No doubt, that the old Canon FD 85/1.2 L still can work great - especially as a portrait lens - even when mounted on a Fujifilm GFX 50s II camera with wits larger mediumformat sensor (33x44 mm), compared to fullframe 24x36 mm. It still works. The slight darker extreme corners are within the margin of what you iron out with post software correction. On top of that, I often prefer darker corners, especially with a portrait/lighting setting like the one with Sal above.
Useful even in 2025
Who would have thought that the old lady (Canon FD 85/1.2 L lens) still could shine in 2025.
It is on of my oldest lenses, bought second hand in 1988 for my analog Canon T90. It even has alight scratch on the backside, when i fucked up with a failed removal (in order to make it an EF mount lens). I stopped that endeavor after i couldn't remove the lens element)
The lens however works still wonderfully.
Damn fun !!
Gosh, it is so damn fun, making real portraits, you know. I can't empathize the joy about working in the Photo studio again. Where the FUCK have i been all these years... !? I also enjoy the technical quality, and the many small corrections i can apply with digital files. It gives great leeway, to fine tune a nice portrait. It is so far removed from any iPhone or mobile phone image. Sure they are nice on a screen - and i have seen many great photos. And yet, they do tend to fall apart when you look at them on a real computer screen.
I guess I am turning into an "old fossil", and still love "the know how" as if working with older style of photography - like with analog film and medium format cameras. And yet, here i am working digitally after all. I do wonder though, how my portraits in 2025 would turn out with BW negative film. Do I still have "it" ?
With a digital camera i do not even use a light meter for the flash light.
What about BW film in 2025 ?
But for film, I would. Yet i also have to get back a sense of how the negatives come out after developing rolls of film. A sort of feedback, about the exposure was enough. Compared to a digital mediumformat camera like Fujifilm GFX, i find that the margins are smaller with BW film. You can only somewhat underexpose film - otherwise they turn out too thin. (They can still be scanned with a larger margin for correction) - but in general, film isn't that tolerant for underexposure. Especially not when you wish to make real prints in the darkroom.
Working Digitally - reminds me of Agfapan APX 25
Because of the clean, very sharp output ! The Agfapan APX 25 film was extremely fine grained, extremely sharp and affordable as well. Perfect portraits in the photo studio. While I loved using APX 25 in the studio, I loathed it when using it outdoors. The local contrast just sucked. (or i didn't get it right) Somehow i never got a grip over the way how the film separated (or rather the lack of separation) of gray tones.
I often needed a lot stronger contrast in order to do something with those film negatives.
In the studio, it was often best to overdevelop the film between N+ 0.5 to N+1 (alt overexposing it according to ISO 16, and adding N +2/3 longer development). If i wished to strengthen the contrast a little further with better high light separation, i would give the negatives a Selenium 1+4 bath. It makes silver denser, where there is a lot of it - but doesn't affect the thin shadow details.
Now all that really kicked butt for the (in my opinion) sluggish contrast, making it perfect for studio portraits with strobes. Those negatives then also worked much better for creating (darkroom) prints.
I think i still have 1-2 rolls of Agfapan APX 25 film in the freezer... unused for 27 years... just imagine.
Then came Ilford Delta 100 to the scene
Later when Agfa stopped selling (?) APX 25 - I tried Ilford Delta 100 - which was the closest thing to how APX 25 performed - but not entirely.
Delta 100 still had its own character... (A Type II film, with medium contrast in the shadows and highlights - while APX 25 also was most likely a II-type of film, but with a stronger S-curve and therefore, the local contrast in shadows and highlights where a bit flat.
It is the reason why I often slightly overexposed and over developed the APX 25 film, which made the overall contrast a bit more punchy, and with that also the local contrast behaviour in both shadow and highlight details.
Ilford Delta 100 had/has a longer, linear response in most gray zones - which gave it also better local highlight and shadow seperation. It is/was a film which handled well with developers, and not so finky like Kodak T-MAX 100. |
