Zhao Zhenguo, Author at i35mm

Leica SBLOO 35mm Viewfinder: A Window to the Unseen

Prologue: The Frame Before the Storm

A viewfinder is not a tool. It is a confession. A whispered pact between the eye and the infinite. Long before cameras stole the world’s shadows, painters framed their truths with bare hands—carving rectangles of meaning from the chaos. The Leica SBLOO 35mm is heir to that ancient heresy. It does not capture light. It curates it.

Hold it to your eye, and you become a thief of horizons.

The Geometry of Longing

The SBLOO is a reverse Galilean telescope—four lenses in five groups, folded into a chrome-plated labyrinth. Light enters, bends, surrenders. Inside, mirrors conspire to concentrate the world into a bright, unforgiving rectangle.

Brightness: Not illumination, but revelation. The SBLOO’s frame glows like a gas station sign on a midnight highway—a beacon for the lost.
Eye Relief: 8mm. A distance as precise as a sigh. Press too close, and the edges blur. Pull back, and the frame becomes a memory.

This is not a viewfinder. It is a threshold.

A Catalog of Ghosts

Leica’s viewfinders are named like old jazz standards—cryptic, haunted, heavy with history.

Focal Length	Name	Personality
21mm	SBKOO	The anarchist, swallowing streets whole
28mm	SLOOZ	The wanderer, hungry for skies
35mm	SBLOO	The poet, balancing chaos and order
50mm	SBOOI	The monk, austere and unyielding
90mm	SGVOO	The sniper, isolating souls
135mm	SHOOC	The astronomer, mapping distant griefs

The SBLOO is the 35mm—a focal length that sees as humans do, if humans could see without desire.

The Ritual of Exclusion

To use the SBLOO is to perform surgery on reality.

Raise the viewfinder. Feel its cold weight against your brow—a stethoscope for the visible world.
Frame. The brightlines cut the scene like scalpels. A child’s laughter becomes a quadrant. A cloud, a diagonal.
Breathe. The 8mm gap between glass and eye lets the outside world bleed in—a reminder: You are still here. This is not a dream.

A Warning:
The SBLOO does not lie. It shows you what you ignore—the homeless man outside the frame, the crack in the pavement, the love affair dissolving in the periphery.

The Myth of Objectivity

Leica’s engineers will tell you about coatings, refractive indices, anti-glare magic. Ignore them. The SBLOO is not optics. It is alchemy.

Its brilliance comes from absence. No electronics. No LEDs. Just polished glass and borrowed light. To look through it is to understand: Photography is not about recording. It is about betrayal. You betray the world by choosing what to exile from the frame.

Epilogue: The Viewfinder as Time Machine

In an age of screens, the SBLOO is a relic. A rebellion.

Attach it to a digital Leica, and something shifts. The live view dies. The world reverts to its analog truth—grainy, fleeting, alive. For a moment, you are Oskar Barnack in 1914, Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1932, Robert Frank in 1955.

The SBLOO whispers:
“To see is to choose. To choose is to lose. Now go—lose beautifully.”

Technical Notes (for those who still crave facts):

Type: Reverse Galilean, 35mm brightline
Magnification: 0.4x
Compatibility: Screwmount and M bodies (adapters weep quietly)
Price: $450 (or three sleepless nights in Marseille)

Frame the unframeable. Then let it go. 🖤

Leica SOFORT: A Polaroid Ghost in the Machine

By a Wanderer with Light-Stained Hands

Prologue: The Weight of an Instant

The Leica SOFORT arrives like a postcard from a stranger—unexpected, cryptic, bearing the smudged fingerprints of time. It is not a camera. It is a provocation, wrapped in red leather and German pragmatism. “SOFORT” means “immediately,” but nothing about this machine feels hurried. To hold it is to hold a paradox: a Leica that laughs at permanence, a Fuji wearing a Savile Row suit.

