Punks, Poets & Pop Stars – Street Portraits on an Omnar Bertele 50mm f2

New York City’s East Village has been an intersection where the counterculture meets the high culture going back at least as far as the 1950’s Beat Generation writers and Abstract Expressionist painters, but also hippies in the 1960’s (the musical “Hair” was created there), and punk rockers and graffiti artists in the 1970’s and early ’80’s.  New York is full of beautiful dreamers, and this neighborhood has been the entry point to the city — whether from abroad, the rest of America, or even other less stimulating parts of New York itself — for generations of young artists & performers drawn there by the cheap rents available in the tenement buildings that housed earlier waves of immigrants coming through Ellis Island who helped build and grow the city in the early 20th century.  I was one of those young dreamers myself, having lived in the East Village twice in my formative years – first in the early 1980’s when I had just finished my undergraduate degree and dreamed of becoming a filmmaker without quite knowing how, and again in the late 1980’s when I was going to graduate school to make those dreams real.

Forty years on, the rents have gone up and things aren’t as scrappy or rough now as they were ‘back in my day’, but the dreams remain.  On a recent afternoon in late April, I spent a couple of hours walking the streets of my old neighborhood with my camera, going from Astor Place to Tompkins Square Park and back.  In that short time, I met and photographed a poet, a punk rocker, aspiring pop stars, a restaurateur, a Tarot card reader, a model, a fashion designer, a legendary film & tv producer, a couple of photographers, and a whole lot of lovely cool people who were kind enough to share a moment with me on film.

I was trying out a special lens, the Omnar Bertele 50mm f2, hand-built in Scotland to match the optical formula of the original 1930’s era Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f2, but using 21st century engineering precision and optical technology.  Omnar, a small bespoke lens manufacturer,  is a joint venture of Skyllaney Opto Mechanics and 35mmc’s very own Hamish Gill.  A review copy arrived in Brooklyn the last week of April and I had to take it out for a ‘test drive’ at the first opportunity, which was the very next day, which turned out to be a beautiful Thursday afternoon in NYC.

The photos in this post were all taken within those four city blocks, presented here in shooting order.

My first subject was a man who calls himself “Bookman” and has a business selling esoteric books that he sets up on a table on the sidewalk in front of Cooper Union, a small but elite arts college where Abraham Lincoln famously gave a speech in April, 1860 that helped propel him to the the Republican nomination and ultimately the Presidency.

Bookman was one of the first people I photographed when I got my Leica Summarit 50mm f1.5, so maybe he’s a bit of a good luck charm with new lenses.  I had the tail end of a roll of Tri-X in the M3 and I think the combination of Tri-X with the Bertele has very nice potential, with a good tonal range, deep blacks & highlights, but plenty of detail in the midtones, and a very healthy dose of grain.  It has stronger contrast and is noticeably sharper here than the similar shots I took of Bookman on the Summarit.

I’d say a very promising start!

Crossing Third Avenue, I headed down St. Marks Place, the ‘high street’ for NYC’s Bohemian subculture.  I saw a nice Japanese gentleman sitting on a stoop and I asked if I could pull up a step to reload.  He nodded yes and I loaded a roll of Portra 160.

I asked my stoop mate if I could take a shot of him; as we chatted I found out he was the owner of an Udon restaurant that was down a 1/2 flight from where we were sitting.  I hope to try his Udon next time I’m in the neighborhood and show him the photos, which I think came out well.

I only had to look across the street for my next subject, a young man who was whiling away the afternoon on the opposite stoop.  I actually had my eye on him as I was reloading, as I liked his look and thoughtful demeanor.

After a quick introduction, Xavier was also happy to sit for a couple of photos.

Immediately, I am really liking the Bertele as a portrait lens!  It feels like it is combining the strengths and avoiding the weaknesses of some of my favorite lenses.  I think it has very satisfying sharpness and clarity on the subject, good contrast, rich vibrant colors, nice separation/3-D pop between subject and background, and the skin tones look great without revealing every micro pore.  Could it be the perfect combination of modern precision and vintage character?   It will take more than one good shot to tell, but I’d say it’s off to a very good start!

