The Zeiss Loxia 35mm F2 certainly ticks a box on my wish list. The moderately wide perspective of a 35mm lens on a full-frame camera is often favored for street photography. Historically, photographers specializing in the genre would focus manually, using a lens’s focus distance scale and depth of field markers to set the ‘zone’ of a scene that would be rendered sharply. That takes any time involved for autofocus or manually focusing out of the equation, so you can snap up a defining moment the instant you see it. The flip side is that the vast majority of recent autofocus lenses have neither a focus distance scale nor any depth of field markers, making zone focusing impossible.

Specifications

Key features

Like other Loxia lenses in the Zeiss family, the 35mm is a manual-focus lens but has all the necessary electronics for full communication with the host camera. As such, in-body image stabilization is automatically available with all but the first generation of Sony Alpha full-frame cameras, for which this lens is designed.

Focusing itself is actually a joy. The rubberized control ring has an immensely smooth and fluid feel, along with a long 180-degree throw that enables very fine and precise adjustments. Depth of field markers are on hand for apertures of f/4, f/8, f/16 and f/22. A further refinement, in common with other Loxia lenses, is that the aperture control ring comes complete with a click/de-click mechanism, spreading the joy to movie capture as well as stills. A small key is provided for engaging or disengaging the click-steps, although you have to remove the lens from the camera to get at the operating slot, which is situated in the mounting plate.

Based on Zeiss’s tried and trusted Biogon optical design, the lens features 9 elements arranged in 6 groups, including one low dispersion element. Build quality is everything I’d expect from Zeiss, with a super-solid metal casing and mounting plate, backed up by an extensive set of weather-seals. Like all other lenses in the Loxia family, the this one features a uniform 52mm filter attachment thread, and comes complete with a bayonet-fit hood.

I also like the compact and lightweight nature of the lens, which makes it perfect for street photography when I’m trying to shoot candidly without drawing attention to myself.

Performance

Helped by the longstanding Zeiss T* Anti-Reflective Coating, the lens delivers crisp images with faithful color rendition and excellent sharpness, with very good resistance to ghosting and flare. Sharpness away from the central region of the frame is a bit mediocre when shooting wide-open at f/2 but improves at f/2.8, while extreme edge/corner-sharpness really hits its stride at f/5.6. I’m perfectly happy with that, as I tend to shoot at f/5.6 or narrower apertures for a decent depth of field, when I want really good edge-to-edge sharpness.

Other facets of image quality are highly impressive, with negligible color fringing even at the extreme corners of the frame, and very minimal barrel distortion.

Lab results

We run a range of lab tests under controlled conditions, using the Imatest Master testing suite. Photos of test charts are taken across the range of apertures and zooms (where available), then analyzed for sharpness, distortion and chromatic aberrations.

We use Imatest SFR (spatial frequency response) charts and analysis software to plot lens resolution at the center of the image frame, corners and mid-point distances, across the range of aperture settings and, with zoom lenses, at four different focal lengths. The tests also measure distortion and color fringing (chromatic aberration).

Sharpness:

The central region of the image frame is plenty sharp enough even wide-open at f/2, but it pays to stop down to f/5.6 if you need really good sharpness right out to the extreme edges and corners of the frame.

Fringing:

Without any need for automatic in-camera correction (available in Sony cameras) color fringing is all but impossible to spot, even out towards the corners of the image frame.

Distortion: -0.17

The tiny amount of barrel distortion revealed in our lab tests will generally go completely unnoticed in real-world shooting.

Verdict

I find that the Zeiss Loxia 35mm F2 has an ideal focal length for street photography. As a manual-focus lens with a focus distance scale and depth of field markers, it’s also ideal for ‘zone focusing’, so I can pre-focus and shoot at will, helping me to avoid missing definitive moments. Image quality is lovely, with the exception that edge-sharpness could be better at wide apertures.

Review & Photography By: Janel Spiegel

One Earth ReggaeFest 2024

July 6, 2024

Presented by: Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley

Presented in Partnership with Movement Moves Media

SteelStacks

July 6, 2024 from 12p.m. to 12 a.m.

https://www.steelstacks.org/festivals/one-earth-reggaefest/

BETHLEHEM, PA…. What a stunning day. The sun was shining. Mother Nature FELT ALL OF THOSE HIGH VIBRATIONS. I definitely think Mother Nature LOVES RAGGAE music. What a BEAUTIFUL DAY with the most beautiful people. I have been fortunate enough life to meet some of the most amazing souls… Not just because of writing but because I like to talk to everyone. Today was no different but so different. The impact that the Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley has on society is so much more than putting together a festival. The musicians, the artists, the vendors. ArtsQuest and SteelStacks, I can NEVER SAY THANK YOU ENOUGH for the kindness. The cooling towel. Taking time to talk to me about one of my favorite festivals. The One Earth ReggaeFest and Musikfest 2024. If you have looked at the line-up and started getting tickets, I suggest you do so.

