This is my Zeiss Ikon "Ikonta" medium format camera. My dad gave me this camera about 25 years ago. He inherited it from someone and didn't have any interest in using it. It's a very unique camera in the fact that it folds up into a pocket camera. It's a 6x6 medium format model that uses standard 120 roll film. I have shot hundreds of rolls of film through this bad boy. The model number of this camera is the 523/16. It was made in Stuttgart, Germany sometime between 1952-1956. I love the fine mechanical detail that is visible on this camera. The bellows are also something you just don't see anymore. Film is a lost art in the digital world but I still try to hang on just a little.
About this challenge... I'm not sure how well my composition will fare in a still life challenge. Technically, it's a still life but I'm sure I'll lose points for not having a wider angle view on the subject. My philosophy on photography of this nature is to show and highlight the parts of interest, which is what I did here. I set the camera on my wife's induction cooktop to get a little bit of reflected interest on the surface. The overhead light in our kitchen was making too much of some hot spots on the lens rings, so I had my wife stand and hold a piece of newspaper between the camera and the light to act as a sort of softbox diffuser to help disperse the light more gently on the subject.
In post processing, I converted to black and white and did a little healing brush dust removal for starters. Then I added a gaussian blur layer to soften the focus just a little.
This photo was shot with my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra phone. It's amazing how well phones do photos these days....
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