Showing posts with label 1964. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1964. Show all posts
7/12/19
6/28/19
6/27/19
6/25/19
6/10/19
5/28/19
5/20/19
1/24/19
5/18/18
4/18/18
9/6/17
Honor House Products - Records your voice at home!
You might think, at first glance, that this record recorder was made by Hohner, the famous musical instrument company, but nope, there's no "H". It's "Honor". Also, there's a "House" after it, so, really "Hohner" doesn't look much like "Honor House" at all, really.
Anyway, yeah, recording records at home sounds kind of fun, if you're stuck in 1964 and there's three channels on your TV. But just like your inkjet printer, they could give you the device for free and still make money off of all the ink / blank records you'll be buying over the next three years until the thing breaks.
I have a bunch of old radio recordings downloaded from Archive.org, and I now have to wonder how many of them still exist thanks to nerdy people with home record recorders like this one, sitting next to their radio, with the mic' shoved up against the speaker. Plenty of those old radio shows definitely sound like they were recorded not from an original broadcast master, but rather from an inexpensive microphone inside a plastic bag stuffed into a dead raccoon... shoved up against the speaker.
Anyway again, hey, clip art lady! She has a sassy attitude and deserves to sass around on your hard drive for a rainy day. Here you go. I need another coffee you're welcome or whatever grumble grumble.
I have a bunch of old radio recordings downloaded from Archive.org, and I now have to wonder how many of them still exist thanks to nerdy people with home record recorders like this one, sitting next to their radio, with the mic' shoved up against the speaker. Plenty of those old radio shows definitely sound like they were recorded not from an original broadcast master, but rather from an inexpensive microphone inside a plastic bag stuffed into a dead raccoon... shoved up against the speaker.
Anyway again, hey, clip art lady! She has a sassy attitude and deserves to sass around on your hard drive for a rainy day. Here you go. I need another coffee you're welcome or whatever grumble grumble.
9/5/17
Are The Beatles a Menace to our Kids? - The Lowdown Magazine, July, 1964
In July 1964, Completely Legitemate Journalistic Outlet, Reliable Source of Horrified Outrage at Sexuality, and Reliable Source of Sexual Content, The Lowdown Magazine blew the lid off the hideous plot to destroy our youth and undermine all of Western Civilization known as The Beatles.
First, the cover, unretouched and exactly as it ran in '64. The Lowdown would only be made less funny by any Photoshopped attempts to make it funnier. Admittedly, whipping cults are now required by the CDC to wash more regularly, so that's one debt of thanks we owe to The Lowdown.
First, the cover, unretouched and exactly as it ran in '64. The Lowdown would only be made less funny by any Photoshopped attempts to make it funnier. Admittedly, whipping cults are now required by the CDC to wash more regularly, so that's one debt of thanks we owe to The Lowdown.
We now present the complete Beatles Expose', for your scandalized enjoyment. You know the drill with images: click it to big it, baby.
6/5/17
Air India - Ooh la la!!! Show your continental!
It's summer holiday season, citizens! Get in the spirit of getting the eff out of here with this 1964 Air-India ad from Holiday magazine!
Air-India wants you to see the world with their help. Who? Air-India is an airline, duh. What's wrong? you've never heard of Air-India? Well, since airlines in the news are mostly known for being purveyors of misery and degradation, if nobody's heard of your air carrier, that's a definite feather in your cap.
And they still exist after all these years. Good for them!
So maybe you're planning a little vacation (as we here in The Colonies call it), and you're looking for a way to show everyone you meet how continental and stuff you are? What better way than with our newly designed Air-India T-shirt? (You can get it printed on whatever color shirt you want, of course.)
And they still exist after all these years. Good for them!
So maybe you're planning a little vacation (as we here in The Colonies call it), and you're looking for a way to show everyone you meet how continental and stuff you are? What better way than with our newly designed Air-India T-shirt? (You can get it printed on whatever color shirt you want, of course.)
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| Oooh la la! Formidable! |
5/23/17
Peugeot - Mouche du coche?
This 1964 ad for Peugeot seems to be trying to convince us that their cars are built to a high standard. Go ask any car geek you know and ask them if Peugeots are famous for their build quality and reliability. Innovation? Quirkiness? Clever design? Ten out of ten. Rock-solid construction? Errrr...... no. More knowledgeable understanders of Gallic carness are free to contradict this assertion in the comments, of course.
Ask Google to translate the idiom "busybody" into French, and it'll come back with "mouche du coche", which, directly translated back to English, means "fly in the coach". Hmm. Interesting. Do a search on "mouche du coche", and French dictionary sites will tell you it means "kibitzer" or "busy bee". So, it looks as though Google's translation feature is getting pretty good at understanding figures of speech and other non-literally-translatable phrases. That could be handy in the future.
The picky Frenchman in the picture could be useful in your graphical adventures some day too, n'est-ce pas? Let's have the Phil Are GO! Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade (PAGGBPB) pop him out of his native ad, complete his beret for him, and save him out as a PNG on an alpha channel backgorund.
Aah yes, just like that. But what if somebody doesn't want the naturally-yellowed version, and just wants him in pure black and white?
