Death Has Its Day

 

Spanish Broom

 We enjoyed a flamenco performance in Old Town's Plaza Don Luis by the Spanish Broom group on Saturday.  The dancers, singers and guitarists all performed at a high level of skill.  They will do another performance at the Casa Rondeña Winery on October 6th and will be  back in Plaza Don Luis on the 10th.  The informal setting of the little plaza combined with the excellent skills on display lent a note of authenticity to the event.

 

Photographing the action was quite a challenge due to the group's highly kinetic style; they are seldom still for even a moment.

I shot the pictures with both the normal and telephoto lenses for my Olympus Pen FT half-frame camera.  The film was some slightly outdated Acros 400 shared with me by fellow film enthusiast, Jim Grey.  His work with the film looked quite a bit better than mine, possibly because of the choice of developers.  I used the same PMK Pyro I normally use with Kentmere, and at the same time and temperature.  I think I'll try some HC110 for the next roll.

Update:

Margaret recorded a short video of the Old Town performance of Spanish Broom.

Friday Morning

 Ate breakfast.  Walked the dog.  Margaret went off to have breakfast with a friend.  Nothing left to do but to head for Old Town with a roll of Fomapan 100 in my Voigtländer Brilliant.

I asked if I might take a picture of this fine looking Scottish Deerhound.  The owner agreed, but insisted the picture be made in the shade as she said he would  not stand still on the sun drenched sidewalk.  I would have preferred to picture him in motion as his gait was incredibly buoyant; it seemed he might suddenly float off the pavement.

Sorting out cameras and lenses.

I took a walk over to Old Town with the Minolta X-700 loaded with TMAX 100.  I was pleased to see the restored 135mm MC Tele Rokkor-QD lens performing up to my expectations.  The images which did not quite work out as hoped were victims of my own technical deficiencies, as well as a little bit to some peculiarities of my yard sale camera.
    The X-700 underexposes compared to my Spotmatic by about a half stop with a normal lens and up to one-and-one-half stops with the 135mm telephoto.  To further complicate matters, with normal lenses the X-700, the XG1 and the Spotmatic all seem to give the same exposure readings in subdued light. Some of this may be due just to differences in the metering systems, but I think the Minolta's auto-exposure system is a bit off.  There may be some way to adjust the sensitivity of the meter, but I haven't come across any clues on the web about how that might be accomplished.  Since the exposure error is pretty consistent with any given lens, the problem can largely be overcome by just adjusting the camera's ASA setting There is a bit of uncertainty that lingers in my mind, however, so I'm slowed down a little in my responses to photo opportunities.

A bigger issue for me with the combination of the X-700 and the 135 lens is that the aperture-priority auto-exposure system actually reverses my usual routine.  With a telephoto mounted on my Spotmatic I first set the shutter speed to ensure that it will be fast enough to stop any subject or camera movement, and then I set the aperture to obtain the proper exposure using stop-down metering.  With the X-700 I need to take a guess at what aperture is going to match the speed I want from the camera.  What happens, sometimes, is that my guess is a little off and if I have failed to note the camera-selected speed in the viewfinder, my shutter might be a stop slower than is required for best sharpness.  What is really at play is my own habits and routines which need to be adjusted in order to get the optimal performance from the camera system.  It is also possible with the X-700 to set the shutter speed manually, which makes the system behave more like my Pentax Spotmatics.

Using the Minolta system has been a useful way to examine my own part in creating the images I want.  As a photographer I have gotten into habits of manipulating the technology through a nearly unconscious learning process.  It is easy to form preferences for certain gear as a result which have much more to do with my performance than with the capabilities of a particular camera system.  My thought at present is that it will be useful to try a couple other cameras with lenses similar to Rokkor--QD.  My later Pentax cameras, for instance, have aperture-priority metering, and I have a couple telephotos similar in characteristics to the Rokkor-QD.

Inside the Samoca-35 Super

The little mid-'50s Samoca rangefinder brings a good price on ebay because of its unusual design.  However, you don't see many pictures posted from the camera, and I have never seen anything on line about restoring the Samoca until now.  A few days ago, Urs Fischer emailed me saying he had seen some of my Samoca shots on line.  He asked if I knew anything about adjusting the vertical alignment in the rangefinder as his was out of alignment.  I had to reply that I could be of no help with the problem as mine was in good working order when I got it and I had no need to look under the hood of the camera.

Undeterred, Urs proceeded to completely disassemble the camera, and he sent me the set of pictures.