The Anatomy of Ephemera

Body

Material: Plastic, but the kind that whispers “I could have been Bakelite.” Red, white, or black—colors borrowed from a Tarkovsky film.
Weight: 307g. Light enough to forget, heavy enough to remind you: Every photo is a farewell.
Design: Squares and circles in a lover’s quarrel. This is not Fuji’s kawaii flirtation; it’s Bauhaus austerity with a cigarette burn.

Lens

Focal Adjustment: A ring at the base, two zones: 0.6m-3m (intimacy), 3m-∞ (escape). Manual focus? No. Mindful focus. To turn the ring is to negotiate with distance, like a truck driver shifting gears on the Autobahn at dusk.
Sharpness: Startling. The lens—Leica-designed, Fuji-born—slices light with Teutonic precision. Polaroid’s soft nostalgia? Nein.

The Viewfinder: A Window to a Parallel World

The SOFORT’s viewfinder is a cathedral. Bright, uncluttered, a rectangle of pure possibility. Fuji’s Instax Mini 90 offers a peephole; Leica offers a portal. To peer through it is to remember: Photography isn’t about capturing reality. It’s about framing your loneliness and calling it art.

Technical Note:

Parallax Correction: None. Your mistakes are your own.

Film: The Alchemy of Impermanence

Film Type	Leica’s Soul	Fuji’s Body
Saturation	High, like blood on snow	Pastel, like faded denim
Contrast	Low, forgiving shadows	Harsh, a teenager’s first heartbreak
Price	$1.20 per shot (a prayer)	$0.80 per shot (a grocery receipt)

Leica’s Secret: Their film—rebranded Fuji—develops warmer. Is it chemistry? Or the placebo effect of a red dot?

The Ritual

Load the film. Feel the cartridge click, a sound like a bullet chambering.
Choose your distance. 0.6m for lovers, ∞ for runaways.
Press the shutter. The motor groans, ejecting a blank rectangle—a Schrödinger’s photo. Wait 90 seconds. Pray.

A Warning:
The SOFORT doesn’t do “spontaneous.” It does delayed urgency. Every shot is a Russian roulette of light and regret.

The Ghost of M

Leica claims this is pedagogy—a gateway drug to M cameras. They’re not wrong. The SOFORT’s manual zone focus is a haiku version of the M’s rangefinder. Use it, and you’ll start craving the click-hiss of a film advance lever.

But here’s the truth:
The SOFORT isn’t training wheels. It’s a memento mori for the digital age. Each photo decays. Each fade is a whisper: “You too will vanish.”

Who Buys This?

Not You, if you photograph birthdays.
You, if you’ve ever stolen a glance at a stranger on a train and wondered what god they curse.

Epilogue: The Eternal Instant

Wim Wenders once wrote:
“Every film is a letter to someone who no longer exists.”

The SOFORT understands. Its photos are letters addressed to ghosts—written in silver halide, sealed with light.

Technical Specs (for the restless):

Lens: 60mm f/12.7 (Leica-designed, Fuji-built)
Focus Zones: 0.6m-3m / 3m-∞
Exposure Control: Auto, with a grudging nod to manual override
Price: $349 (or one sleepless night in Berlin)

Shoot it. Burn it. Let it haunt you. 🖤

Leica I Model C: A Camera That Wears Its Scars Like Black Silk

By a designer who whispers to rust and light

Prologue: The Blade Hidden in a Pocket

A camera is not a tool. It is a wound—a deliberate incision into time. The Leica I Model C (1930) knows this. It arrives not as an answer, but as a question carved in nickel and obsidian. Hold it, and you hold a blade forged in the smithy of Oskar Barnack’s rebellion: “Why must cameras be grand? Why not let them bleed into the shadows?”

This is not a machine for the obedient. It is for those who wear their loneliness like a tailored coat.

The Anatomy of Silence

Body

Material: Black lacquer, hand-mixed and now extinct—a pigment so deep it swallows light like a midnight ocean.
Weight: 380g. Not heavy, but dense with the gravity of firsts—the first Leica to detach its eye (lens), the first to let light carve its own path.
Shutter: Cloth curtain, still alive after a century. Adjust it, and it purrs like a wolf on a frayed leash.

