Inspired by what I learned in the recent “Goldilocks Challenge” comparing my different Leica 50mm lenses, I’ve embarked on an open ended project/rabbit hole of trying out different pairings of lenses with film stocks to find the most interesting/optimal combinations. Ideally I’ll find pairings where the optical qualities of a given lens will match up with the photochemical properties of a given film stock and result in better photos!
In still photography as well as in my cinema career, I place a very high value in the technical qualities of an image, but always in the service of the creative meaning and emotional impact. I am not a deeply scientific student of photography, on the film and tv side I depend on world class collaborators who have dedicated their careers to refining their craft, in terms of my personal photography, most of my learning and exploration is intuitive and coming from trial and error plus following tips from friends. I can’t tell you about the chemical reasons a certain film stock has the properties that it has, nor do I get too deep into things like whether it has a tabular or non-tabular grain structure, and, to the dismay of many of my fellow 35mmc contributors I send my photos to a very good professional lab (Photo Life in Brooklyn) for processing, so I can’t advise on developer chemicals or temperatures. I can tell you how my photos look to me based on my personal visual aesthetics/taste, and what they make me think and how they make me feel. So those are the perspectives I’ll be exploring in these posts. I suspect I’ll be learning a lot about these films and lenses that I didn’t know from other more seasoned photographers in the comments, which is great, and part of why I like 35mmc so much as a forum!
The first pairing I decided to try was a bit of a ‘deep cut’ shooting Rollei Blackbird with my 1957 Leica Summarit 50mm f1.5, neither likely to break into the top 10 of their respective categories any time soon. The setting? Washington Square Park on April 20, 2026, i.e., “420” the (in)famous informal national holiday for people who like to smoke marijuana. I decided to shoot on that day at Washington Square based on a tip from Tibi, a photographer friend I’ve met out and about who frequently sets up a large format Linhof 4×5 camera with a Polaroid back on a tripod in popular gathering spots around NYC and sells instant photos to tourists and passersby. I frequently grab a shot of Tibi when I see him as a bit of a good luck charm, and have a small collection of shots of him in various weathers and lighting conditions and corresponding outdoor gear.
This shot has a really interesting vintage look to me — when I sent it to Tibi, I remarked that it looks a bit like a publicity still from a 1950’s Italian neorealist film. I thought the light looked good through the viewfinder and Tibi stands out very nicely from the background, which falls out of focus pretty quickly, but doesn’t start to swirl or smear the way it does when the Summarit is below f4. You can see his Linhof frame left, which adds to the vintage ‘period’ feel and the framing & composition gives him a bit of that neorealist Everyman/Hero look.
This fellow with a solar powered electric guitar looks a little like a one man time warp, combining a 60’s rock vibe with 21st century tech. This backlit shot is very different from what I’m used to with Blackbird, much softer and more going on in the middle of the zones as opposed to everything going to the extremes of dark and light.
Blackbird is a slow (ISO 64) fine grain high contrast film and the Summarit is a fast (f1.5) fairly low contrast lens that is known to be a little bit soft compared to more modern glass. I can’t explain why it is so, but I’ve read a number of times that contrast is a factor in creating the appearance of sharpness, so a higher contrast image will appear sharper. I also speculated that a lower contrast lens might add some more nuance to the middle tones on a high contrast film. If the idea worked, I hoped that the film & lens would bring out the best qualities of each other and do better than they might individually or in other combinations. If it didn’t work, either the film or the lens might dominate and look no different than others with the same film or lens, or they might cancel each other out by offsetting each other’s strongest inherent qualities and result in some middling bland quality, less that the sum of the parts.
I first tried Rollei Blackbird toward the end of my 2025 survey of black & white film stocks, as a bit of a ‘completist’ afterthought when I noticed a roll in the fridge of a Brooklyn film lab.
I love this shot that I took on Pride Day, 2025 and still count it among my all-time favorite street portraits. But on the Summitar which has a fair amount of contrast for a vintage lens, you can see how the skin tones go pretty quickly form dark to light without pausing too long on the middle, and there is almost a black “glow” in the shadows, which feels exciting as long as it doesn’t swamp the image into inky black depths, like in this group shot taken a few frames later on the same roll.
While I think it looks pretty cool in the shot of Strawberry Trev, those qualities often tended to overwhelm and I thought of the film as a ‘high risk/high reward’ stock. Over a handful of rolls, I haven’t figured out how to master it with the Summitar, which is otherwise a pretty reliable and easy to use lens.
