Climbed the Witches Hat Tower

Yesterday was the day the tower was open (this year, it’s open two more days, June 12-13), and I managed to remember to go over, and got to see the inside and see the view from the top. It was rather hazy, which made photographs from there less interesting than they might be.  But it was still fun, and it makes an easy way to scout for places on the ground with a good view of the tower.

The line got rather longer, and by the time I left was around the tower, down two flights of stairs, and across a lawn.  (I posted a cell-phone picture on Facebook yesterday, so this will be largely redundant to my friends there.)

This was the line when I got there
This was the line when I got there
This was the line when I left
This was the line when I left

The Zeiss Super-Q-Gigantar 40mm f/0.33

I remember reading about this back in one of the mainstream photo magazines in the 1960s.  At the time, Zeiss was taking a lot of flack for making slow lenses (they made very good lenses, but for lots of uses, their lenses were too slow for the new, gritty, world of 35mm photojournalism).  This lens was a major counter-thrust in that war.  The lens consisted of an enlarger condenser element, cobbled into a mount, with an aperture and so forth.   Zeiss was saying very loudly that anybody can make a fast lens if you don’t care how good it is.

 

The Zeiss 40mm f/0.33 Super-Q-Gigantar
The Zeiss 40mm f/0.33 Super-Q-Gigantar

 

See Petapixel article for more detail.