Lens

Mount: Threaded, like a secret handshake. Early sets (I-III) were monogamous—body and lens serial numbers married, their brass vows etched into metal. Later, Leica let them divorce. Look for the “0” mark—a scar from lovers reunited.
Options: Nickel-plated Elmar 50mm f/3.5 (a dagger), Hektor 135mm f/4.5 (a spear). Chrome came later, but nickel whispers: “I am not here to shine. I am here to outlast you.”

Contax G45 f/2: The Lens That Dances Between Precision and Poetry (A review structured like a bamboo grove—orderly yet alive with whispers)

The Alchemist’s Paradox

In a world obsessed with 50mm orthodoxy, the Contax G45 arrives as a 45mm heretic—a focal length as deliberate as a sculptor’s finest chisel. While others chase symmetry, Zeiss engineers carved this optical anomaly: a brass-core lens sheathed in titanium, weighing less than a sparrow’s sigh (198g). Priced at 420(new,1996)or420(new,1996)or380–$420 (2025 USD for mint copies), it defies both physics and financial logic.

The Rollei 35 Review: A Camera That’s Part Time Machine, Part Pocket-Sized Rebel (With Footnotes for Your Inner Nerd)

By Douglas Adams’ long-lost cousin who majored in camera geekery

Introduction: The Camera That Defies Logic (And Gravity)

Imagine if a toaster, a spy gadget, and a Stradivarius violin had a baby. That’s the Rollei 35. It’s smaller than your smartphone, heavier than your regrets about buying film in 2024, and somehow still the most charming mechanical contraption this side of the Milky Way.

TL;DR for ADHD Humans:

Size: Fits in a jeans pocket (if you ignore the fact that it weighs like a brick of nostalgia).
Vibe: “I’m not a Leica, but I’ll steal your soul anyway.”

Contax TVS III: The Titanium Quiet Poet

(A review woven like leaves rustling in a spring breeze—delicate yet precise)

The Quiet Rebel in a Screaming World

While smartphone cameras shout about computational miracles, the Contax TVS III enters the room like a librarian silencing a nightclub—polite, unassuming, yet radiating authority. This titanium-clad time capsule (1999–2002) weighs less than a barista’s latte art obsession (390g) and costs less than a designer phone case (450–450–550 in 2025 USD). In an era of planned obsolescence, it asks: “What if a camera could outlive its own relevance?”

Design: Porsche’s Forgotten Sketchbook

Titanium Seduction: Not Leica’s brass-and-leather nostalgia, but a stealth fighter’s elegance. The matte finish feels like a poet’s favorite drafting pencil—cool to the touch, warm in the hand.
Lens Ballet: The motorized bridge cover unfolds smoother than a Swiss watch’s second hand, revealing a zoom lens sharper than a diplomat’s retort.
Ergonomic Whisper: Fits a palm like a river stone worn smooth by centuries—no sharp edges, only intention.

Optical Alchemy

Zeiss’ Final Bow
The 28–56mm Vario-Sonnar lens doesn’t just capture light—it curates it. At f/3.5–6.5, it renders colors like autumn leaves preserved in resin: vibrant yet restrained. Skin tones glow like parchment under library lamps, skies hold their blue without turning cartoonish.

Stealth Mode
The shutter clicks quieter than a chess master’s calculated move, leaving only the purr of film advance as evidence. Street photographers will feel like ghosts—present yet invisible.

Contax G2 Review: The Forgotten Haiku of Analog Photography

Prologue: The Autumn Leaf in a Digital Storm

In an era where pixels multiply like dandelion seeds, the Contax G2 drifts into view like a maple leaf preserved in a vintage book—fragile, poetic, and stubbornly beautiful. Priced between 600–600–1,200 (2024 USD), this titanium-clad relic is the antique pocket watch of film cameras: intricate, undervalued, and ticking with analog grace. Think of it as the quiet companion you’d find in a forgotten library, whispering stories of a time when light was measured in silver halide, not megapixels.

