During London Marathon 2011, I decided to test out a roll of Ilford HP5 ISO 400 film using my newly acquired Leica M3 with collapsible Elmar 50 3.5 lens. At some point during the event, I decided to lift the camera in the air, set the focus to infinity and shoot away. However, since the focus ring on the Elmar needs to lock into a certain position, I actually managed to misjudge the focus, thus resulting in some fancy out of focus images. All of the images below are out of focus, apart from the first and last.

 

I wouldn’t recommend trying to figure out what the pictures represent, since the human mind has a way of messing around with perception. If I had my own dark room, I’m pretty sure that I could achieve the same results, although it wouldn’t necessary be possible to get a sharp image from an out of focus image.