But lets discuss Reggae Fest. They started at 12:00pm (noon) and it was still going when I left around…. Who knows what time. (I’ll be vending at The Carriage House in Hellertown tomorrow so, I had to cut my dancing short.) So many talented artists including: DJ Quickdraw, Cultivated Mind, Elephants Dancing, DJ Focus Podcast, The Tabernacle. Space Kamp WITH TROUBLOE CITY ALL-STARS. THEY DID SUCH AN INCREDIBLE JOB. Trouble City All-Stars, the amount of love and support we send to all of you. Thank you for the music.

Space Kamp played, “Air” featuring Jessica Lamb. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that song so much.

DJ Menace hosted, and kicked off the day with Good Vibes. Sound Off, Mighty Mystic, Marrissa Joy (WHO IS AMAZING!), F.Y.A.H., Long Beach Dub Allstars, DJ Menace again, Ras Jem & Unity Vibration.

They had a Dominoes Tournament this year and of course the beautiful Hoover-Mason Trestle was open, and Wind Creek Casino, along with tons of restaurants near-by.

Some of the amazing food trucks included: Cubano X-Press (I was SENDING EVERYONE TO THEM.), D&S Carribbean Kitchen, Island Noodles, Kona Ice of Allentown, Kou Kitchen, Movement Moves Media, Sedellah’s Island Grill: OKAY, I need to take a MOMENT TO TALK ABOUT Sedellah’s Island Grill. First… The coconuts were incredible. The food, the smoothies. EVERYTHING. They need to COME TO EVERY EVENT! EVERY SINGLE EVENT.

Slabs and Crabs, Tha Taste Smokers (ALWAYS PERFECTION), The Udder Bar, they were packed all day long, Travelin’ Ton’s Coffee of Lehigh Co., and more.

Some of the vendors included: Art of Henna, Beauty by Monette, Collective Curiosities, Der Wenig Bauernhof, LLC, DJ Focus Podcast, Evita Ink, Go Getter Movement Studioz, Isasuma Art, Jewels by Nicol Marie, Losco Glass, and LuvLee Creations, 22 Peppers, 420 Survival Enterprises, and More.

There are not enough words on how important it is for communities to truly come together. It does make a difference, especially when people care as much as all of these hard workers care.

Here is to next year. Maybe we will get two days. Thank you so much and thank you to all the amazing souls and my friends who came out.

https://www.steelstacks.org/festivals/one-earth-reggaefest/

https://www.musikfest.org/

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Man Ray is considered one of the most influential visual artists of the 20th Century, significantly contributing to the Dada and Surrealist art movements through his painting and photography.

A collection of over 150 photographs, including stills lifes and portraits, has been collated and showcased in a new exhibition and accompanying coffee table book titled Man Ray: Liberating Photography, curated by Nathalie Herschorfer and published by Thames & Hudson.

Ray was a pioneer of photography, pushing boundaries and experimenting with approaches and processes ahead of his time. His influence can be seen in many fine art photography trends even today, almost a century on, and his portraits taken in the 1920s and 1930s are the subject of the new book.  

Located in Paris during that time, Ray captured portraits of many contemporary artists from the Paris art scene such as Marcel Duchamp, Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti and Pablo Picasso. Man Ray: Liberating Photography features some of these most famous portraits and some of his glamourous fashion work.

Ray formed long-lasting friendships with many of his subjects and used this as an excuse to use his photography studio as a playground to work on new approaches, techniques, and processes.  

One particular unique approach was a then-contemporary technique to photograms that he coined ‘Rayographs’. These involved laying objects on photographic paper and exposing them to light, leaving behind hauntingly beautiful still lifes of everyday objects. 

In addition to his portraits, these can be found intertwined throughout the book and provide insight into how Ray’s experimentations evolved and crossed genres.

Man Ray: Liberating Photography is a beautifully made and edited book that provides a great look at the work of Man Ray. Not often spoken about in modern photography, his work pushed the boundaries of the medium and helped develop its possibilities. The volume is a testament to his legacy and evidence of a true pioneer.

