At the time I shot these frames, I had owned the Contax G1 for a little less than two months. It was my first film camera and I fell in love with her immediately. You just want to hold it in your hands and enjoy the genius of the people who created it. I won’t write much about the difference between the first and second versions of this camera. I will just say that for me they are both wonderful and I advise you to use the one that is easier for you to get.

For this first time, I shot at temperatures below 30 degrees Celsius. And probably for the first time, I was on the street in weather like this. Almost two years have passed since that moment, I completely forgot how cold it was then. Maybe this is because these pictures do not convey the cold, and I am glad of that. This makes them seem more honest to me. Because they convey the real facts and not how we look at things based on on our feeling.

I didn’t protect the camera and I wasn’t sure whether it would remain functional in such weather conditions. But as you can see, she never let me down. I was a little worried that in severe frost the batteries can quickly go down and I have no spare. All the photos were shot in Canada, almost beyond the Arctic Circle. At that time I was working in the manufacture of airships and we did some testing in cold weather. For a long time, my employer did not allow me to publish photos, but I finally got encouragement to do this.

We spent several days there and managed to do everything we planned. I will probably post a photo later under the same conditions with the same camera but with a Carl Zeiss 90 mm lens and Portra 400. But for now, let’s dwell on these photos.

Everything was shot at Contax Carl Zeiss Planar T* 45mm f2, unfortunately, I do not remember with what aperture I took specific shots. I can only say that at the beginning of using this camera, I rarely closed the lens further than f/5.6. Of course, the sun was shining that day and there was a lot of snow. Perhaps this was the first opportunity for me to shoot in such conditions and not even think about additional lighting and most likely I closed the aperture to f/8.

~ Igor

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3 responses to “5 Frames… Of cold-weather testing airships by the arctic circle on Kodak Portra 160 (35mm Format / EI 160 / Contax G1 + Planar 45mm f/2) – by Igor Immfun”

  1. Love the G1 ! Very happy, to have her back, after decades.
    Planar 35/F2 is my go-to lens. You need a green label G1,
    or hack the firmware via service menu to get it working,
    as it should – infos are onto photrio.com since 2020…

  2. great shots, and a bit of history there!

 

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