The Summarit is a bit of a ‘Cilantro’ lens, some people love it, others can’t abide it. I am a fan, and this shot of Maikeru is another all time favorite portrait. But I’m accepting a bit of softness here because I really like the other very strong qualities of this image, especially the vibrant almost glowing skin tones, but also the layers of overlapping bokeh hits from light coming through the soft, swirling tree branches in the background. Also, Maikeru looks amazing
Back to the park on 420, and some early shots of a young woman called Pyramid and a friend…
I think these look sharper than most of my other Summarit portraits, and as I had hoped, the Summarit seems to be adding a good deal of nuance in the mid tones compared to other lenses I’ve tried with Blackbird.
It feels like my theory of using a higher contrast film with the Summarit might have something to it!
I think this paring also works on paler skin, much paler in the case of these two young women.
The one on the left has a bit of a ‘silent film vamp’ feel, and they look like they may have gotten started a little early with their 420 festivities.
I like the fortuitous motion blur that came when this man decided he wanted to take a drag during my shot, which happened as I was pressing the shutter. There were a bunch of younger celebrants off camera to my left who found this hilarious and dissolved into an infectious puddle of giggles.
I think I may have been the only person in the park who wasn’t stoned at this point in the late afternoon, but the vibe was very friendly and almost everyone I approached was very happy to let me take photos of them, including this nice group of friends.
I decided to grab singles of each of the young men, including this one who had a shiny gold ‘grill.’
While there was no hierarchy, Chucky was the most outgoing member of the group.
This shot starts to move into that Rollei Blackbird ‘black glow’ look, which I like here in a somewhat smaller dose than in those early Summitar shots, helped here with a little more subtle shading between black and white, courtesy of the Summarit. I’m not sure, but think maybe the hoody is creating a micro shadow area that is slightly under the exposure levels of the other shots on the roll.
Note: most of this roll was metered 1 stop over, i.e., at ISO 32, and then processed at the ISO 64 box speed. I’ve been habitually shooting this way for about 6-8 months based on a tip from Hamish. I think this ‘black glow’, which is an interesting part of the the Blackbird ‘personality’ might emerge more if I meter at box speed, which I may do next time I shoot a roll.
I think I was worried that this fellow moved on the first shot, you can see a bit of blur on his jacket, so I took a second. I don’t know from what depths he pulled this soulful yearning expression, but I love it! I think this is my favorite shot of the day.
Von took a big and perfectly timed drag just as I tripped the shutter. Totally fitting as an end to my roll of Rollei Blackbird on 420. I like the reflections on his glasses subtly showing the south skyline of the park, while we see the iconic arch a little soft in the background over his shoulder.
On this first foray, I was a little shy about going too wide open where the Summarit is at its softest and weirdest bokeh-wise, but I am very encouraged/excited about this pairing, as well as the overall concept of looking for the most interesting combinations of lenses with stocks. These are some of the technically strongest/sharpest images I’ve made with the Summarit, and other than a few lucky shots like Strawberry Trev, I haven’t been this consistently successful shooting Rollei Blackbird with my other lenses. For me, most of this roll was not just acceptable, but quite good.
I realize that some of the subtleties of experiments like these may be lost on my fellow 35mmc readers, who rightly suggest that a good photograph is a good photograph whatever camera, lens or film you are shooting, and nothing on the hardware and chemistry side of the process will rescue a crap photograph. I readily agree that the most important pieces of equipment are a photographer’s eye and brain, and in many cases the differences I’m seeing in these ‘projects’ of mine may be either invisible or feel insignificant to other smart and talented photographers. I’ll admit they are very much in the fine margins. But I also believe when you are trying to raise your levels, the further and deeper you get into any kind of creative field, the finer the margins become.
This may be an idiosyncrasy of mine, but I also think I get a little hit of energy & motivation when I’m trying something that is just a little different than what I’m used to. I remember hearing a story from a friend who played keyboards on Bob Dylan’s “Time Out of Mind” album and he said that Dylan would rehearse the studio band on a song until they got really good at it, then he’d go off with the producer Daniel Lanois and come up with some change to what they had learned, like shifting the key, tempo or time signature, and that’s when they’d start recording. I respect photographers who have found the ideal approach that fits their style of photography and drill down on a single emulsion, camera & lens combination, and post workflow. Perhaps these little projects of mine are a bit of a ‘cheat code’ where I’m trying to keep myself fresh and creatively on my toes, the photographic equivalent of what Dylan and Lanois were doing in the recording studio.
In any event, I definitely want to shoot more Summarit + Blackbird, but first we’ll look at the next matchup, also shot on 420, the Leica Summilux 50mm f1.4 ASPH + Tri-X.
Stay tuned!
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