Can do. Hop to it, team....
Formidable! Right click that picky frog onto your "disque dur" for safe keeping, do you can use him to help convince people of your attention to detail, just like the build quality of French cars sort of doesn't.
What? More??? Jeez! Fine. Here's a new t-shirt in our shop, made from stuff we pulled from this ad. now you can show everyone how proud you are of your Peugeot 106, sitting back home in the garage, waiting for a new fuel pump to arrive on the slow boat from Nice.
Link to the Peugeot shirt at our Spreadshirt shop.
Yep. Those cars are sort of arranged in the colors of the French flag. Clever, huh? Yep, that's that attention to detail the French are famous for.
Lastly, you know what's interesting? While, yes, Peugeot does still make cars and bicycles, they make a surprising number of high-end salt and pepper shakers, for some reason. Next time you're in a reasonably fancy restaurant, and you notice the shakers are made of stainless steel (not glass, for some reason), look at the bottom while you're adding some big flavor to your soup and see if there's a Peugeot logo down there. Then you can make the face like the guy in this ad, because you noticed a detail.
The picky Frenchman in the picture could be useful in your graphical adventures some day too, n'est-ce pas? Let's have the Phil Are GO! Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade (PAGGBPB) pop him out of his native ad, complete his beret for him, and save him out as a PNG on an alpha channel backgorund.
Aah yes, just like that. But what if somebody doesn't want the naturally-yellowed version, and just wants him in pure black and white?
Can do. Hop to it, team....
Formidable! Right click that picky frog onto your "disque dur" for safe keeping, do you can use him to help convince people of your attention to detail, just like the build quality of French cars sort of doesn't.
What? More??? Jeez! Fine. Here's a new t-shirt in our shop, made from stuff we pulled from this ad. now you can show everyone how proud you are of your Peugeot 106, sitting back home in the garage, waiting for a new fuel pump to arrive on the slow boat from Nice.
Link to the Peugeot shirt at our Spreadshirt shop.
Yep. Those cars are sort of arranged in the colors of the French flag. Clever, huh? Yep, that's that attention to detail the French are famous for.
Lastly, you know what's interesting? While, yes, Peugeot does still make cars and bicycles, they make a surprising number of high-end salt and pepper shakers, for some reason. Next time you're in a reasonably fancy restaurant, and you notice the shakers are made of stainless steel (not glass, for some reason), look at the bottom while you're adding some big flavor to your soup and see if there's a Peugeot logo down there. Then you can make the face like the guy in this ad, because you noticed a detail.
3/7/16
Dan River - Shorts suit.
The weather is slightly warming up, citizens! That means soon you'll be on vacation or something (Our readers in Europe may want to pronounce "vacation" as "'oliday.")! That means you'll finally be able to break out all that great "sportswear" you got for Pointy Tree Day, like these great sportswears from 1964!
Obviously, playing sports is the last thing you'd want to do in flimsy sandals and a jacket, or better yet, a suit jacket, tie, and... plaid shorts? Honestly, double-you tee eff, 1964?
"Sportswear". Yeah. Exactly what the hell is sportswear anyway, if it's obviously not something you'd wear to actually play sports? Let's ask Merriam-Webster...
"Sportswear". Yeah. Exactly what the hell is sportswear anyway, if it's obviously not something you'd wear to actually play sports? Let's ask Merriam-Webster...
Simple Definition of sportswear
: clothes that people wear for playing sports
: comfortable clothes that people wear for informal activities
Thanks, marketing, for once again removing meaning from words."Sports" now means "not formal". Gotcha. "Comfortable" must be used here in the literal form. The shorts are not terribly restrictive of your movements. So, in that sense, the bottom half of the guy could be as described by his choice of "sportswear". However, in the figurative sense of the word "comfortable", a shorts suit would not be the go-to getup for lots of men, regardless of their proclivities or plans for the weekend, I think. History is on the side of this argument, too. Otherwise, we would commonly see men sashaying around our city's zoos and museums looking like they hurried out the door while changing out of their work clothes.
Here in The Future, to see a guy's knees looking like two rolls of carpet in polite company is a bit of an eye-opener. Men are slightly expected to, uuh, "trim" to some extent, it seems. Either that, or just maybe wear longer shorts. But back in the Sixties, before men were expected to be nearly women, it was hunky-dory to go Full Connery anwyere you pleased. Please recall the hotel pool scene in the early part of Goldfinger. You know the scene. Bond is hanging out, looking super dangerous in his baby blue terry cloth jumper while sizing up Auric Goldfinger.
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| "Mister Bond, we'll have to bill you for the rug if you try to leave the room with it. Oh! My apologies." |
It must also be mentioned that, if we use Goldfinger as an example, it was also romantic and adventurous to basically commit criminal sexual assault. Think of the barn scene where Bond forces himself upon Pussy Galore. Sexy!....?
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| Mr. and Mrs Galore really have some explaining to do regarding the naming of children. Does Pussy have a brother named Richard? |
It's easy to be conflicted. On one hand, should everyone be expected to be shiny and smooth like a baby? That's pretty weird. One the other hand, it's hard to keep yourself from jumping a little every time Bond walks out that door looking like his mom dressed him for a day at the pool.