Thames & Hudson has been publishing some exceptional photography books of late with more exciting releases still to come later this year. I highly recommend checking out its recent releases, in particular its ‘Photofile’ series which provides greater accessibility, delivering the work of some of the greatest photographers of all time at a more affordable price point.  

Man Ray: Liberating Photography by Man Ray, Nathalie Herschdorfer, and Wendy Grossmanis is published by Thames & Hudson and is available to order now in the UK for £35 and preorder in the US for $50, with the US release scheduled for September 20.

The book was created to accompany the exhibition of the same name, which is on display at Photo Elysée, Switzerland, until August 04, 2024.  

You may also be interested in our guides to the best coffee table books, the best books on photography, and the best books on portrait photography.

An increasingly popular photography challenge, just in time for Lakes Appreciation Month in July.

Living Lakes Canada (LLC) is encouraging people to enjoy their favourite waterbodies by taking pictures of them for the fourth annual Lake Biodiversity Photo Challenge.

LLC Lakes Program Manager Georgia Peck said the contest underscores the importance of getting the larger public at large to understand and recognize the importance of lake ecology. More people are taking notice of how healthy their lakes, ponds and rivers are, all thanks to this photo challenge.

“Last year, there was amazing number of submissions, which (for the first time since the challenge started) actually spanned every province and territory across the country,” Peck said.

“So, we’re really looking forward to this year, hoping to surpass last year’s number of 629 submissions.”

Organizers are also looking forward to seeing pictures of different lakes and wildlife that haven’t been photographed extensively before.

LLC is a water science and stewardship non-profit that has been working with community groups, local government and First Nations to protect freshwater for more than 20 years.

“What we do is that we facilitate collaboration through education, water monitoring, restoration as well as policy development initiatives,” Peck said.

“All of this is done for the long-term protection of lakes, rivers, wetlands and just broad watersheds within the country.”

Living Lakes helps people to be observant of their local waterbodies over time. If they notice the water quality in decline, it also helps mobilize them to work to reverse it.

“Really, what our mandate is to help people across Canada understand, mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change on water quality and quantity and help conserve biodiversity as well as healthy human communities, and also grassroots water stewardship activities,” Peck said.

“We try and really put the responsibility at the community level. We think the biggest impact happens [there].”

The Lake Biodiversity Photo Challenge gets people outside looking at their surroundings in a “different lens.”

“So many of the changes in the impacts that are seen on waterbodies are slow and over time often,” Peck said.

“Ensuring that people are keeping an eye on their local freshwater resources and tracking those through photos or apps such as iNaturalist, different biodiversity tracking apps … it’s just a really great way for us to build a baseline understanding of where we’re at.”

All of this will lend toward helping water ecologists determine how to best protect and prevent climate change and other environmental impacts from doing extreme and perhaps irreversible damage to our freshwater areas.

The challenge includes four different categories for submissions: Lake Landscapes, Lake Biodiversity, Lake Impacts and there’s also a youth category for youth photographers who are 16 years and under.

The whole goal, she said, is to foster appreciation for lake wildlife, raise awareness around the threats that they face and encourage youth to explore lakes and dip their toes into photography. Also, they want participants to be mindful of their own actions and how they might affect elements of nature.

“We’re putting a real key focus on this year’s challenge to promote ethical nature photography,” Peck said.

“Wildlife and environmental photography as a whole has become really popular in the last couple of years. We’ve partnered with the Canadian Conservation Photographers Collective to encourage participants to follow a code of ethics for nature photography.”

All the details of the challenge and how to submit photo entries can be found at www.livinglakescanada.ca. The contest ends on July 31.

In 1993, Elaine Constantine was commissioned by the Face magazine to photograph a northern soul night at the 100 Club in London. “It was challenging, to say the least,” she recalls. “The place was really dark except for the illuminated signs for the exits and the toilets, and a few lamps above the record decks. The only way to photograph was with a flash, which kept blinding everyone on the dancefloor.”

Having recently moved to London from Manchester, Constantine had come of age on the northern soul scene a decade earlier, regularly attending all-nighters across the country as a teenager. At the 100 Club, she immediately noticed that the crowd was older and the records more obscure, but the dancers were as energetic and self-absorbed as ever. When she heard the familiar propulsive thump of Lester Tipton’s rare mid-60s record This Won’t Change, it proved irresistible. She put down her camera under a chair and took to the dancefloor, losing herself in the music until the dawn.