Tiago is another street photographer and we both wanted to shoot the same person arriving at roughly the same time.  We chatted a bit, and he was very interested in the Bertele, so I grabbed a quick “cowboy” shot of him.  “Cowboy” is a term I picked up from cinema for a 3/4’s portrait so that you can see the six guns, or in Tiago’s case, his cameras.

Tiago’s Instagram reel is very strong and his street portraits are impressive.

This is Donald, the young man I was waiting to shoot after Tiago.  He was very happy to roll right into another series of photos.  He’s a really nice guy and was quite happy to take direction and very comfortable being photographed.

I think this portrait is kind of ‘next level’ and right at the top of portraits I’ve taken since coming back to NYC.  Here I think everything is really working well — the light, the nice depth & colors in the soft focus background, the lens and the film.

Oh, and Donald looks amazing!

Not surprisingly, Donald is a punk rock musician and I think has a bit of a studied attitude that many performing artists have in front of a camera.

These images have a ‘quintessential’ East Village look, with Donald in full punk regalia in front of the heavily graffiti’d storefront, harking back the the era when musicians like the Ramones, Patti Smith and Talking Heads ruled the clubs and artists like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat lived and created in the neighborhood.

If anything these shots on the Bertele with Portra 160 are so lush and beautiful that they are feeling a little more ‘fashion spread’ than ‘punk fanzine.’  If I wanted to shoot Donald performing, I might choose a film with a bit more edge, but I’m very happy with these impromptu portraits and think they are among the highlights of a great day of shooting.

How could I not shoot this fellow in the Davy Crockett cap?

He was extremely gracious and honored by the photographs, and summoned his friend so they could be in a two shot.

It felt like I was on a roll with a series of really cool people all happy to stand or sit for a photo, and I hadn’t even gone a full city block!

Next stop, Fun City!

I liked the look of these three guys hanging out on the stoop of the Fun City Tattoo parlor.  Again, they were happy to sit for some photos.

Far from feeling bothered, they seemed amused and a little excited being approached by a total stranger with a vintage camera.

This fellow in the white T shirt knew a bit about the history of the M3 and that it was a favorite of photojournalists in Vietnam, and was built to survive in challenging conditions.

My last frames of the roll were of this pug hanging out on a leather sofa in a bar that seemed otherwise empty.  He looks a bit like he lost one of those black velvet card games after being overserved.

The day was going better than I had imagined and I was only getting started.  I wandered into Tompkins Square Park and sat down on a bench to reload a second time.  As the sun was still pretty high, I decided to try a roll of Ilford Pan F Plus, a slow 50 ISO b&w stock with very fine grain and strong contrast.  There were a couple of interesting people on the opposite bench who showed some familiarity with my M3 and started quizzing me about what film I was loading.  As it turns out, they were professional photographer friends from Australia.  They were pleasant, but not without a healthy dose of attitude, and seemed bemused by my choice of such a slow emulsion.

Robert seemed the most skeptical about PanF Plus; he’s a very experienced professional photographer who does very high end, but edgy music, fashion & glamour photography.  He told me his ‘secret sauce’, which was shooting HP5 at 3200, and developing it in Kodak developer for 30 minutes at 75 degrees.  He didn’t seem to think I had much of a chance with PanF Plus at box speed.  I liked him despite, or maybe because of, his swagger.  I think he looks great in this ‘cowboy’ portrait, you can feel the cool, confident aura he projects.

His friend was only marginally less self-assured and also seemed more than a bit skeptical about whether I really knew what I was doing.  And to some degree, maybe he was right, I was experimenting with a lens I’d never shot before and didn’t really know how it would combine with a film stock that I’d used much more for landscapes than portraits.  He also gave me a few photography pointers which got overwritten by Robert’s formula in my short term memory.

I’m sure I could learn a lot from both of them!

This gentleman from Israel enthusiastically joined the photography-themed conversation from another park bench.  While he was not part of Robert’s group, they made him welcome — maybe a little more welcome than me.  He was very interested in the M3 and especially the Bertele, and seemed to hold out a little more hope on my behalf.  He felt a little more peer/enthusiast than grizzled veteran pro.

