Photographer Invite

A friend of mine recently had his second child, and decided he needed a bigger place for his family.  He found a suitable (much larger!) place and moved in.  A few months after the move, in the new house he found an old leather camera bag covered in dust.  Inside were three camera lenses.  He did not know anything about photography or lenses, so on a random visit he gave them to me.

Two of the three lenses, packaged together had suffered the test of time.  The aperture blades had become corroded and quite stiff, and evidence of fungus could be seen on multiple glass elements.  The other lens was wrapped separately.  I can only assume the material it was wrapped in had different properties to the material the other two were wrapped in, more suitable for preservation of glass, and therefore, as I unravelled it, out fell a 50mm prime lens in pristine condition.

It is a Prakticar Pentacon MC 50mm f/1.8.  A little researched suggested it was not worth a great deal, it was more than likely the kit lens that come with a mid-range SLR from at least 20 years ago.  As with most old kit lenses, their value doesn't reflect their quality.  This lens is a prime, and should render very sharp high quality results.  The mount is M42 screw thread.  It was nice to be given a lens for nothing, but I had two distinct feelings about it.  Firstly, although I have acquired the lens, I don't really feel like it is mine.  Somebody, at some point will have carried it around on a brand spanking new SLR and possibly took lots of photographs with this lens, the numbers etched into the focus ring are worn from use.  It makes me feel a little strange about using it.  The other thing I felt, was that i would probably never use it.  I can easily get hold of an adapter, mount it and get some photos, but it is unlikely to replace my more modern 50mm prime.  I thought it was a shame to have been hiding for many years, only to then be discovered and placed on a shelf for many years more.

I had noticed a few blogs online, where budding photographers had done a project 50 50, which put simply is ...  50 photographs, taken over the course of 50 days, with a 50mm prime lens (Hmmm maybe it should be called project 50 50 50).  It is interesting to see the variety of ways a 50mm prime can be used to create beautiful images.  I thought about giving it a go, and giving the lens a new lease of life, but I still feel a little strange about using / owning it.  Then I come up with this idea.

I'll send the lens to 49 photographers that I know from the internet, but have never actually met. Hopefully if they agree, each of them can take one photograph using the lens, then send it on to the next photographer on the list that I will co-ordinate.  Finally if it makes it back to me along with 49 photographs, I will take the 50'th photograph and use all the images to create a book of photos that I will get printed, and send to all the photographers that contributed.  Sending the lens on it's final voyage around the world!  I will keep this blog up to date with the lens' current location, which photographer has hold of it, and post their photo once created.

Hopefully you are reading this, as one of the photographers I thought would be a great selection to contribute to this project.  If you are, and you do not wish to be involved, thanks for reading this far, please let me know that you are not interested and there is no need to read any further.

Aha! so I see you are interested in being involved?  Superb.  I thought the thing that would work best, is for each photographer to have two pages in the book.  The left page will be divided horizontally into two, the top half will be a portrait of yourself holding the lucky 50mm prime.  Ideally if you can be in a location that is typical for where you are in the world, it will give a good feel for who you are just form the photograph.  The bottom half of the left page will be where you can write a little about who you are, what kind of photography you do, and a few short words about the image you created.  The right hand page will be taken up entirely by the photograph.  Both the portrait image and the main image should be in 4:3 format and landscape orientation (the book will need turning sideways to view the full colour photograph).

There's not much more to it than this.  If you need any further information please let me know.  I will try and keep my co-ordination emails at least one person in advance, so that they can be ready to receive the lens by the time you send it.  In the "pack" will be an adapter for Nikon and an adapter for Canon.  Hopefully that covers most fitting requirements.

Thank you for being awesome.

- Craig