still rented as apartments in 1992.

This is Walnut Street looking north. I am not sure which of these houses are still extant.

Washington Street view south, Rollei 35S, 40mm Sonnar lens

Grove Street from Washington Street, Rollei 35S, 40mm Sonnar lens

Velchoff's Corner Restaurant & Miller's Still Lounge formerly occupied the building at the corner of Washington and Grove Streets (Summerlin and Summerlin 1995). I only ate there once and cannot remember when it closed. Look up Grove Street and you can see a car repair shop on the left. That building is gone, and again, I do not recall when it was demolished. The lot on the left was once occupied by the Masonic Temple, which was torn down in the mid- or late-1970s.

In front of the 61 Coffeehouse, view north, December 2018, Ilford Delta 100 film, Voigtlander Vito BL camera

61 Coffeeshop, 35 mm f/3.5 Super-Takumar lens, Pentax Spotmatic camera

Today, the corner building houses Attic Gallery and the 61 Coffeehouse. Daniel Boone runs 61 and provides the best coffee in town (except at my house....). And he employs charming coffee ladies. Look north along Washington Street and you see a building in the distance. Decades ago, this was a club and various other businesses.

Washington Street, Kodachrome 25 slide, Pentax Spotmatic camera, 150mm f/4 Super-Takumar lens

No. 913 Washington Street was once an automobile showroom. The second building, possibly a 7-Up bottling plant at one time, was unceremoniously demolished by City of Vicksburg in 2007.

Washington Street, Fujichrome 50 film, 4×5" B&J camera, 20" lens (presently the site of the M/V Mississippi on land)

The 1985 photographs are from Kodak VPS color negative film using a Rollei 35S camera. Its 40mm f/2.8 Sonnar lens was top quality for such a compact camera.

References

Summerlin, C. and Summerlin, V., 1995.  Traveling the Trace: A Complete Tour Guide to the Historic Natchez Trace from Nashville to Natchez. Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, Tennessee.

UPDATE 2021. Here is a photograph on the Mississippi River Bridge during the 2021 Bricks & Spokes bike ride. This is one of the few times that the bridge is open to the public. It is fun to bike over the river.