In your bag 303, Marco Castelvecchio
Marco brings us a bag which spans Europe today. With a nice mixture of digital and film, this is a bag that travels well and has everything that Marco needs. Come and have a look.
My name is Marco Castelvecchio. I’m an amateur photographer based in both Italy and France. I travel a lot between Milan and Paris as my fiancée lives there so I take a lot of pictures in the city of love :)
I recently developed a real passion for film photography and I’m running a blog where I post my experiences and my attempts at street photography.
This bag is continuously evolving, but I think it’s quite settled for now. I take it with me all the time and what you see is all I have in it, except the Lubitel, which I swap with X100 when photowalking with friends, because that’s “Analog Time” :)
Outside the bag I have a small collection of Russian cameras (a Kiev 4M, a Petri ES Auto and a Zorki 4) that I bought on Ebay and repaired myself, spending hours to learn the inner mechanism and experimenting, guessing, finding unorthodox solutions (that usually involve glue, solder, epoxy or gaffer tape).
My real proud is a Leica M6, that I shoot either with a 1954 Summaron 35mm f/3.5 or a Jupiter-8 50mm f/2. It’s a russian copy of the first rigid Summicron, but I guess I’ve been very lucky as this lens delivers outstanding results. I love it.
I’ve developed quite a passion for lomography as well and I enjoy shooting medium format exotic film (redscale, cross process) with my original russian Lubitel (sorry, I don’t like Lomography versions). Recently I also got this Smena 8M that I carry all the time, small and fun to use. Many people prefer the LC-A, but I’m not a fan of automatic settings ;)
The only digital camera is the spectacular X100, but I keep it all the time on manual focus, f/16 and black&white for shooting streets (I’m addicted to zone focus).
Summarizing, in the photo you can see (left to right, top to bottom):
Billingham Hadley Small Bag
Business Cards
Jupiter-8 50mm f/2
Leica M6 with Summaron 35mm f/3.5 (with Leica original strap)
Lubitel 166 Universal (original USSR made)
Wallet
Fujifilm Finepix X100 with hood
Lomo Smena 8M
Phone
Notebook with Pencil
Lens Pen
Benchmade Osborne 950 knife
Fenix LD10 flashlight
Neoprene film holder (hope to replace it soon with a JCH film holder), containing 3 rolls of either Portra 400, Velvia 50 or a random one between Agfa CT, Ilford Xp2 or Ilford HP5. That depends mostly on my mood ;)
You can see some of my work here:
http://500px.com/kastel
https://pathbrite.com/portfolio/Ph0lPwv/Analog-Photography
https://pathbrite.com/portfolio/Ph0fPB2N/Street-Photography
or follow my blog here:
http://marcocastelvecchio.com/
Twitter: @castelvecchio
500px: 500px.com/kastel
Instagram: @keilunfilms
DigitalRev: www.digitalrev.com/kastel
Thanks,
Marco
Thanks for sharing your bag with us Marco. Not often you see a Lubitel in the bag shots.
Check out Marco’s masses of links and make sure you come and comment. We love it when you do that.
Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com. Send me a hi resolution image of the bag (please make sure it is horizontal) and its contents, with some details about yourself and what you shoot. Oh and don’t forget your contact details (twitter, flickr, tumbler et al). Send the bag shots here.
Cheers
Japancamerahunter
Wow those Billingham bags carry a lot… I would love to have a good Jupiter but all I have seen are shockers, it really is a bit of a lottery!
“a Jupiter-8 50mm f/2. It’s a russian copy of the first rigid Summicron” I just had a double take on this, correct me if I am wrong but isn’t the Jupiter 8 a copy of a Zeiss Sonnar nicked by the Ruski’s after WW2? I’d still like to get a good one!
You’re right, but I did some research and apparently both lenses (leica and zeiss) shared same design. Unfortunately I still have to see that sonnar, but both are very very similar. I’m quite lucky I found a working one. I have to adjust the aperture ring from time to time (it tends to loosen up) but the glass is very good. Hope you can find one as well. Look for Zorki cameras, they had a slightly better quality check than others. I basically bought the camera for the lens, around 80 euro. Cheers!
Sonnar lenses and Summicron lenses don’t share the same pedigree. Sonnar lenses are triplet-derived and usually have a small number of elements with at least one cemented group of three elements.
The Summicron is a double-gauss lens (or Planar-type, if you use the Zeiss terminology), which is easily identified by the back to back positive and negative meniscus lenses in the design.
Hi guys, you’re right. I did better reseach and the Jupiter is instead a pre-war Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/2 developed by Ludwig Bertele in the early 1930s. Apologies :)
Marco, how do you find shooting an early Summaron 35 without using the goggles? Do you not need them on an M6 or are you focusing based on distance?
Nice stuff!
Cris
In the M6 I have 35mm lines and since I use zone focusing almost all the time with that lens it’s not so difficult to get proper focus. I’m a big fan of 35mm and I hope to get a better lens someday, like a summicron 35 or a zeiss biogon 35 (it’s all about budget) :)