Seeing Switzerland Through the Daguerreotype Achromat

I was given the Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 by Lomography to take on my vacation to Switzerland, in order to test it and shoot a beautiful series. Together with four other photographers, I spent five days in a cottage in Axalp in Brienz and I had an amazing time with beautiful people. I took most of the pictures with my Sony Alpha 7, as well as a few with the Canon 5D Mark II.

One day, model and tattoo artist Juan from Thun joined us for a photo shoot and thanks to the Achromat, we were able to get a number of great portraits!

For an additional shoot, Sarah, a talented photographer from Brienz, spontaneously agreed on posing in front of the camera. Maria, another great photographer from Bad Münder, provided the colorful pants and photographer Pascal happened to have a matching top -- and voilà, the outfit was on point! Finally, we were happy to discover, that Sally had brought orange smoke-bombs on the trip, which went just perfectly with Sarah's look.

The next day we visited the museum Ballenberg, where we got to see and learn plenty of interesting things. We were shown old farmhouses and their interiors and were given loads of information about work, life, and animals back in the days. It took us four hours and we didn't even get to see every part of the museum! Yet, I was taught to make butter with my own hands from scratch and got to taste it together with delicious homemade bread!

Afterwards, we visited the Giessbachfall, a beautiful waterfall, and the stunning Grandhotel Giessbach, in which I should have taken a lot more pictures! We enjoyed a drink at the bar and live piano music in the hotel. If you ever happen to be in the area, you should definitely go see that place and have a drink!

Finally, a few pictures, I took in between things and I want to share with you.

Back at home, I was able to shoot one film roll with the lens, before sending it back and am super happy that I at least got a couple of analogue shots with the Achromat!

I took most of the photos with an aperture ratio of 4, because I wanted to avoid getting too soft aesthetics. The aperture of 4, however, was perfect for what I had in mind, therefore I didn't even try a lot of different settings. The photos turned out soft but sharp, just to the right extent. The experimental aperture plates turned out to work even better with the Achromat, than the Petzval. I believe this is due to the better position of the plates on the lens.

A lot of text and pictures later - here is my conclusion: The lens produced amazing aesthetics, which is, because of its soft look, perfectly suited for shooting portraits. The soft look and Bokeh really convinced me and I would love to own one myself now. The Bokeh is a little swirling, yet totally decent. It is still less swirling, compared to the Petzval. But to be clear, I am not preferring one over the other, both have completely different effects. They are both simply unique in their own ways.

Yours, @pearlgirl

written by pearlgirl77 on 2017-10-24 #people #lomography-art-lens #daguerreotype-achromat-art-lens