Dan River would have us believe that these clothes are the perfect thing for a hike through Wile E. Coyote country. It can get breezy out there in the high desert. You'd better tuck your tie into your pants or it will flap around, and then you'd look silly. You don't want that.
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| Click for big. |
2/11/16
Baldwin Orga-Sonic - Play with yourself or others.
Time was, if you wanted to be the swingingest (not sexually) family on the block, what you wanted was an organ in your living room. You may think it sounds cheesy, but this was 1964. Yes, The Kids already had frikkin' cool as hell acts like The Kinks, but The Kids' Parents still had their own type of easy listening FM hits to draw upon for evening singalong hour, and in many cases, the Mom and Dad music of 1964 couldn't be made worse by application of amateur organ.
The Baldwin Orga-Sonic. So what's that sound like? I mean, we know what the name sounds like, but what did the instrument sound like? It sounded like this:
Yep. Some organs could rock, like your Hammonds and stuff. The Baldwin Orgasmonic, to my Ears of the Future, definitely delivered your family to squaresville on wings of polyseter. Even when playing the piano solo from Bennie and the Jets, it's pretty corny. At the time, though, the only alternative was another, cooler organ, or a piano. A piano must have seemed horribly old-fashioned in 1964. Plus, without proper tuning and maintenance, the piano would soon enough drift sonically into the realm of jangly cowboy hoedowns.
Baldwin claimed their Orgasmoronic was "more versatile tonally than other organs", enjoying state-of-the-art (at the time) synthesis to vaguely replicate the sound of other instruments... if you squint a little and listen just right. This, to the marketing department of the Baldwin corporation must have seemed vastly superior to the comparatively primitive drawbars used by its older competitors. Ironically, drawbar organs, to our sophisticated Future Ears, have aged more better, and are seriously more kickass, as demonstrated below...
Yeah. You don't see many Baldwin Orga-sumonics on stages at summer jazz festivals. Maybe the name isn't helping? It's hard to make any jokes about a name like "Hammond B-3", but "Baldwin Orga-Sonic"? That's some low hanging fruit. Here are some rejected names for the Baldwin Orga-Sonic.
The Baldwin Orga-Sonic. So what's that sound like? I mean, we know what the name sounds like, but what did the instrument sound like? It sounded like this:
Yep. Some organs could rock, like your Hammonds and stuff. The Baldwin Orgasmonic, to my Ears of the Future, definitely delivered your family to squaresville on wings of polyseter. Even when playing the piano solo from Bennie and the Jets, it's pretty corny. At the time, though, the only alternative was another, cooler organ, or a piano. A piano must have seemed horribly old-fashioned in 1964. Plus, without proper tuning and maintenance, the piano would soon enough drift sonically into the realm of jangly cowboy hoedowns.
Baldwin claimed their Orgasmoronic was "more versatile tonally than other organs", enjoying state-of-the-art (at the time) synthesis to vaguely replicate the sound of other instruments... if you squint a little and listen just right. This, to the marketing department of the Baldwin corporation must have seemed vastly superior to the comparatively primitive drawbars used by its older competitors. Ironically, drawbar organs, to our sophisticated Future Ears, have aged more better, and are seriously more kickass, as demonstrated below...
- Orga-Ironic-Sonic
- Orgas-AAAHHH!!-Nic
- Gaggatronic
- Orga-Tragic
- Vulvasonic
- Premature Orga-Soniculator
- Ejacumatic
- Spunk-o-Sonic
- Orga-Stop-O-Tron
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| Click for big |
1/25/16
Cadillac 1964 - More trunk for your junk.
In 1964, Cadillac was still The Shit in luxury cars. The Europeans had yet to put a dent in the American luxo-barge market, and so Cadillac could still talk all big, and look down their noses at everyone who wasn't Cadillac.
"...wherever people of consequence gather, the Cadillac car is a predominate part of the scene." "People of consequence"! Oh, I say. We are grand, aren't we? Oew oew. No more buttered scones for me, mater - I'm off to play the grahnd piahnew.
Personal taste: Visually, Cadillacs have always have had a look that was more like a building than a car. All angles and corners. It looks like you're driving around in a bank, which, for "people of consequence" may we just the ticket. To me, they don't look fast or especially agile. In case you haven't driven a savings and loan recently, they tend to accelerate and change direction on a geologic time scale. This, in my estimation, is a poor sort of look to emulate in the design of your car. If you want a bourgemobile that looks like it could go round a corner without scratching up the door panels, look to Aston Martin, or Jaguar, or The Germans. They had this figured out in The Fifties.
Today, Cadillac is faced with the imminent mortality of their core customer base, and so have to try to appeal to people under sixty years of age. Trouble is, youngsters like us, with only most of our hair gone gray, like a bit of performance. Current Cadillacs can be quick and agile to be sure, but their family design language still tends to the architectural, and to my eye, this looks clunky and awkward on a performance car.
But to us Americans, more is more, apparently. As long as it's big, it doesn't matter that it has an interior that is still the laughingstock of the international car community, or that it's less aerodynamic than the garage you keep it in.
