Traction engine rally in early summer at Eastnor Castle. Steam, smoke and clanking of heavy metal. Most evocative of bygone times.

The old adage that you should always carry a camera is, as ever, true. On this particular day it was particularly true as we gone to view the castle and tripped over, unbeknownst to us, this traction engine rally in full steam.

On this particular occasion I had my good old Zeiss Ikon ZM film camera slung over my shoulder, so proceeded to make many photographs with it for which it was well suited, by using the method of setting the hyper focal distance on the lens using the distance and depth of field scales. For the 35mm lens I was using, I chose an aperture of f11 and set the scale so that everything between about 1.6m and infinity was in focus.

I could then simply snap away without having worry about focusing at all and in the constant light nor did I worry about exposure either having made my first setting I could stay with it, especially as the film I was using had a huge exposure latitude anyway.

I was then free to concentrate on the chugging, clanking, belching, lumbering, old machines and their proud owners. It was magical. Somehow capturing these old behemoths on a classic 35mm rangefinder camera and lens on film seemed just so appropriate and made the experience complete. Just compose my picture, wait for everything to come right in the frames in the optical viewfinder and click.

All pictures made on Kodak film with my Zeiss Ikon ZM 35mm rangefinder camera with a Voigtlander Classic Nokton II MC 35mm f1.4 and Portra 400 in the summer mid-day sun. Dig the dynamic range of this professional CN film!

I still love film and using classic rangefinder cameras with it.