The Contaxian

​ Prime lenses may not be universally better than zooms, but they generally have important advantages in terms of aperture, sharpness, and contrast.  With these lenses, the connection between focal length and composition is also more obvious, which makes it easier to understand composition issues. A normal lens has a focal length equal to the diagonal of the imaging format. For 135-film (24×36 mm) this means about 43 mm, for 110-film (13×17 mm) about 20 mm, and for 120-film (60×60 mm) about 80 mm. Lenses with these focal lengths are called 'normal' because when a picture taken with a normal lens is viewed, objects in the image appear normal, i.e. neither stretched nor compressed in depth. A telephoto lens has a focal length greater than the normal. It can be a tool for bringing distant objects closer and isolating them from their surroundings. These lenses are often described as 'compressing' the pictures and making them appear flatter. However, this is just a matter of...

After being preoccupied with 135-film (24×36 mm), I wished to revisit other formats briefly. I took the below pictures with a Pentax Auto 110 for 110-film (13×17 mm) with an 18 mm lens and a Rolleiflex 2.8C for 120-film (60×60 mm) with an 80 mm lens.  The Pentax picture, on the left, is taken using Orca 100 ASA, and the Rolleiflex picture, below, is taken using Fomapan 400. Both films are processed in Rodinal 1+25 for 5:30 minutes. Considering the small frames of the 110-film, I am surprised by how good the Pentax photo is. I expected it to show much more grain and much less detail.  But there's more to it than that. The impression of the two images is different, and compared to the Rolleiflex image, the Pentax image appears flatter, partly because the Pentax image object (the row of fishing huts) is more distant than the objects in the Rolleiflex image.  However, the difference in focal lengths also have effect, but comparisons of focal length need to account for differe...