Points of comparison

I thought that I would share a couple of photographs of the same location in today’s post as it could make for an interesting comparison. The place is a local reservoir about five miles from my home, and both pictures were taken in similar conditions at around the same time of day a week or two apart. The weather was comparable on both occasions (although there’s a little more hazy cloud in the second shot).

The first shot was taken with my Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 medium format folding camera on Fuji Provia 100F. This camera has a superbly sharp lens. The second shot was taken with my recently acquired Holga 120N on some expired Kodak Tri-X (from a badly manufactured batch that shows the backing paper details on the negatives). This camera has a plastic lens which is somewhat sharp in the centre, but not really anywhere else.

The first picture is looking roughly north-east across the water, the second north-west, but I was stood at the same spot on the bank for both pictures.

If I had to pick a favourite from the two than I think I’d have to go for the Holga shot. It lacks the sharpness and definition of the Zeiss photo, but makes up for it with heaps of atmosphere. My only dislike is the branches creeping into the upper left of the frame – caused either by the Holga’s viewfinder not showing the full image frame, or possibly because with my glasses on it’s a bit difficult to see the full frame in its entirety through the viewfinder. The fact that I have a definite preference for black and white images probably also swings things in its favour.

Which one is your favourite, and why?