The shot speaks for itself, the bottle's on my favorite surface, brushed aluminum, which can be used both as a background and a rough mirror reflection of the subject matter.

      This lens is all about understated elegance.

       Take care

    Maybe my scanner didn't feel like putting out yesterday, because this image is a better scan.  Oh well, my scanner's almost as old as I am, and can't be expected to put out a max effort every day.  

    This is the Jim Galli modified Turner Reich on my Toyo AII, to get close enough I had to put on the 4 inch extension sleeve to give me the max 16 inches which I needed most of to get this.  Exposure was wide open(F6.8), shutter was 'one thousand and one'.

    Let me preface what I have to say by saying that the j-peg image you see here doesn't do justice to the actual print of this image which is much, much sharper, and has a greater sense of fidelity, but I've uploaded it anyway to give a flavor of this lenses pallette. 

    Jim Galli modified this lens, and I'm very pleased w/the resulting look, the lens has a tendency to make the highlights 'pop', and then transition abruptly/very quickly to deep, dark, 'velvet' like shadows.   The look is dramatic, and I get a sense of immediacy from the print of this image.  The lens doesn't have the greyish 'murky' kind of pallette of some soft focus/portrait  lenses, and the lens has some of the same nuances and values as the Cooke PS945 when the Cooke lens is stopped down somewhat.

A shot turning out like this, is why I love photography; there wasn't much I did to it, and there's no complicated story behind it, I was simply fortunate.   I had the Kollmorgen lens on my Speed Graphic, and had just finished shooting something else, looked over and spotted this reflector, and put it in front of the camera to see what I had.  As soon as I looked through the reflex I knew I was going to shoot it.

  What you see through the reflex w/this lens, is exactly what you get.
 

   Just goes to show you the treasures you can unearth w/a $21.00 lens.

      Getting this site going has been a fun part of my life.  The site's still new, and and it excites me when folks take the time to visit.   One aspect of this which caused the creation of this site, and which has caused a fundamental change in my feelings over the years towards what tools I choose to use in my photography, specifically textures,  wideopen exposures, the exploration of projection lenses, gun camera lenses, magic lantern optics and the like as taking lenses.......... all the wonderful and offbeat techniques and things that can be had for so little money, and which now make me laugh at my long ago Rollei days when I'd pay a fortune for a lens becuase it was sharp and because of it's specs. 

      A trio of Kollmorgen projection lenses came up for sale on ebay, for $64.00 US, included shipping.  3 Art Deco masterpieces for approx. $21.00 a piece is a gamble I'll take anyday and so I bit.  Two of the lenses turned out not to be suited for my purposes, but are gonna make nice Art Deco style subject matter.  The third lens is a 5inch and very fast F2 optic which was worth the transaction, and what I've gotten from it has been right between the AeroEktar and Jim Galli's fabulous Secret Weapon lens, or at least that's my wishful thinking.

      When I shoot w/this kind of lens, I keep wanting to describe what I see as "Sharp to so out of focus it's surreal', or 'sharp to surreal', where the subject matter shares it's uniqueness w/the transition between it and the background.   It's all about the degree w/which these lenses do this. 

    Jim Galli's SW lens, combined with Jim's skill, gives us a benchmark for how the effects of these lenses can be explored.  I'm just happy I can ride along the same trail and pick up a few nuggets of my own. 

    This is a shot of lightbulb, nothing deep, nothing cerebral, which is geat by me............