Took a few days off to spend with my brother, his son and a few friends for the opening of deer season. We were in a small cabin nestled between three hills in Greene County. The weather was cold the first night but then got unseasonably warm. We saw 72°F on the bank thermometer. The next day it rained hard.

Now, getting down there was its own mini-adventure. The trip from my house to Washington, Pa., was quick. Maybe 45 minutes. The second leg should have been simple, but the directions were a bit vague: Turn right onto the one-land road. Problem was, they were all one-lane roads!

One of the roads took me into "Deliverance" – the movie. I stopped to talk with a guy walking his bicycle up a steep hill. Seemed to him that his education stopped somewhere around the second grade. Just 40 miles out of Pittsburgh, and this guy barely spoke English. I asked him for directions. He flashed a big dumb scary-looking grin. I rolled up the window and quickly moved on.

Then it started getting dark, so after the fourth one-land road – the first was actually someone's driveway and the last was Monkey Hollow – I knew I didn't want to be lost on anything called Monkey Holler, as everyone was calling it. I had this image flash through my head that involved me being lost in the middle of Greene County with "Dueling Banjos" playing in the background and me being told to make some type of squealing farm animal noise.

No thanks. I immediately turned around and went to a convenience store. Of course, they didn't have a pay phone, and there was no mobile-phone signal. Luckily, the lady who ran it was nice and pointed me in the right direction. I made it without having to get out of my car again and without having to make any porcine sounds (suu-eee!). The 30-minute final leg of the trip turned into one hour and 15 minutes.

My brother is what's known as a straight shooter in life [and with weapons ... didn't realize the pun until I was editing this entry], and he's come up with these two pieces of wisdom:

• "I don't think there should be any speed limits. People should be able to drive as fast as they want." This one makes me laugh and then I recall a drive this past June when I had to follow him to my sister's home out in Kansas. Let's see: I'm doing 90 mph and struggling to keep pace. On wet roads. Two-lane roads. My wife was horrified ... or maybe I should say terrified. Then we ended up turning down several one-lane dirt roads (now mud roads) that kept us down to about 30 mph.
• "I can't understand why any man wouldn't want to hunt." I don't think this needs any explanation. I haven't shot a gun in about 20 years. Maybe I'll join him next year. We'll see.

I brought along the Zeiss Ikon, a prewar Zeiss Ikon Tenax II and a prewar Super Ikonta 530/2 6x9 with body release. I only put one roll of Ektachrome 100GX through the Super Ikonta. The Tenax II was loaded with Ilford FP4+, and some Agfa Vista 200 color print film went into the Zeiss Ikon.

The Agfa Vista 200 is a different film from Kodak Gold 200. Grain is tight, but the colors seem to be a bit more saturated, although not totally out of control. The Agfa film doesn't scan quite as well as the Kodak Gold, and I think mostly it's a film that I would need to shoot for a while to get a feel for it. So, not better or worse – just different.

One thing I've seen: This film gives the appearance of chromatic aberration in a couple of shots that have high-contrast regions. At first, I thought maybe it was the lens, but I've shot Kodak Gold 200 under similar situations and haven't noticed it, so I believe it's a scanning issue. This appears to be visible only in the scans and not the photos that I receved. I should have some slide film coming back this week, so I'll take a closer look.

I took both lenses, and the thing that continues to strike me is the excellence of the 25mm Biogon. It gives a very wide field of view with a natural look. I shot with the 25 more than I had thought. Actually, going through the photos, I think I might have shot almost everything with the 25.

Again, the camera operated without any undue fuss. Several of us got into a discussion about optics – I was approaching it from the photographic angle while my brother offered up his knowledge on binoculars and hunting scopes. My brother's general feeling is that some of the old names (Carl Zeiss and Leica were ones he specifically mentioned) are falling behind. He says the German products are excellent, but better value can be found with other manufacturers. He also said some of his scopes cost more than the rifles on which he uses them. And he also wishes that he could afford some of the Zeiss scopes.

Left: At recommended setting by autoexposure system. Right: With +2/3 stop compensation.

I purposely shot two photos – one with +2/3 exposure compensation (see above). I was looking at the scene and saw that the sky was very bright. So I dialed in the compensation and took the second shot. I think that 1 stop might have been too much, although there are a lot of tones in the scene. Anyway, I was thinking that I was pretty smart. Later in the afternoon, I wasn't paying attention and took four shots at 1/2000 as the light was just beginning to fade. I thought the camera was on "A." That wasn't as smart – I love those lessons in humility.

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I might start a comments section. The last one I had with my Cosina Voigtlander Bessa-R minisite turned into a spam-o-rama from the porn kings. It was embarrassing. So, I'm still working on it.