This Tarot card reader, Francesco, had a more buttoned up “business” look than I’m used to with people who read tarot cards, who tend more toward colorful silk & feathers than sleek black sport coats.  He looked more sophisticated urban architect than clairvoyant mystic to me, but seems like a very nice fellow.   I was a little over an hour into my “Bertele Walk” and had an uninterrupted string of cool and interesting people who agreed to sit for a photo.

My streak was almost interrupted when I approached a group of vey attractive young women who were the first people of the day who said they weren’t interested in being photographed.   They weren’t unfriendly but were having some kind of meeting to look at fabric swatches for a swimsuit line.  I think it can a little more touch and go to ask for a photo when people have gathered in a group to socialize or do business as opposed to people who are just hanging out.  But after I ran into a mutual friend of theirs, one of them, Amenah, agreed to a couple of shots, including this portrait.

After exchanging Instagram info, I learned that she’s a professional model, which isn’t at all surprising.  That may have contributed to her initial reluctance to having her photo taken for free by some stranger in the park. After all, that’s how she makes a living!  But once we broke the ice, she was very sweet, and looks gorgeous here on PanF Plus.

Nearby, I saw a group of friends sitting on the lawn having a chat.  They agreed to some shots and I asked them to carry on as if I wasn’t there.

It was interesting trying them from a variety of angles and distances, and they each took the light a little differently, especially the very pale fellow with the platinum hair.  Here on PanF Plus, the sense and feel of ‘film’ with the Bertele is palpable compared to other contemporary lenses designed and engineered for high end digital cameras.

Next I ran into two sweet and very pretty twin sisters who are aspiring pop stars, who call themselves “Twin City.”  I decided to listen to a set of their very bright and polished pop songs and try taking some performance photos, starting with the last few frames of Pan F Plus.

And then moving into Portra 400.  It was getting later in the day and the extra stops felt useful.

I also tried getting in closer for some more dynamic two shots.

They were moving quite a bit as they danced and sang, so timing shots was tricky to get focus and an interesting moment, but I also like the energy of shooting closer with a 50mm.

After they were finished I did a couple of posed portrait shots.  I think they look amazing, and again, the Bertele really stands out as a portrait lens, hitting the sweet spot of being very sharp & detailed yet flattering at the same time, not that the Twin City sisters need much help looking good on film.

I decided it was time to head back west, and worked my way back through the park, grabbing shots of people who looked interesting along the way.

I asked this sharp looking gentleman, John, if I could grab a shot of him.  Before agreeing he quizzed me about what film stock I was shooting and which model my Leica was.  He also asked the focal length of the lens I was using and when I told him about the Bertele, he wanted to know about the coating, which I didn’t know.  Not surprisingly, it turns out he is a photographer, and we had a nice long chat about our different techniques and gear and exchanged info.

I also grabbed a handful of shots of him, including these on Svema Foto 200, the next emulsion up in my one day “Bertele Grand Tour.”  Normally I like to see some results before I ‘go deep’ on something I haven’t tried before, but there I was, five rolls in.  I think I was feeling pretty confident about the Bertele based on some of the reviews, including a straight up rave on Analog Insights, one of my favorite photo review sites.

By now the light was getting low and intermittently overcast, and we were getting into lower stops, like 2.8 at around 1/60th.  On this end of the dial, I think the separation between the subject and background starts to get next level on the Bertele, going from pop to POP!

The bokeh is also getting interesting, but holding itself together — not looking like it just stumbled out of the bar when the lights came on at closing time…

I think Ludwig Bertele’s famous 1930’s optical formula deserves its lofty reputation!

There was still enough light in the sky to shoot another 45 minutes or so, and I decided to head west to Washington Square Park, another favorite haunt of mine these days, to see what was happening over there.  But along the way I ran into my dear friend and mentor as a film producer, Michael Hausman (producer of Amadeus, Silkwood, The Firm and Brokeback Mountain, among many others) and his wife Pam.  I walked along with them for about 20 minutes catching up and grabbed a couple of shots outside the restaurant where they were having dinner.

Around the corner from the restaurant I ran into an interesting looking young writer, Henry.

He agreed to a couple of shots, now fully wide open and at around 1/30th.