The '64 in today's ad could use some help. What's faster than a sedan? A coupe! What's faster than two wheel drive? Two more wheel drive! You can use more trunk space to carry your bags and bags of jewels and other riches, tastefully arranges in pirate chests. Phil Are GO! Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade, ASSEMBLE! PKSHOW! Team, you know what to do. Add and axle, lose some seats, and keep the wheelbase the same. Hop to it!
Yeesssss. Just the ticket! With a trunk like that, you could carry the corpses of those three greenskeepers you ran over in your golf cart, last weekend at the club. Accidental manslaughter charges are for people of "less consequence" than you. Somebody at the dinner gala will know how to make this little inconvenience go away with minimal fuss. Better park the car yourself, just to be safe. "Wave at the doorman as we glide by on our way to the parking lot, honey."
Today, Cadillac is faced with the imminent mortality of their core customer base, and so have to try to appeal to people under sixty years of age. Trouble is, youngsters like us, with only most of our hair gone gray, like a bit of performance. Current Cadillacs can be quick and agile to be sure, but their family design language still tends to the architectural, and to my eye, this looks clunky and awkward on a performance car.
But to us Americans, more is more, apparently. As long as it's big, it doesn't matter that it has an interior that is still the laughingstock of the international car community, or that it's less aerodynamic than the garage you keep it in.
The '64 in today's ad could use some help. What's faster than a sedan? A coupe! What's faster than two wheel drive? Two more wheel drive! You can use more trunk space to carry your bags and bags of jewels and other riches, tastefully arranges in pirate chests. Phil Are GO! Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade, ASSEMBLE! PKSHOW! Team, you know what to do. Add and axle, lose some seats, and keep the wheelbase the same. Hop to it!
Yeesssss. Just the ticket! With a trunk like that, you could carry the corpses of those three greenskeepers you ran over in your golf cart, last weekend at the club. Accidental manslaughter charges are for people of "less consequence" than you. Somebody at the dinner gala will know how to make this little inconvenience go away with minimal fuss. Better park the car yourself, just to be safe. "Wave at the doorman as we glide by on our way to the parking lot, honey."
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| Here's the darling dualie as a PNG on alpha channel background. Right click it onto your hard drive's multicar pileup with your rude little finger. You're welcome! |
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| Click for big, Thurston. |
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| Click for big, Lovey. |
1/18/16
1/8/16
Mercury Colony Park - You got to let thirds rule.
A bright-eyed intern from the Magazine Search Pool dropped this 1964 ad on my desk this morning. That kid's going to go places. Why? Because she immediately spotted the near-perfect layout of this ad. Check it out.
Man, look at that. A nice composition is like classical music for your eyes. You can feel it making you smarter. But maybe you're not seeing the magic? Let's help you out a bit.
Faced with yet another product shot of their car, the art director could have phoned it in. They could have gone with some kind of perspective thing, where they drop the car in a field or something and shoot it from the corner, to show you how big the car is. But when you read the copy, you can tell that Mercury was kind of proud of the design of the car.
The beauty of a fake wood paneled station wagon is debatable, but in any case, they looked at the rectangular, slab-sided profile of their car and lined up the camera directly at the profile. Then, they put the car in front of a building that echoes the wooden linearity. The net effect of this decision flattens the car and the building into simple graphic shapes that - if handled well - can form a bold and clear composition that catches the eye.
If you look at the roof of the car in relation to the overall length, you can see the roof line is about two thirds of the car's length. You can divide the car's length into threes, and the roof takes up two of them. Then, notice that the belt line of the car falls about two thirds of the way from the ground to the roof. This all recalls the "rule of thirds": an old and ubiquitous tool that artists and photographers use to arrange pleasing compositions. Your camera probably has a rule of thirds overlay in the LCD screen. Your phone's camera app probably has one too, if you find it and enable the option.
Essentially, the rule of thirds is this: if you drop a three by three grid over your image and try to place points of interest along the lines, or the intersections of those lines, you're most of the way to having a really nice composition. The easiest way to make the leap from just taking pictures to creating a little piece of art is to start paying attention to the rule of thirds. Same for traditional art, too. In a nutshell, putting the focal point right in the center of the frame is really boring. It's what a six year old would do. Asymmetry is more interesting to your eye. Don't believe me? Go look at some stuff and come back in an hour.
So, the form of the car itself adhere to the rule of thirds. That's a nice start. Now, back to the whole photo. Let's put a three by three grid over the ad.
Well, look at that. The Colony Park is centered on a line one third of the height of the frame. This is not an accident.
The other details of the photo add interest too, like the lady and the stuff in the window.No, the window is not one third the width of the photo, but that's okay. The other elements in the image don't all need to slavishly adhere to the rule of thirds in their arrangement. To do that would be a little obsessive, and missing the point a bit. The ROT is just a near-perfect tool to place the major focal points of your image in a position that's far more interesting than just dead center.
The rest of the ad is similarly simple and beautiful. The pavement is just a big black rectangle, with the pavement's texture nearly eliminated. That way, the visual relationship between the wood in the building and the car is clearer. Here's another handy rule for pretty much art of any kind. "If it's not needed, remove it." The pavement texture wouldn't be helping, so out it can go.
