Historic Albuquerque

 I was at my usual place in front of the computer soon after sunrise when I noticed the nice light that illuminates our street this time of year.  I threw on some clothes and went out on the sidewalk with my No.1A Pocket Kodak and a tripod.  I made a couple shots on a roll of Fomapan 400 of the house across the street and a couple of our place as well.

The two story Henry Mann house was built in 1905.  When we first came to the neighborhood about fifteen years ago, the house was surrounded by about an acre of garden space.  About half of that area is now occupied by three concrete block houses that don't have nearly the character of their old neighbor.

Our little house on the opposite corner was originally a four-room bungalow with a screen porch in front.  It was built about one hundred years ago.  Sometime along the way the porch was incorporated to enlarge the living room, and another flat-roofed section was added to the back to provide a separate kitchen and another small bedroom.

Pinholing Around The House

This roll of film actually started out on a walk through the Botanic Garden.  When I clicked the shutter it fired at about 1/20 rather than the 30 seconds I intended.  I tripped the shutter again with the same result.  So I completed the walk with my Retina II.

Back home, I removed the film from the pinhole camera in my dark bag, and then opened up the Vario shutter to see if I could get it operating properly in Bulb mode. After studying the repair manual I found online and looking at a nice series of images by P F McFarland I disassembled the part of the linkage that seemed to control the bulb setting.  I slightly bent one of the components and reassembled the shutter.  Somewhat to my surprise the shutter seemed to be working fine, so I finished off the roll at home.

San Ignacio

 I took two cameras to photograph the interesting little San Ignacio church about a mile from our home.

The No.3A Folding Pocket Kodak was again loaded with a sheet of postcard-size photo paper.  I made an eight second exposure at f64 under a lightly overcast sky.  I developed the paper negative in HC110b, stopped in some water with a little vinegar and fixed for about five minutes.

I also shot a roll of Fomapan 400 in my Bentzin Primar Folder.  I was pleased with the results from the film and the sharpness obtained from the Meyer Gorlitz Trioplan lens.  However, the open frame viewfinder on the folder will need some adjustment so that it more closely shows what will end up on the film.

Update

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I have made some small changes to the images in this post, increasing the contrast slightly.  I recently got my old Dell XP computer running again, so am getting back to using my preferred CS2 and Silverfast programs.  I have also made an effort to better match the screens on my Windows and MAC computers. 

Friday Morning

  I took my Bentzin Primar plate camera to the Plaza Vieja to catch the old cars and a couple of the old car guys.

The roll of Fomapan 400 was processed in HC110b.  I was pleased with image quality from the low-cost Fomapan, but found I was really out of practice in using the plate camera.  Both the wire frame finder and the little reflex viewer provide a somewhat vague idea of where the camera is pointed, and achieving sharp focus by estimation is always tricky at less than the smallest apertures.  It took some careful cropping of the negatives to get some reasonable compositions.

Midsummer

 I spent the morning at the Botanical Garden shooting Fomapan 400 in my Mamiya C330.

The Show

 On a Sunday in May the parking lot and the street in front of the Albuquerque Art Museum are populated by the automotive treasures of the area.  There are an equal number of opportunities and challenges for photographers at the event.  The sun is always very bright and it shines on acres of chrome, producing dazzling reflections interspersed with deep shadows.  The cars, probably around a couple hundred, are packed side by side in each parking lane.  The free show draws a big crowd and it is often difficult to get an unobstructed view of the cars.

I think I logged a couple miles up and down the lanes over a couple hours, so I was glad I chose my lightweight Argoflex Forty to make my pictures of the show.  Quite a few people asked me about the camera.  One fellow took a picture of me and the Argoflex.  Most seemed somewhat surprised to find it was still possible to make pictures with such an instrument.

