Winter

BioPark

 

Wood Duck on ice

Mediterranean Conservatory

At the Botanic Garden

 

Back to the Plate Cameras

 After talking recently with Vince Lupo about the nice results he has gotten from his Ermanox I was inspired to get back to shooting with my own plate cameras.  They are not as exotic as the Ermanox, but the lenses are good and the big negatives from 120 film produce very nice images. 

Since I had not used the plate cameras in some time I had to go through them to check functionality and make sure no pinholes had appeared in the bellows.  The Patent Etui looked pretty good, but I'm going to have to clean the shutter before it can make pictures for me again.  I couldn't find any pinholes in the Bentzin Primar bellows, and the big old Compur shutter remains very reliable, so that was it.  I loaded the camera with my last roll of HP5+ and went to the Botanical Garden which is now fully open again.

It took me half the roll of eight shots to get back into something approaching a competent performance with the Bentzin.  I'm looking forward now to shooting more soon with the plate cameras so that I can take advantage of my renewed familiarity with the old folders.  I'm thinking I may use the half-frame mask with the Rada film back so that I can get sixteen shots from the 120 roll.  I would also like to try shooting some sheet film and some glass plates, but I'll need to look for some good advice on getting set up properly for that.

X-700

I took the Minolta X-700 and two lenses to the Biopark to shoot the African Forest Lily which blooms in the conservatory in January and February.

The first shot is with the 135mm and a +2 closeup accessory lens.  Shooting slow film in 35mm is something of a challenge in a greenhouse.  I would likely have had better results either with a tripod or using medium format with 400-speed film.

Outdoors, the use of the normal and telephoto lenses presented no problems.  However, my negatives were a bit thin, so I'll try the next roll with a +1 exposure setting which worked well for me with the XG-1.

The Minolta Celtic 2.8/28mm lens I ordered on ebay showed up the next day on my porch.  It was gray, cold day, but I wanted to see what the lens would do. so I finished off the roll of TMAX with Roxie at the dog park.  Poor light, but the lens looks like it will be a sharp shooter.

I'm enjoying learning to use the Minolta X-700.  I borrowed one from a neighbor six or eight years ago, shot just one roll and decided I didn't like the camera.  Having shot a Spotmatic for forty years, I felt that the X-700 had too many buttons to deal with, and I was a little unhappy at the time with the plastic components.  Now, having spent some time with the manual and experiencing the excellence of the Minolta lenses I am pleased to have the opportunity to work with a full kit.

Retina Redux

A brief shutter cleaning for my Retina Reflex got the aperture stop-down mechanism operating properly and allowed the nice qualities  the Xenon lens to come through in the camera's images.  I still have a bit of work to do on the film advance, and it would be really nice to find a replacement for the clouded prism.  That is not a difficult repair, but I keep getting outbid on ebay for junker donor cameras because I'm not willing to spend much on spare parts.

The last shot is Joe Van Cleave showing his marvelously crafted handmade cameras to the New Mexico Film Photographers Group.  He has posted an excellent series of videos about film photography on YouTube.

winter flower

This plant flowers in mid-winter in the Mediterranean Conservatory.  I have made quite a few pictures of it over several years with a variety of old cameras.

Pentax K1000

Pentax Spotmatic

Kodak Recomar 18

Riding the Swan

I patched the last of the light leaks in the bellows of my oldest Kodak Duo Six-20 and took it to the Albuquerque Botanical Garden.  I seem to end up testing all my old cameras at some point with how well they can render a little garden sculpture there.

My impression at this point is that the lens on this camera is not quite as sharp as the ones on my two other Duo Six-20, but it is still a capable shooter if handled with some care.  

This mid-'30s model is very similar to the one Amelia Earhart carried with her on her last flight.  The camera's Deco style fit her nicely.

I felt I had made a little progress in getting the camera working closer to its potential on my outing at the Botanical Garden.  I was also happy with the combination of Tri-X film and D-76 developer on this occasion.  My last efforts with the combo had yielded some thin negatives, so I gave the film an extra minute this time in the 1+1 D-76 and got better density.