With regard to color, the photo basically consists of four colors: red, brown, white, and black. Again, simple and controlled.
I like the two-box shape of wagons and hatchbacks, but lots of people don't. Overall, the deft application of artsy-fartsy skill on display in this ad does a pretty amazing job of making the much-maligned station wagon seem sophisticated and elegant, which can't be that easy. Very impressive, Art Director.
That's a pretty cool looking building. I wonder where it is. The ad is considerate enough to use the address as a design element, and it's easy to read. 17600 Northland Park Court. That's a pretty uncommon name for a street. How many of those can there be?
Okay, it looks like there's a 17600 Northland Park Court in Southfield, Michigan. Could this be the place? Michigan makes sense, as it was still the center of American car production back in '64, and the art director may want to stay close to the office for the shoot. Let's assemble a Street View away team and beam down to have a look around.
Well I'll be darned. There it is, wood and all. The parking lot has been grassed over, but there's the shot right there, untouched... at least, as recently as 2012. Holy crap.
This whole area looks pretty much un-demolished since it was built in The Sixties. Across the street and one or two doors down, there's another cool building with a crazy uppey-downey roof that no one would build today. See?
Looks like there's lots of cool stuff to see in Southfield. Who's up for a road trip? We'll need to load up the station wagon...
Faced with yet another product shot of their car, the art director could have phoned it in. They could have gone with some kind of perspective thing, where they drop the car in a field or something and shoot it from the corner, to show you how big the car is. But when you read the copy, you can tell that Mercury was kind of proud of the design of the car.
The beauty of a fake wood paneled station wagon is debatable, but in any case, they looked at the rectangular, slab-sided profile of their car and lined up the camera directly at the profile. Then, they put the car in front of a building that echoes the wooden linearity. The net effect of this decision flattens the car and the building into simple graphic shapes that - if handled well - can form a bold and clear composition that catches the eye.
If you look at the roof of the car in relation to the overall length, you can see the roof line is about two thirds of the car's length. You can divide the car's length into threes, and the roof takes up two of them. Then, notice that the belt line of the car falls about two thirds of the way from the ground to the roof. This all recalls the "rule of thirds": an old and ubiquitous tool that artists and photographers use to arrange pleasing compositions. Your camera probably has a rule of thirds overlay in the LCD screen. Your phone's camera app probably has one too, if you find it and enable the option.
Essentially, the rule of thirds is this: if you drop a three by three grid over your image and try to place points of interest along the lines, or the intersections of those lines, you're most of the way to having a really nice composition. The easiest way to make the leap from just taking pictures to creating a little piece of art is to start paying attention to the rule of thirds. Same for traditional art, too. In a nutshell, putting the focal point right in the center of the frame is really boring. It's what a six year old would do. Asymmetry is more interesting to your eye. Don't believe me? Go look at some stuff and come back in an hour.
So, the form of the car itself adhere to the rule of thirds. That's a nice start. Now, back to the whole photo. Let's put a three by three grid over the ad.
The other details of the photo add interest too, like the lady and the stuff in the window.No, the window is not one third the width of the photo, but that's okay. The other elements in the image don't all need to slavishly adhere to the rule of thirds in their arrangement. To do that would be a little obsessive, and missing the point a bit. The ROT is just a near-perfect tool to place the major focal points of your image in a position that's far more interesting than just dead center.
The rest of the ad is similarly simple and beautiful. The pavement is just a big black rectangle, with the pavement's texture nearly eliminated. That way, the visual relationship between the wood in the building and the car is clearer. Here's another handy rule for pretty much art of any kind. "If it's not needed, remove it." The pavement texture wouldn't be helping, so out it can go.
With regard to color, the photo basically consists of four colors: red, brown, white, and black. Again, simple and controlled.
I like the two-box shape of wagons and hatchbacks, but lots of people don't. Overall, the deft application of artsy-fartsy skill on display in this ad does a pretty amazing job of making the much-maligned station wagon seem sophisticated and elegant, which can't be that easy. Very impressive, Art Director.
That's a pretty cool looking building. I wonder where it is. The ad is considerate enough to use the address as a design element, and it's easy to read. 17600 Northland Park Court. That's a pretty uncommon name for a street. How many of those can there be?
Well I'll be darned. There it is, wood and all. The parking lot has been grassed over, but there's the shot right there, untouched... at least, as recently as 2012. Holy crap.
This whole area looks pretty much un-demolished since it was built in The Sixties. Across the street and one or two doors down, there's another cool building with a crazy uppey-downey roof that no one would build today. See?
Looks like there's lots of cool stuff to see in Southfield. Who's up for a road trip? We'll need to load up the station wagon...
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| Click for big. |
6/15/15
Vintage Russian Lens Test - Mir, Mir, on the wall... Or, The Mir has Two Faces.
Two new (old) Russian lenses arrived at GO! Tower this week. A Mir-24H 35mm f/2 (1995 maybe?) and a Mir-1 MC 37mm f/2.8 (roughly 1962 or something). Both were eBay finds, and cost nearly exactly the same. Let's see how they compare.