Riverdance

 I took a morning walk along the river.  A lot of water has been let through the dams for irrigation, so the bosque is getting the benefit too.  There is strong growth in the patches of yerba mansa and there a few flower buds on the plants.  I expect the flowering of the yerba mansa will reach its peak in a couple weeks.  So, I'll look forward to getting back soon, probably with the same camera and film.

The cat gets the last frame.

Fomapan 400 Revisited

 I wasn't happy with some images on Fomapan 400 shot recently with my 1A Pocket Special and put them aside.  I started playing around with them again in Photoshop this evening and discovered that some rather radical adjustments to contrast, highlights and shadows revealed that there was quite a lot of useful detail available in the negatives.

The adjustments to the images got me a lot closer to what I want from my black and white medium format pictures in regard to sharpness and tonal range.  I'm thinking now that I need to take a close look at my Silverfast settings when I do the initial scans of the Fomapan 400 negatives.

The 116 to 120 adapters from the Film Photography Project look like they are going to make using 120 film in the 1A Pocket Special a lot more practical.  I also spent some time today in getting a better handle on advancing the film blindly since the red window is not of any use.  It seems that if I am careful in the advance process I could get as many as seven frames from a roll of 120.

Trial Run

I am wanting to do some portraits with my plate cameras.  It seemed only fair and prudent to first subject myself to the process.

I picked a corner with reasonably good light and propped a box up where I thought my head would appear.  I focused on a barcode on the front of the box and then substituted my nose for the barcode.  I made the shot using my longest cable release with the camera set to 1/2 second and f/22.

Shooting closeups with the Kodak Recomar 18 or any of the plate cameras is not for the impatient or the faint of heart.  With the dark slide in place, the roll film holder is replaced with the ground glass back for focusing.  The lens is opened wide for visibility and the shutter is actuated on the T setting to hold it open.  With the focus established, the shutter is closed and then set to the speed indicated by the meter, with a sufficiently small aperture to ensure adequate depth of focus.  Finally, the ground glass back is removed and replaced with the film back, hopefully without disturbing the positioning of the camera on the tripod.  The dark slide is pulled up and the exposure is made.

River Walk

I took my Kodak Recomar 18 plate camera on a walk north of Jemez Springs where the Jemez River and its East Fork come together near Battleship Rock.

The Nagel-built Recomar is a little bulkier than the Patent Etui or the Bentzin Primar, but it is solidly constructed and it accepts the Rada film back, which is sturdier than the Rollex.  While the accessory film backs make all the plate cameras more practical to shoot, the added bulk interferes with the use of the wire-frame viewfinder by keeping the eye too far behind the rear sighting aperture.  The little swiveling reflex finder is small and subject to confusing reflexions.  The ground glass back can give very precise framing, but is awkward to swap out with the film backs.

I like to shoot 400-speed films in my medium format cameras because they give a nice range of tonality and grain is not perceptible in moderate enlargements from the big negatives.  My past favorites were Fuji Acros and Kodak TMAX, but I'm not willing to pay the current asking prices for those brands.  In fact, the only 120 roll film which meets my cheapskate standard is Fomapan at about five bucks a roll.  For the Jemez outing I loaded a roll of  Foma 400 which I shot at 200 ISO for processing in PMK Pyro.  I haven't been too impressed with the performance of Fomapan in the past, but I thought the results on this occasion were acceptable and worthy of further experimentation.

I ran out of energy walking the river trails when I had only used half the eight frames in the roll of Fomapan.  I stopped at the church ruins near Jemez Springs on the way back to make a couple more shots, and finely finished the roll on a walk around my neighborhood the next day.  These last shots were hand-held at 1/100 and f/16.  For the river pictures I had to use a tripod and shot at 1/2 sec. and f/22.

Accurately estimating distance and proper framing are the two big challenges with all the plate cameras.  I shot at small apertures to get adequate depth of focus and I had to crop all of the pictures to produce compositions which matched my intentions.  So, I clearly need some more practice with these cameras, but the nice qualities of the images they produce encourages me to keep at it.