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Now, just over 30 years later, the photographs Constantine took of the scene are being published in a book called I’m Com’un Home in the Morn’un, the title an insider’s nod to a northern soul classic from 1970 by the gravelly voiced Lou Pride. Shot in the 100 Club and also at the Ritz, Manchester, as well as various lesser-known venues across the country, it’s an intimate glimpse of a peculiarly British subculture that began in the 1960s and stubbornly refuses to die. Its roots lie in a predominantly working-class soul music scene that took hold in the industrial north and the Midlands following the demise of the mod movement.

By the early 1970s, at venues such as the Wigan Casino and the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, the defining stylistic aspects of northern soul had been established: loose athletic tops, wide trousers and skirts that facilitated often acrobatic dance moves. Out on the floor, the atmosphere was both communal and fiercely competitive, the more extravagant dancers executing high kicks, backflips and dizzying 360-degree spins to the up-tempo thrust of often obscure American soul 45s. For confidence and staying power, amphetamine was the stimulant of choice.

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When Constantine initially revisited the music of her youth for the Face in the early 90s, she was “reluctant to be dragged back into the scene”, but over the next year or so, she kept photographing around Manchester, the Midlands and Yorkshire, while simultaneously establishing a reputation as a fashion photographer.

Constantine first picked up a camera as a teenager in her home town, Bury, where, encouraged by her mother, she attended an amateur photography workshop. There, one of the teachers showed her a copy of In Flagrante, the late Chris Killip’s celebrated photobook about working-class life in the north-east of England during the Thatcher years. “I was 19 and on the dole and that book changed my life,” she recalls. “I was stunned by the raw power of his images and remember thinking, maybe there is hope for me.”

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All these years later, though, Constantine remains something of an outsider in terms of British photography culture. “I still don’t work like a traditional documentary photographer,” she says, cheerily. “I tend to go off on my own tangents, more for enjoyment than anything else.”

This may be why, at 58, I’m Com’un Home in the Morn’un is her debut photobook. It grew out of a talk she gave at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol in 2022. Parr, the veteran British photographer, recognising the cultural importance of the northern soul series, suggested she should do a book and an exhibition of the work (the book will be launched there in July).

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In the interim, her rekindled passion for the music of her youth led to her directing her first feature film: Northern Soul was released in 2014, and was nominated for a Bafta. It was a bruising, if ultimately rewarding, experience, she recalls. The film was denied a theatrical run at first, then became a social media cause celebre, with fans successfully pressurising their local cinemas to show it. It made the box office Top 10 on its first week of release and was an even bigger success on DVD. “Everyone in the industry thought it would be niche,” she says, “but there were queues around the block at every indie cinema that screened it.”

Like the film, Constantine’s new photobook is an ode to a subculture that endures against all the odds. “When I was shooting the scene in the 90s, it was dwindling.” she says. “There are still regular nights across the country where the regulars are mainly older, but there are also clubs in places like south London and Bristol, where it’s all youngsters on the dancefloor.”

She describes the song whose title she borrowed for her book as “a record that never dates”. For the faithful, old and young, the northern soul scene continues to cast a similar spell. Her images are a testament to the power of the music and those who have kept a passion for it through the generations.

• I’m Com’un Home in the Morn’un is published by RRB Photobooks; the exhibition is at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, 11 July-22 September

Shooting in exotic locations presents unique challenges and opportunities for photographers. Capturing the essence of a place while managing technical difficulties and working with models requires skill, adaptability, and creative problem-solving.

Coming to you from Irene Rudynk, this insightful video takes you behind the scenes of a photoshoot at Bali’s Banana Waterfalls. Rudynk faced several challenges, including difficult lighting conditions and communication issues due to the loud waterfall. She opted for wider shots to showcase more of the location, pushing herself out of her comfort zone. The cloudy yet bright jungle setting created tricky lighting situations, with light coming only from above and quickly becoming unflattering. To simplify the shoot, Rudynk chose black bikinis for both models when they posed together, allowing the stunning backdrop to take center stage.

Rudynk shares valuable tips for capturing natural-looking shots in such environments. She instructed her models to move constantly but slowly, allowing her to snap multiple pictures and choose the best poses. For an intimate look, she directed the models to pretend they were whispering to each other while maintaining subtle pose changes. Rudynk emphasizes the importance of showing models the images on the camera’s back screen, helping them understand the composition and their appearance in the shot.

The video also discusses the technical aspects of photography in challenging conditions. Rudynk encountered exposure issues due to the stark contrast between dark and bright areas. She initially shot underexposed images, planning to brighten them in post-processing. However, she struggled to recover shadow detail, leading to an important lesson about camera settings. A fellow photographer pointed out that using the electronic shutter on her Canon EOS R5 resulted in 12-bit files instead of 14-bit, limiting her ability to recover shadow detail. This experience taught Rudynk to use full raw and mechanical shutter settings when shooting in high-contrast situations to maximize image information. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Rudynk.