FYI: All photo geekdom described in our lens tests are aimed at the novice / casual reader. If you want heavy shop talk that assumes you already know a lot, go to DPReview, pixel peeper.
First, a little note on old lenses. In general, you can expect even a really good lens of this age to have it's own "character". If you're looking for sharpness all the way from center to edge, and accurate colors in all conditions, you'll probably be better off with nearly any modern lens. Technology has gotten better in the intervening decades, and even a cheap-ish modern lens will be truer, sharper, and more accurate than vintage glass. When people go digging through auctions for old stuff like these Mirs, they're looking for "interesting flaws", or "personality". Dark corners, softness at the edge, and other quirks are to be expected. It's kind of like Instagram filters, but less fake, but still fun. Also, old lenses almost never have any plastic on them. They're all metal, and have a satisfying weight to them.
On the right is the Mir-24H, which was produced from 1976 to 1999! Its serial number is 950701, so, maybe it's a 1995 unit? This is really surprising, because it looks and feels like it was made in the seventies. If it was built in '95, they did not update the design at all over the years. If you put it in a pillow case and got in a good swing, you could knock out a horse with it.
These Mirs share the same approximate focal length: 37mm and 35mm, which is pretty wide, making them decent for lots of things. They are"primes", which means they don't zoom. That may sound like a bummer, but prime lenses tend to be nice and sharp, and pretty bright. They were meant to be sold with a camera ("kit" lenses), and were intended for general use. Landscapes, travel, family snapshots, etc. Their apertures are f/2.8 and f/2, respectively, which is pretty darn good, especially for the older 1964 model. They let in lots of light, so you can shoot indoors, or in low light without too much motion blur.
I'll be using them on a Mirco Four Thirds camera, whose image sensor is smaller than a 35mm frame of film, which they were designed for. With the help of an adapter that has corrective optics in it, they will behave exactly like 50mm lenses on my camera. This is more "zoomed in" than their original 35mm focal length, but 50 is another of the standard and much-loved focal lengths - good for a general "walking-around" lens. Since they're both Russian, and built like tanks, the focus rings are lubricated with what feels like tank grease. I have read that this is literally true. It definitely takes more effort to turn them than, say, the whippy action of a Japanese lens. Also, they don't snap to focus with half a turn like some other lenses. You'll wind the focus rings around and around to get from one end of the scale to another. This is par for the Russian course, comrade.
There's a lot to like about the numbers on these lenses. So how do they shoot? We headed out to the garage to get some sample pictures, because the rain was holding off, making the weather forecast a big fat liarhead.
Frisbee Wall, and the Great Paint by Number.
As a test of their color, let's have a look at some Frisbees. I will not call them "flying discs". Screw you Wham-O.
When you're playing Frisbee Golf, it doesn't pay to use a disc that matches the scenery. If it goes into the underbrush on a long drive, it will probably stay there, unless it's an eye-stabbingly bright color so you can find it. Color ahoy! My dad did that paint by number in the early 1970s. He was an automation engineer, so when it came to art, he preferred to have some lines to stay inside. That's okay. You should see the last manufacturing production line I designed. FEMA is still clearing up the severed arms.
Here's the silver Mir-1's attempt at the Frisbee Wall. I focused on the boat in the painting, which may have been a mistake, since that's not really in the center, which is the only place this lens is sharp. See the mushy corners compared to the white disc in the middle? It's technically a flaw, but we knew what to expect. I like it. Put someone's face front and center and the soft corners will pull your attention right to their pretty puss. Colors and saturation are nice.
Now the black Mir-24 has a go. It's a much younger design, so overall sharpness is clearly better. This lens has a .8 aperture advantage over its daddy, so the image is perceptibly brighter.
Approach the Bench.
Here's the work bench, for some all-over detail. Just to keep things clear, silver goes first again.
Again, we see that, on the journey from the center to the edge, it doesn't take long for things to get soft. Interestingly, chromatic aberration isn't too bad. That's when areas of high contrast have blue or purple fringe, because some colors arrive at the sensor (or film) out of focus, while others are still sharp. In an old lens like this, I wouldn't be surprised to see a blue fringe on the edge of that blue lamp where it cuts into the bright window pane there, but CA seems pretty controlled in the Mir-1.
Mmmmm, sharp. The Mir-24 does get a little soft away from the center, but nothing like the silver lens.
Portrait of my Dad ('s bike).
To see how these lenses do depth of field (blurry backgrounds), I rolled out Dad's bike for a portrait. Here's the Mir-1.
Yep. Bokeh is pretty smooth in the background. Points of light are basically round, instead of some kind of weird shape.
Now the black Mir-24:
The background is blurrier than the other lens. This is surprising, since the slightly longer focal length of the older lens should soften up the background a little more. The dust on the bike is sharper with this younger lens. Pretty.
Okay, here's the interesting thing. That first picture of the bike? That was the silver lens focused as close as it could get, which was about three feet. The black lens can focus so close, you could almost use it as a macro / close-up lens if you wanted. Watch.