Design: Porsche’s Haiku

Bauhaus in Titanium
- Body: Brushed metal and matte finishes—cold as a Bavarian winter morning, yet balanced like a Zen rock garden. Fits in a coat pocket like a folded love letter.
- Lens: Carl Zeiss glass, sharper than a samurai’s blade and warmer than a hearth—28mm f/2.8 to 90mm f/2.8, each a stanza in an optical poem.
The Weight of Intent
- Dense enough to feel purposeful, light enough to forget you’re carrying it—a paradox wrapped in Japanese-German engineering.

Optical Alchemy: Time Travel in a Frame

Aspect	Contax G2	Fujifilm X-Pro3
Focus Speed	A falcon diving for prey	A commuter missing their train
Bokeh	Van Gogh’s Starry Night	A spreadsheet gradient
Soul	🖋️🖋️🖋️🖋️🖋️	💻

Autofocus: Snaps to clarity like a novelist finding the perfect word—startlingly fast for a ’90s relic.
Manual Focus: A hidden dial for purists, turning focus into a meditative ritual.

The “Three Truths”

Film’s Ephemeral Dance: Burns through rolls like pages in a diary—each frame a fleeting confession.
Flaws as Features: LCD counters bleed ink like aging calligraphy; plastic grips shed skin like a snake—wabi-sabi in motion.
Chinese Proverb Footnote:“榫卯相合”
(“Mortise and tenon joinery”)
A nod to how this camera interlocks analog craftsmanship with digital curiosity, like ancient woodwork defying time.

Film vs Digital: A Garden in Two Seasons

Film Romance: On Kodak Portra 400, it’s Hemingway in Paris—grainy, raw, and drenched in golden-hour longing.
Digital Age: Fuji’s X-Pro3 feels like a ChatGPT sonnet—polished but sterile, missing the coffee stains and dog-eared corners.

Who Needs This Camera?

✓ Analog Archivists: Who believe imperfection is the soul of art
✓ Minimalist Poets: Seeking “less tech, more texture”
✓ Contrarians: Who’d choose a typewriter over a touchscreen

Avoid If: You crave autofocus speed, hate quirks, or think “vintage” means “obsolete.”

Final Verdict: The Unlikely Time Capsule

The G2 isn’t just a camera—it’s a kintsugi masterpiece, mending analog’s cracks with titanium and grit. For the price of a weekend in Kyoto, you gain:

A relic from photography’s last romantic rebellion
Proof that “outdated” often means “undervalued”
Permission to ignore megapixels and chase ghosts

Rating:
🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️ (film alchemists) | 📱📱🤍🤍🤍 (zoombies)

“A camera that whispers: ‘The past is not dead—it’s just waiting to be rediscovered.’”

Pro Tips:

Battery Hack: Use SR44 cells—avoid the dreaded mid-roll blackout.
Film Pairing: Ilford HP5+ @1600—grain dances with Zeiss’ clinical precision.
Zen Mantra: “The best camera is the one that makes you forget time.”

Epilogue: The Blue-and-White Whisper
Contax’s G2 scoffs at digital’s ephemeral glow, whispering: “True artistry lies in the seams where light hesitates.” Like a 竹简 (bamboo scroll), its beauty thrives in the tension between fragility and endurance—a tactile chronicle of moments etched not in code, but in silver. Now slip it into your bag and wander, not to conquer light, but to let it unravel like ink on rice paper. 📸

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Bottled Sunshine

Nowadays, when you can grab almost anything from the supermarket, I’ve noticed how little I interact with nature anymore. My most recent “nature moment” came from peeling back the rind of an orange – that bright citrus scent lingered on my hands like bottled sunshine. Realizing this, I immediately reached for my camera. Maybe you can catch a hint of its scent through the image.

