In the early to mid-twentieth century, Pyro found its most famous advocates. Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and other Zone System pioneers relied on Pyro for its long tonal curve and ability to handle extreme contrast scenes. Adams’ negatives from Yosemite, printed decades later, still exhibit the smooth highlight roll-off typical of Pyrogallol development. Pyro allowed these photographers to “place” tones with mathematical precision — the foundation of the Zone System itself.

There are vintage lenses you respect for their engineering, and then there are lenses you fall in love with because of how they render the world. The Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 50mm f/1.8 Zebra, in its radioactive 8-blade form from the late 1960s, is very much the latter. This is a lens that reminds you why character still matters — whether you’re shooting on film or adapting to digital.

When an image is exposed on film, it isn’t yet a photograph. It lives invisibly in the emulsion, suspended between existence and nothingness — a latent ghost of light. At this stage it can still be erased, fogged, or lost entirely, but it is there, waiting. Only when it meets developer does it reveal itself, and only when it meets fixer is it frozen forever. That alchemy — the moment when something ephemeral becomes permanent — is what makes film different. Memory doesn’t just appear; it is conjured, stabilised, and preserved.