Here is the Mir-24 at it's minimum focal distance. The front element of the lens is a few inches away from the bike's light. Here, the depth of field is paper thin. Only about an inch of depth is in focus. Closer or farther than that, and it's all dreamland. This is pretty impressive.
The Oval Lamp
Know the difference between an oval and an ellipse? An oval can have flat sides, but an ellipse has a definite geometric description. Basically, you won't be too far off if you think of an ellipse as a circle with two centers. Take a circle and stretch it out in one direction but not the other. That's an ellipse. An oval can look like an egg, or a pill, etc. This lamp is made of ovals. Fascinating! Nope.
Anyway, these two pictures reveal some color differences in the lenses. I don't think the light outside changed in the twenty seconds it took me to swap lenses between shots, so there must be some difference in the way they each transmit color. Observe.
The silver Mir-1 makes the light coming through the window seem a little blue, as you would mostly expect.
The Mir-24, at least in these circumstances, looks decidedly more green. This lens is multi coated, whereas the older silver lens isn't. Maybe this is the multi coating at work, rejecting the bulue light from the sky outside and allowing the green paint on the walls of the room to have more of an influence over the ambient light in the picture?
Standard-issue tree picture.
Shooting up into a tree like this should be a good way to reveal what a lens does with corner detail. Specifically, I'm looking for any "petzval effect". That's the concentric, water-ripple-looking circles that appear away from the center of the image. Here is an example of the petzval effect, from our first lens test, way back in 2011...
The phenomena is named after a famous lens from the 1800s that would produce distortions like this, made by Joseph Petzval. How famous is the lens? Well, if you're an idiot, you can buy a brass reproduction of the Petzval 85mm from Lomography, Inc. for $700. Or, you can go on eBay and buy a lens from a security camera and an adapter for less than $30 and get the same effect. Your choice.
Neither of the Mirs seems to have much petzval effect to speak of. Although technically this is good news, I was a little disappointed. I like the petzval look. Oh well.
Here's the Mir-1. The corners have some smeary blurry stuff going on, but nothing even a little petzvally. "Ho" closely followed by "hum".
The Mir-24 looks similar, but just a little sharper.
Summary:
Mir-1
I was hoping for a little more kooky old weirdness from this lens, but really it's just a reasonable old design that doesn't focus very close. I think it would shoot nice portraits, due to the flattering de-focus of it's oldness. In black and white, it may also be an interesting street shooter or landscape lens.
Mir-24
It looks and feels older than it is, because the model was already thirty years old when it was made, in 1995. It's a more versatile all-rounder because of the fairly incredible close focus distance of three inches or so. Despite being a fairly wide 35mm, the bokeh (blurry backgrounds) is buttery soft. It would make a brilliant portrait lens. The Mir-24 was a pleasant surprise. Definite recommendo.
FYI: All photo geekdom described in our lens tests are aimed at the novice / casual reader. If you want heavy shop talk that assumes you already know a lot, go to DPReview, pixel peeper.
First, a little note on old lenses. In general, you can expect even a really good lens of this age to have it's own "character". If you're looking for sharpness all the way from center to edge, and accurate colors in all conditions, you'll probably be better off with nearly any modern lens. Technology has gotten better in the intervening decades, and even a cheap-ish modern lens will be truer, sharper, and more accurate than vintage glass. When people go digging through auctions for old stuff like these Mirs, they're looking for "interesting flaws", or "personality". Dark corners, softness at the edge, and other quirks are to be expected. It's kind of like Instagram filters, but less fake, but still fun. Also, old lenses almost never have any plastic on them. They're all metal, and have a satisfying weight to them.
On the left is the Mir-1. It's one of the rarer, earlier versions of this lens, with a silver anodized finish and the "Brussels Grand Prix" inscription on the side. That was because the lens won an award in 1958, and the company made sure you knew about it. This inscription could still be found on these lenses a decade or two after the award was given. Often, the first two digits of a lenses serial number indicate the year it was made. This seems to be true for this silver Brussles darling. It's 6401399, so it's likely it was made in 1964. Coooowelll.
On the right is the Mir-24H, which was produced from 1976 to 1999! Its serial number is 950701, so, maybe it's a 1995 unit? This is really surprising, because it looks and feels like it was made in the seventies. If it was built in '95, they did not update the design at all over the years. If you put it in a pillow case and got in a good swing, you could knock out a horse with it.
I'll be using them on a Mirco Four Thirds camera, whose image sensor is smaller than a 35mm frame of film, which they were designed for. With the help of an adapter that has corrective optics in it, they will behave exactly like 50mm lenses on my camera. This is more "zoomed in" than their original 35mm focal length, but 50 is another of the standard and much-loved focal lengths - good for a general "walking-around" lens. Since they're both Russian, and built like tanks, the focus rings are lubricated with what feels like tank grease. I have read that this is literally true. It definitely takes more effort to turn them than, say, the whippy action of a Japanese lens. Also, they don't snap to focus with half a turn like some other lenses. You'll wind the focus rings around and around to get from one end of the scale to another. This is par for the Russian course, comrade.
