This just in.

Back today from Phoenix with a side trip to Tucson to visit the Pima Air and Space Museum. I shot four cameras there, starting off with the Certo Dolly Super Sport.  I was pleased to see some progress with that old folder, though I still have some work to do on it.

El Sueño de Dalí

Could this be the most surreal moment in the life of Salvador Dalí ?

This is the lead photo in a slide show from the Spanish newspaper, El País commemorating today's 100th Anniversary of the Girl Scouts. I don't see any official logos on the cameras, but they all appear to be models that one would expect to see in the hands of Las Girl Scouts in 1960 when the photo was made.  The Brownie Hawkeye Flash is appropriately front and center.  I think I see an Ansco Shur-Flash half hidden in the back row.  Not sure about the others.

The Slate site also has a slide show about the Girl Scouts, along with a thoughtful article comparing the organization and its founders to to Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts.

What more do we need to know?

The photojournalist who seems to me to be most skillful at explaining America's wars to Americans is Elliot D. Woods.  As a former soldier, he presents the point of view of the combatants as few others can.  However, he also seems able to achieve an extraordinary level of rapport with the people in whose lands the wars are being waged.

There is a great article with pictures and words by Woods in the March issue of The Sun magazine about a platoon of Marines in Afghanistan.  It paints a terrible picture in black and white of bravery and futility.  I haven't found an on line presentation of the article yet, but I'll post it here when I do.  In the meantime, it is worth the effort to track down a copy of the magazine.

The BHF Again

I posted a link some time ago to the 3D video animation below on my vintage cameras page about the Brownie Hawkeye Flash.  I revisited it recently and dug a little deeper into the production's background.


The animation was put together by a team of three college students; it provides extraordinary insights into the construction and functioning of Kodak's bakelite box camera.  The professor for the class, Dennis K. Lieu, provided an explanation for the project:

" It was produced as a class project in my advanced engineering graphics class at UC Berkeley. The class is E128. The emphasis of the class is on 3-dimensional modeling and technical animation. The project assignment was to select a device of moderate mechanical complexity, and create an animation that shows how it is assembled and how it works. If you go to Youtube and search on E128, a few more of my class projects come up. I've been teaching the class for over 10 years, and have accumulated about a hundred such animations in my library. All the animations are public domain, via a verbal agreement with the students at the beginning of the class."

There are several photography-related productions in addition to the BHF, and all of the video animations emanating from this project are worth watching.  They can be accessed at YouTube with a search using the phrase, Project E128.  Details of how the class project is structured are presented in the UC Berkeley course description.

Roll Film Formats

Here are some reels from roll film cameras in my collection.

L to R:  127  620  120  116  122

I get questions frequently about identifying old cameras and asking what kind of film they use.  There is quite a variety, so the confusion is understandable, particularly in regard to Kodak as the company had a habit of reusing camera names, often applying the same name to cameras of different types and formats.  The name, "Brownie", for instance was applied to box cameras and folders, and they might use 127, 120 or 620 film.

The early Kodak folders did adhere to a system of sorts in which there was an association of model names and film sizes.  Thus, No.1 and No.2 Kodaks used 120 film.  No.1A Kodaks used 116 film.  No.3A Kodaks used 122 film.

Later Kodak model names left out the direct film size reference, with only an oblique gesture toward identification.  The Bantam series name, for instance, referred to the 828 roll film format.  The 127-format cameras were called "Vest Pocket" models by Kodak, and some other companies also used that association of model and film size.  Other companies used the term, "Baby", to refer to their small 127 format cameras.

The earliest Kodak film reels had wooden core spools.  As can be seen in this rotating 3D model, the ends were different, so there was a right way and a wrong way to insert the reel in the camera.



The Wikipedia Film Formats page has some comprehensive tables of the many film formats which have appeared over the years.  The tables include image dimensions, production years, and associated model names as well as a lot of other helpful data.

got focus

I ran another roll through my Certo Super Sport Dolly after adjusting the focus.  

I traded away a very nice Dolly some years ago and have been looking for a replacement ever since.  I bought four in various states of repair in the intervening time.  Mostly they were junk, but I've got a good supply of parts now, and the latest purchase has me nearly to the finish line.

This one has a good bellows and, being an early model, it sports the elegant diamond-pattern on the leather covering.  The cloudy front lens element cleaned up pretty well.  The low-speed escapement has a lazy spring, so I'm limited to shooting at 1/25 and faster, but that is not much of a problem.

Since everything is really working pretty well at this point, I'm looking forward to shooting this camera on an upcoming trip to Phoenix.

History

Margaret was the keynote speaker at the Growing Through Loss Conference in Las Cruces on March 2nd.  Her topic was the history of Mesilla Valley Hospice where she worked for about twenty years, most of that as the Executive Director. 

When Margaret first started working with the organization in the early '80s it was mostly supported by the hard work of a few volunteers based in a store-front office to provide in-home end-of-life care.  Margaret gradually built the staff, the patient census and the support of the community to create a first-class hospice that presently serves about a hundred patients at a time.
    Most people still are able to receive the needed support to stay at home, but there is also a residential facility, La Posada, which can provide residential care for up to 28 patients and their families.  No one is turned away from hospice services because of an inability to pay, thanks in a large part to Margaret's early effort to convince the State of New Mexico to make indigent care funds available to hospice and other non-profit social service and health care organizations throughout the state.

Back to the Bar

I rode my Shadow back to the bar at the end of Highway 6 on a windy Monday afternoon.  I carried along a Super Sport Dolly which I've been working on.  Most of the pictures on the first test roll were a little off focus, but the Trioplan looks like it will get the job done.  I'll have more to say about the camera once I've shot another roll or two.

Traveling with the Hawkeye Flash

We took a ride down lonely Highway 6 on Monday.

This abandoned bar is located on a small strip of non-Indian land at the border of the Isleta and Laguna Pueblos.  There is no Wild Horse Mesa on the map of the area.  My guess is that the bar got its name from the title of  the old Zane Grey western novel.  The book was made into a silent film in 1925, and another version was made in 1947.  Next time I'm in the area, I'll see if I can find someone who knows the history of the place.