Again, at these lower f stops, the separation on the Bertele is phenomenal; this medium close up looks almost like one of those greeting cards that unfold when you open it so that the foreground person is a half inch in front of the background.  While these shots aren’t quite as sharp as the ones I took earlier in the day at f4 around 1/250th, I think they look pretty cool and have a nice amount of mood and personality, as did Henry.

I was so excited about the incredible series of very cool encounters that, instead of shooting until I totally lost the light, I decided to head to Photo Life to drop the film off before they closed for the night.  I wanted to see what I shot with the Bertele as soon as possible!  And when the scans came through the next day, I was thrilled by the results of an epic photo walk.

While it’s too early to make final conclusions, what did I learn from my first outing with a Bertele?

Having seen the results and the number of ‘keepers’/’hang on the wall shots’ from a single outing, I’m floored by the quality of the optics.  For my personal taste, I don’t have a better portrait lens in my collection and it looks amazing in both color and black & white.  On the subject of the color, a friend of mine was talking about an older Russian lens that has what he called a “water color” look, and I think the Bertele has something of a rich and deep “oil paint” look to me.  I especially liked how Portra 160 looks on these first rolls.  I’m excited to try out some more b&w stocks with it while I still have it on loan.

In terms of the somewhat unique design, I love its compact size for a 50mm and distinctive look with a chunky gnurled grip on the barrel. And immediately the moment you lift it out of the box you can feel that the build quality is first class — smooth, precise and rock solid.  But there are a few things that take some getting used to.  The first thing you notice is the entire lens, including the aperture ring, rotates when you are focusing.  Also, the rotation of the focus ring is quite long compared to typical Leica M lenses, almost 3/4’s of a rotation.  Despite this I found focusing pretty easy with those butch gnurled ridges, and I didn’t mind it once I got a feel for it after a roll or two.

There are also a few things I’m not sure I’ll get used to and if there was one design element I could suggest Omnar think about for future batches, it would be the somewhat small & narrow combo aperture ring/filter ring.  On the plus side, the filter thread takes the Leica M standard 39mm filters, which is great, since I have a pretty full set of 39mm filters.  On the less optimal side for me, it doesn’t take a standard Leica 50mm hood.  Given it’s state of the art coatings, you may not need a hood for flare as much as with a vintage lens, but I sometimes like to use a lens hood as a rain shield on drizzly “Saul Leiter” days, so I might look into finding a 39mm thread mount hood.  Also it  feels just a bit fiddly adding or removing filters compared to my Leica lenses where the filter ring is stationary and threads up more smoothly.

Finally, I have a bit of a neurotic relationship with the elegant brass lens cap, of all things.  I really like the premium look and feel of the beautifully machined metal cap that looks awesome on and off the lens, but it can be a bit of a time suck to unscrew it compared to a regular ‘pop on’ lens cap, especially if you’re in a hurry to grab a fleeting moment.  So I tend to leave it off the lens while shooting (and used a UV filter to protect the front element of the lens on this outing.)  But on subsequent outings, I kept worrying about either damaging the lens,  getting it wet in the rain, and/or losing the expensive and beautiful lens cap and was constantly fumbling around in my pockets to make sure it was still there.

All of these issues pale in comparison to where the lens feels truly elite to me — how the photos look!   Whatever cost/benefit decisions Omnar had to make, it’s clear they didn’t stint on the most essential element — the quality of the glass and the innovative engineering design to create a floating lens block that corrects a focus issue on the original Bertele Sonnars.  No doubt, I’d quickly get better and faster and more accurate in handling a Bertele if I acquired one, which is already very tempting!  I think that evening on St. Marks Place might be in the running for my best-ever photo outing, and the notwithstanding those minor design issues, the Bertele might be in the running for my favorite-ever lens!

Thanks to Hamish and the people at Omnar for the loan.   My imposter syndrome was kicking in a bit, as I’m still relatively new to shooting film compared to the kinds of people who typically review high end photography gear like an Omnar lens.  It feels like a real honor to be worthy of trying out such a special lens and sharing the results here on 35mmc, and I hope I did it a small bit of justice with this first round of shots.

I don’t think this will be my last post on the Bertele, but it certainly came strong out of the gate!

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