Old Town

 I have been walking around Old Town with my cameras since we moved to Albuquerque about sixteen years ago.  A lot of little shops have come and gone in that time, but the character of the place has largely endured.

Spare Parts

 In one week I managed to break the plastic rewind cranks on two old cameras that I like, the Nikon EM and my two-decade-old Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim.  Luckily for me I had a spare crank for the VUWS, and the Nikon EM was put back in working order thanks to the generosity of a friend.

So, time to test the repairs.  I headed over to the Los Poblanos fields to see if I could find some wintering Sandhill Cranes.  Thee were plenty of birds, but none were willing to allow me close enough for a picture.  I had to settle for a shot of an old cottonwood which showed no objection to being photographed.

Nikon EM

The next day I took  both cameras to the Tingley ponds. The little Ultra Wide was loaded with Kendtmere 100.  In the Nikon EM I had a roll of slightly expired Fuji Neopan Presto which Jim Grey sent me some time ago, 

I had walked around one of the ponds with the Vivitar 70-210 Macro Zoom on the Nikon EM.  That gave me more than enough reach to shoot the lounging ducks and geese.  Back at my starting point I rewarded my subjects with a single slice of bread which caused quite a lot of excitement.  There is a sign at the pool's edge requesting that people not feed the birds, but I figured my small transgression would not be noticed.

Shortly afterward this woman arrived in an suv and distributed about forty pounds of bird food to the ducks and geese.  She told me she did this daily!  I captured the scene with the Ultra Wide.

With two rolls of film to process I decided to do them together with semi-stand development in highly diluted HC110, following the technique developed by hjlphotos.  That turned out well with the Fuji Neopan 400.  The Kentmere 100 from the Ultra Wide did not like that choice however, and I had to resort to some careful photoshopping to get something acceptable.

Baila Baila

 The folk dance group, Baila Baila, puts on an elaborate show each year in Old Town during the Balloon Fiesta with children in traditional Mexican costumes and a lot of makeup.  The large number of participants offers many opportunities for photographers.

I am still not getting the tonal qualities I would like from the expired Acros 400.  The balance of shadows and highlights presents a difficult challenge for scanning and only approach acceptability with considerable photoshopping.  I tried semi-stand development in hc110 with this roll, so will probably go to dilution B or E for the next.

Kentmere

The best part of Albuquerque's Balloon Fiesta for me is actually not the balloons, but the Flamenco dance performances in the Old Town Plaza Vieja which are staged by the National Institute of Flamenco.  I believe the small woman in the picture is Eva Encinias who founded the Institute as well as the unique Flamenco dance program at UNM.  The tall woman beside her is the head teacher at the Institute.

I shot a roll of Kentmere 100 and another of Kentmere 400 this time around.  Since I had two rolls of film to process I decided to try them both together using semi-stand processing in HC110 at 1:100 for an hour.  I was very pleased with the results which this choice yielded for the Kentmere 400.  The tonal qualities were very good and the grain was nearly undetectable.  I have mostly used PMK Pyro as a developer for Kentmere in the past with good results, but I thought the quality of the HC110 pictures made with my Nikon FE were just as good if not better.

The Kentmere 100 shot in my FED 1g rangefinder responded less well to the HC110 stand development, so I'll likely stick with PMK Pyro processing for that film which seems better able to handle the higher contrast of the slower speed film.