Nearpara Rubber Company: From Tire Reclaiming to Toxic Brownfield

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The Last Days of Nearpara Rubber I smelled it before I saw anything worth photographing. That warm, faintly sweet bite of old rubber, the kind that hits you somewhere between a tire shop and a summer highway, drifted through the first building the moment I stepped inside. The structure was burned out, charred and broken, rubble underfoot. But the smell was alive. And then I saw the pile. In the corner of the room, faded brown and heaped maybe two feet high, was a mound of baby bottle nipples. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of the small rubber tips, just sitting on the floor of a collapsed industrial building in Trenton, New Jersey. I stood there for a moment, genuinely confused, and then kept moving. Nothing like the smell of warmed-over rubber. Twenty minutes later, I understood even less. Through another door passage, I found the main source of the smell: six open metal trailer containers, still loaded with bagged baby bottle nipples, sitting in open air. Bags of them, mountains of bagged n...
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Samigon 35mm f2.8 Manual Focus Prime Review




Close-up of a Samigon 35mm f/2.8 vintage camera lens, with the aperture visible through the glass. The lens is set against a softly lit indoor background, highlighting its metallic body and engraved details, showcasing the classic design and build quality of traditional photography equipment.



We have here the Samigon 1:2.8 35mm M42 mount lens with an M42 to EOS adapter for the Canon Rebel T3i.








As you can see the lens is all metal construction. The light pro-consumer T3i succumbs to the hefty weight of the well-made almost indestructible Samignon lens. Made in Japan means quality.








This lens will be in use for my summer photography gunning. Unfortunately, the weather is still a bit windy and cold for me to take my precious DSLR outside to really open the aperture on a bright sunny day like today. I am amassing a nice collection of vintage glass for my camera bag and personal collection. The quest for cheap vintage glass for a modern DSLR is really making my wallet happier but a little bit slimmer. Shipping is a killer in the final price.



Nifty Fifty is in focus with an aperture of f22.






Playing around with the lens today showed me the lens is sharp with enough surrounding light it brings out great detail. It has a bit of softness but overall not too much. I realize some of these lenses will naturally have a soft glow in the final pictures. It will make a great walk-around lens and a wide-angle lens for long-exposure shots in the city. I can't wait to test out this baby during the night in NYC. All the samples below have been unprocessed and not cropped.

Samigon 35mm M42 mount Sample Pics



Sunny couch with nifty fifty blurred with an aperture of f16.




More sample pics to come later once school comes to an end.

Camera: Sony HX9V, Canon Rebel T3i, 

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