Analog Therapy: Rollei Infrared 400 – Konica Hexar RF – Voigtländer Nokton 40mm F1.2.

AKA, guess who realized that their R72 filter bought for another camera fits on the Voigtländer Nokton 40mm F1.2 also.

Had very good luck with Rollei Infrared 400 film with another 35mm camera and lens…

…so I decided to give it a spin with the Hexar/Voigtlander.

Same rules as before. Adjusted 5 stops to account for the R72 filter and doubled the development time using Cinestill df96. Be warned. This is a thin film. So much so that it took a few attempts to get it wound on the reel. Small issue. I found going slow when winding helped. Here are the resulting pics with some thoughts after that.

Thoughts.

I thought I would like the results more.

Mainly because I thought the larger aperture would help out with the whole R72 thing. But that was not the case.

I prefer the pics taken with the Contax G1 and slower 28mm f/2.8 lens. The pics above are not as sharp and contrasty. I cannot say for sure why but I know what did not cause issues based on past experience with both cameras.

Camera exposure accuracy. Both the G1 and RF have proven themselves to be formidable exposure accuracy beasts.
Focusing. Manual on the RF and AF on the G1 have proven to be equally accurate in the past.
Lens quality. Same goes here. I put ZEISS and Voigtlander in the same category of greatness for IQ.

I have some theories on why there was a difference.

R72 quality. May be as simple as the G1 had the benefit of a brand new Hoya branded filter and the RF used a second hand no brand filter from my local camera shop.
Bright aperture. Have read that IR throws off the focal plane. A slower apertures of f/2.8 might have benefitted from a deeper depth of field thereby covering for focus inaccuracies that f/1.2 exposed.

All theory. Easy fix. I will use the G1 from here on out.

I still like the RF pics abive. I just like the G1 pics better.

No surprise. A while back I wrote a post saying this was my favorite analog camera system in a blog post I wrote for KEH Spotlight. I still stand by this.

The film?

I like it and will buy it again.

Happy capturing.

-ELW