There's a lot to like about the numbers on these lenses. So how do they shoot? We headed out to the garage to get some sample pictures, because the rain was holding off, making the weather forecast a big fat liarhead.
Frisbee Wall, and the Great Paint by Number.
As a test of their color, let's have a look at some Frisbees. I will not call them "flying discs". Screw you Wham-O.
When you're playing Frisbee Golf, it doesn't pay to use a disc that matches the scenery. If it goes into the underbrush on a long drive, it will probably stay there, unless it's an eye-stabbingly bright color so you can find it. Color ahoy! My dad did that paint by number in the early 1970s. He was an automation engineer, so when it came to art, he preferred to have some lines to stay inside. That's okay. You should see the last manufacturing production line I designed. FEMA is still clearing up the severed arms.
Here's the silver Mir-1's attempt at the Frisbee Wall. I focused on the boat in the painting, which may have been a mistake, since that's not really in the center, which is the only place this lens is sharp. See the mushy corners compared to the white disc in the middle? It's technically a flaw, but we knew what to expect. I like it. Put someone's face front and center and the soft corners will pull your attention right to their pretty puss. Colors and saturation are nice.
Now the black Mir-24 has a go. It's a much younger design, so overall sharpness is clearly better. This lens has a .8 aperture advantage over its daddy, so the image is perceptibly brighter.
Approach the Bench.
Again, we see that, on the journey from the center to the edge, it doesn't take long for things to get soft. Interestingly, chromatic aberration isn't too bad. That's when areas of high contrast have blue or purple fringe, because some colors arrive at the sensor (or film) out of focus, while others are still sharp. In an old lens like this, I wouldn't be surprised to see a blue fringe on the edge of that blue lamp where it cuts into the bright window pane there, but CA seems pretty controlled in the Mir-1.
Mmmmm, sharp. The Mir-24 does get a little soft away from the center, but nothing like the silver lens.
Portrait of my Dad ('s bike).
To see how these lenses do depth of field (blurry backgrounds), I rolled out Dad's bike for a portrait. Here's the Mir-1.
Yep. Bokeh is pretty smooth in the background. Points of light are basically round, instead of some kind of weird shape.
Now the black Mir-24:
Okay, here's the interesting thing. That first picture of the bike? That was the silver lens focused as close as it could get, which was about three feet. The black lens can focus so close, you could almost use it as a macro / close-up lens if you wanted. Watch.
Here is the Mir-24 at it's minimum focal distance. The front element of the lens is a few inches away from the bike's light. Here, the depth of field is paper thin. Only about an inch of depth is in focus. Closer or farther than that, and it's all dreamland. This is pretty impressive.
The Oval Lamp
Know the difference between an oval and an ellipse? An oval can have flat sides, but an ellipse has a definite geometric description. Basically, you won't be too far off if you think of an ellipse as a circle with two centers. Take a circle and stretch it out in one direction but not the other. That's an ellipse. An oval can look like an egg, or a pill, etc. This lamp is made of ovals. Fascinating! Nope.
Anyway, these two pictures reveal some color differences in the lenses. I don't think the light outside changed in the twenty seconds it took me to swap lenses between shots, so there must be some difference in the way they each transmit color. Observe.
The silver Mir-1 makes the light coming through the window seem a little blue, as you would mostly expect.
The Mir-24, at least in these circumstances, looks decidedly more green. This lens is multi coated, whereas the older silver lens isn't. Maybe this is the multi coating at work, rejecting the bulue light from the sky outside and allowing the green paint on the walls of the room to have more of an influence over the ambient light in the picture?
Standard-issue tree picture.
Shooting up into a tree like this should be a good way to reveal what a lens does with corner detail. Specifically, I'm looking for any "petzval effect". That's the concentric, water-ripple-looking circles that appear away from the center of the image. Here is an example of the petzval effect, from our first lens test, way back in 2011...
The phenomena is named after a famous lens from the 1800s that would produce distortions like this, made by Joseph Petzval. How famous is the lens? Well, if you're an idiot, you can buy a brass reproduction of the Petzval 85mm from Lomography, Inc. for $700. Or, you can go on eBay and buy a lens from a security camera and an adapter for less than $30 and get the same effect. Your choice.
Neither of the Mirs seems to have much petzval effect to speak of. Although technically this is good news, I was a little disappointed. I like the petzval look. Oh well.
Here's the Mir-1. The corners have some smeary blurry stuff going on, but nothing even a little petzvally. "Ho" closely followed by "hum".
The Mir-24 looks similar, but just a little sharper.
Summary:
Mir-1
I was hoping for a little more kooky old weirdness from this lens, but really it's just a reasonable old design that doesn't focus very close. I think it would shoot nice portraits, due to the flattering de-focus of it's oldness. In black and white, it may also be an interesting street shooter or landscape lens.
Mir-24
It looks and feels older than it is, because the model was already thirty years old when it was made, in 1995. It's a more versatile all-rounder because of the fairly incredible close focus distance of three inches or so. Despite being a fairly wide 35mm, the bokeh (blurry backgrounds) is buttery soft. It would make a brilliant portrait lens. The Mir-24 was a pleasant surprise. Definite recommendo.
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