Urs said he encountered no great difficulty in taking apart the Samoca, or in getting it all back together again.  Unfortunately he did not find the key to adjusting the misaligned rangefinder.  Here is what he reported back about his findings:

I took my camera completely apart, under the topcover one can clean all the glasses and mirrors, but the length adjustment is done by the cogwheel on the frontplate, the beam splitter and the deflector mirror are glued to the rangefinder housing without any possibility of adjustment. The distance measurement is done by a moving lens. That's why I thought of the rangefinder window cover has a adjustment optic and because it is knurled, and because mine is missing.

So anyway, perhaps time will tell,

meanwhile I wait to see the first pictures,

thanks and regards

urs fischer

So, still another chapter to go in the Samoca restoration, but the information Urs contributed is a big step forward for those of us with an interest in the unique little Samoca-35 Super.

UPDATE (June 3, 2022)

The mystery of rangefinder adjustment appears to have been solved!  I received an email from Christian Treiber with the following explanation: 

There is a screw hidden in the axis of the upper Knob that will show the distance.  When you take up the leather, you will see the Nut, and deep in the nut is a screw where you can adjust the Split sreen or picture .  There you can synchronize the infinity of the lens and the split window.

* * *

Since it has been a long time since I last made any pictures with the Samoca, I loaded a roll of Kodak ColorPlus 200 and shot all 36 exposures over the weekend in the Plaza Vieja.

I had to make some substantial contrast adjustment to the pictures from the Samoca.  I suspect that was no fault of the camera, but rather a function of my C-41 processing.  I'll try some Fuji next time around to see if I can sort out the processing issues.

Ektar

The images coming from the f/3.5 Ektar on my Kodak Signet 35 seem very similar to me to those produced by the f/2.8 Tessar on the Zeiss Ikon Contessa.  There are several reasons to support that judgement.  The Ektar name did not refer to a specific lens design, but rather was used by Kodak to indicate that the lens was of the highest quality that the company produced.  The Signet 35 lens, in fact, is a four-element in three-group Tessar-type design and was contemporaneous with the Tessar on the Contessa 35.  The two cameras and their lenses were early to mid-'50s products which made use of significant advances in the post-war years in glass composition, lens component design and lens coatings.  I'm looking forward now to making some pictures with the Contessa 35 for the sake of comparison, but I'm pretty sure that there will be no apparent difference in the images from the two cameras used in similar conditions.

The warm spring days have put leaves on the trees in the Plaza Vieja and brought out the custom classics for the informal Friday morning car shows.  There were a couple parked at the curb that I had not seen before including a '37 Chevy 4-door and a '49  Fastback.

Kodak Signet 35

I wanted a Signet 35 for decades, but I was only dimly aware of that desire until just recently.

My step-father acquired one of these in the mid-'50s when I was a teenager.  I don't recall him using it, but I do remember how impressed I was at the time with the compact, elegant styling of the camera.  What brought that distant past into focus was an ad on Craigslist for a Signet 35 for $10.

The cosmetic appearance of the camera was not bad, but the shutter only worked sluggishly and the viewfinder was nearly opaque.  Luckily, this is one of the easiest rangefinder cameras to work on, and a bit of light cleaning of the optics and mechanics got everything working fine.  There are excellent on line resources for servicing the Signet 35 including the pheugo site, Mike Elek and Chris Sherlock.  The Kodak Signet 35 user manual is available on line from Butkus.

The Signet 35 shares a number of design features with the contemporary Kodak Bantam RF, however the plastic-bodied Bantam used 828 roll film, while the even smaller Signet accommodated 35mm cassettes.  The Signet 35 body was sturdy cast aluminum, which made it more suitable for the military applications to which it was put during the Korean War period.  The manual cocking shutter has a limited but adequate range of speeds going up to 1/300.  The Ektar lens is a Tessar type, and of outstanding quality.

I included a bit of the camera's frame mask in the last shot to illustrate a curious feature which the Signet 35 shares with both the plastic and the metal-bodied Bantams.  I have never found a satisfactory explanation for those little notches on the left side of the image.  I assume they had something to do with the assembly or adjustment of the camera in the factory.  Kodak, like most big manufacturing concerns in those days, was very secretive about their design and construction processes, and it seems unlikely at this point that the question of the notches will get an authoritative answer.  It is also something of a mystery as to why the company did not further pursue the design innovations incorporated in the Signet 35.