If you would like to continue learning about the art of portraiture, be sure to check out our range of tutorials on the subject in the Fstoppers store.

We’re still awaiting the full specs of the new Pixii Max rangefinder camera, though it sounds like I hit the nail on the head when I wrote what I wanted to see from it. 

However, one confirmed spec got me thinking more about the system – and how it could be the one and only camera for photographers who want a true monochrome camera (Monochrom, if you’re a Leica user) that can also shoot color.

I’m not a very technical person, but getting a genuine monochrome image from a camera that also shoots color with a Bayer filter sensor hasn’t been ‘truly’ possible before – until Pixii did so with its Monochrome camera, which can also shoot color.

Well, now this technology has been further developed and integrated into its latest offering, with its new 24MP full-frame sensor. And it got me thinking: could this be the best all-in-one for those who want authentic monochrome images while also having the opportunity to shoot color?

As a photographer who has been shooting exclusively in black-and-white for over a year, and someone who only shoots black-and-white film with my Leica M2, I can say there are times that I just want to shoot color and times when I want a true black-and-white experience – like shooting on the Leica M11 Monochrom.

But thanks to some clever tech, Pixii Camera has managed to merge the two in an exciting and possibly industry-leading way. Basically, Pixii explains that all camera sensors are born monochrome, and at the silicon level each sensor pixel-counts the intensity of light – basically “seeing” in shades of grey, before the Bayer filter is added to record color.

Because of this, Pixii managed to engineer the quantity of light that can hit a defined pixel on the sensor through the Bayer filter – enabling Pixii to recreate the response of the underlying monochrome sensor, which then produces a true 16-bit monochrome RAW DNG image. 

It all  sounds like complete wizardry to me, but it would enable many photographers like myself that want true monochrome images, while also having the benefit of shooting color by simply sliding a slider within the camera app on your phone towards either Mono or Bayer (for color images)

Pixii also acknowledged that there is a slight trade-off for this magical sensor when you look at the FAQs on its website, and I’ve included the full Q&A below to help offer clarity: 

Q: “But I shall only be able to attain the ultimate performance with a monochrome-only sensor, right?!”

Pixii: “Sure. All other things being equal, a non-Bayer sensor gives you that extra stop of sensitivity at the same gain level and a tad more resolution as well. Please consider also that the camera itself is only part of the equation and that, without equally performant lenses, this little bit of extra performance can easily be lost. You just need to decide whether the marginal performance increase justifies buying another dedicated B&W-only camera.”

Maybe this is a bit of a marketing spin to make you invest your hard-earned cash into the Pixii system rather than blowing it all on a new Leica M11 Monochrom. But the Pixii Max does something that Leicas currently can’t: it takes true 16-bit RAW DNG monochrome images, while also shooting true color images at a moment’s notice.

I’d love to get my hands on one to fully test this theory of mine out, as I see it would mean I’m only carrying one camera round, rather than two if I want to shoot a day full of color and black-and-white. Yes, I can just change the color profile to Black and White on my Leica – but that’s not true monochrome!

So if anyone at Pixii Camera is reading this, or anyone who knows people at Pixii, then send them this article – I want to get my hands on a Max and see this awesome feature in the flesh!

You might be interested in the best cameras for black and white photography, or perhaps the best film cameras, or maybe even the best rangefinder cameras.

Here comes another puzzle to keep you somewhat busy this Sunday morning. Straight out of the oven, this one has a new underlying structure. Making these is harder than it looks, seriously! I hope you get as much enjoyment out of it as I did of making it.

The Phoblographer realizes that, as a publication, we don’t always have to be so serious. So, each weekend, we work to bring you a bit of fun in our Humor section and through our Crosswords. Inspired by some of the classic political cartoons and offerings of other publications, we’re tapping into some of the things that only photographers love to laugh about. And we’re turning those into cartoons and crossword puzzles that we think you’ll want to share with lots of the rest of your friends in the photo community. Yes, we believe and hope that you have friends in the photo world.

You can expect to see these cartoons once a week on Saturdays and crosswords every Sunday for as long as we keep doing this.

Most of all, however, we hope that they bring you joy, even for at least a little bit. Ideally, they’ll bring you joy in a way that you recognize. Sometimes, you may moan. At other times, you’ll probably roll your eyes. There’s nothing wrong with genuinely showing off a bit of a laugh or a smile.