A Casual Chat About the MINOX MB/ML: Small Wonders, Big Joys

Imagine a camera that slips into your life as effortlessly as a spring breeze rustling through a cherry blossom grove—a fleeting whisper of beauty, delicate yet purposeful. That’s the MINOX MB/ML for you. This little gem from Germany’s storied craftsmanship has roots in the shadowy world of spy gadgets—think James Bond slipping one into his tuxedo pocket before a martini-soaked mission. From that clandestine lineage, you’d expect it to excel at quick, close-up shots, and boy, does it deliver. No wonder Leica, the grandmaster of lenses, scooped it up as a subsidiary. Compared to heavyweights like the Contax TVS III or Minolta TC-1, the MINOX stands out with two magic words: affordable and portable.

The Lens: A German Heart in a Humble Shell

Let’s start with the good stuff: that MINOX Color-Minotar 35mm f/2.8 lens. It’s pure German precision—sharp, crisp, and worthy of Leica’s approving nod. Sure, the body’s plastic, and some gearheads might scoff at it like it’s a paperback next to a leather-bound classic. Picture this: if a Leica M3 decided to flex its metal muscles and smash a MINOX, it’d be a one-sided brawl—shattered plastic everywhere. But here’s the kicker: can you tuck an M3 into your shirt pocket and saunter off to a picnic? Didn’t think so. The Contax wouldn’t fare much better in that imaginary showdown either.

The MINOX’s plastic shell might not scream durability, but its heart—a simple, scientific design—beats strong. Take it to the highlands or a snowy peak, and it’ll hum along happily, snapping away without a hiccup. And with so many of these floating around, if one gives up the ghost, replacing it costs about as much as a Leica UV filter. That’s a steal. Andy Warhol loved it—paired it with a flash, no less—and I get why. The MINOX with a flash isn’t just cool; it’s downright dapper, and the photos it pumps out have that same swagger.

Now, a small confession: that f/2.8 lens, as lovely as it is, doesn’t quite tame glare like a Leica or Contax. It’s a trade-off for its pint-sized brilliance.

The Everyday Magic

What makes the MINOX a delight is how it fits into your day. The imaging is rich, with layers that unfold like a well-told story—think of Kazuo Ishiguro’s quiet, evocative prose, where every detail builds a world. The metering? Spot-on. The controls? Simple enough to master over a lazy coffee. That shutter prompt in the viewfinder is a thoughtful touch, like a friend nudging you to seize the moment. The frosted body feels great in hand—smooth, not scratchy like the Rollei 35, which always seems to poke at you.

Two Tips for the Road

Rating: 4/5 (for dreamers) | 3/5 (for gear purists)
A pocket-sized sonnet—recite it off-key, and it still charms the room.
Rating: 5/5 (for wanderers) | 2/5 (for tripod loyalists)
A kite on a string—light enough to soar, but don’t ask it to anchor your ship.

The Verdict: A Trusty Sidekick

The MINOX MB/ML isn’t here to steal the spotlight—it’s a cheerful companion, a tool that gets the job done with a grin. Light as a feather at 180g, small enough to vanish into your pocket (100×62×32mm), it blends electronic shutters with program and aperture-priority modes seamlessly. The lens—4 elements in 3 groups—spans f/2.8 to f/16, focusing from 0.9m to infinity, while the shutter dances between 1 and 1/500 seconds. It sips power from a PX 28 lithium battery and handles ISO 25-1600 film like a pro. Oh, and that black, reinforced fiberglass body? It’s got a understated charm.

Pros

Light and tiny—your perfect travel buddy.
Electronic shutter plus dual-mode flexibility.
Affordable enough to keep the wallet smiling.

Cons

Lens quality, while solid, doesn’t quite match the Rollei 35’s finesse.

Final Thoughts

The MINOX MB/ML is like a trusty bamboo flute in a world of brass orchestras—simple, elegant, and unmistakably itself. (There’s your Chinese nod—a bamboo flute, familiar yet exotic to Western ears.) It’s not the flashiest, but it’s a joy to carry, a breeze to use, and a reminder that sometimes the smallest things bring the brightest moments. Whether you’re chasing sunsets or candid laughs, this little wonder’s got your back.

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