Margaret

 

Reduced

Shooting the Beast

 I nearly always like the images I get from the Mamiya C330 and each time I shoot it I pledge that I will use it more often.  It doesn't happen.  I average picking up the camera once yearly.  That's been going on now for ten years.  

I loaded some HP5+ into the C330 on Saturday and went down to the river in the afternoon.  There were ducks, geese and cranes in the ankle-deep water from bank to bank.  It was a scene that seemed to call out for some telephoto work.  Of course, I had left the 180mm lens for the C330 at home along with all the other accessories for the camera.  Luckily, the 2.8/80mm lens is ultra-sharp and the HP5+ combined with PMK Pyro processing yields very fine grain.  So, I came home with one good bird shot.

I think the lens on my YashicaMat is likely just as sharp as the lenses I have for the C330.  However, the close focusing and parallax correction available in the Mamiya give it the edge whenever I'm out prospecting for images.

On my recent outing with the camera I used the waist-level finder; it is very bright and easy to focus with the flip-up magnifying lens.  The Porroflex finder is a little dimmer and does not completely show the full image that will be on the film, but it makes shooting at a downward angle much easier.  The accessory grip  in combination with the neck strap also contributes greatly to managing the heavy camera.

Leotax Elite

 I picked up this Leotax Elite recently at a good price from a seller on Rangefinderforum.  It is a Japanese Leica clone from about 1959.  

The camera looked good with only  few signs of use and it seemed to be working.  However, there was no take-up spool and the ones I use in my Leica and Soviet copies did not fit in the Leotax.  Some research indicated the Canon spools with a pop-up handle were what I needed.  I found a pair on ebay.

I shot a roll of HP5+ and processed that in Legacypro L110b.  I wasn't too happy with that combination, but at least I got to see that the camera could make some pictures.

I tried out three of my Soviet lenses with mixed results.  The Jupiter 8 and the FED 50 seemed ok, but I'm not sure about the Jupiter 12.  The camera itself has a few issues that will need attention.  The viewfinder is a little cloudy, the rewind switch is a bit hinky, and the shutter curtains need to be properly tensioned because of some uneven exposure across the image.  I'll try adjusting the shutter tension, but I'm not sure I'll trust myself with the rest.

I found a couple good repair information resources on the web for the Leotax:

On Flickr there is a good tutorial about viewfinder cleaning for the similar Leotax K.

A Youtube video shows how to take the Elite apart and get it back together, though the presenter gets a bit confused at the end about reassembling the rewind handle and leaves that incomplete.  

There is a good review of the whole Leotax line at the yashicatlr site.

Nikon F + HP5 + Xtol

I loaded some HP5 into my Nikon F and went on one of my usual walks through the neighborhood to the Old Town Plaza.  Something about this camera inspires me to see old subjects in a new light, and I finished up the roll before I was back home.

The Nikon F is arguably the best buy in my collection of old cameras; it would have been a bargain at two or three times the price.  It shows little signs of use and everything works smoothly and precisely.  The shutter is accurate and quiet.  The Nikon lenses are all fine performers.

I processed the HP5 in Xtol at 1+1 dilution and was very pleased to see the best results I have gotten from this developer.  The grain and tonal spectrum were near perfect with little need for Photoshop adjustments.

HP5 in XTOL

 I'm mostly happy with my first results from processing Ilford HP5+ in Kodak XTOL 1:1 developer.

One thing I don't like is the way middle gray skies are rendered.  Those areas in the images have a bit more grittiness than I want.

The tonal values of this film and developer combination are nice, and in pictures that do not include large areas of sky I think that the results are quite acceptable.

It is possible that using yellow, red or green filters would help to attenuate the grain issue.  I might also try processing with 1:0 undiluted developer.  So, I still have some things to learn about this film and XTOL.  I am also looking forward to comparing results using XTOL with some other films including TMAX and Kentmere.

School Days

Thanks to a storm-caused loss of power affecting 1,500 homes in Albuquerque, we had a chance to observe our granddaughter's on line school day at our house as we were unaffected by the outage.  Cate's middle-school schedule for the day included several classes, with one devoted to PE exercises.  She seemed very comfortable in the on line environment, as did the teachers.

No on line encounters seem complete without the need to iron out a few unexpected glitches.  In this case we discovered after Cate's first class session that her backpack did not include her laptop's charger.  That was quite a small issue as we have six computers in the house, but it did give me the chance to have Cate test drive the laptop I had recently converted to a chromebook with the free Neverware CloudReady operating system.  Cate, with no coaching from me, instantly navigated the connection to her classroom interface.

What we are seeing may not be representative of the state of the on line educational experience across the country, but it does seem to show that there is some justification for optimism in regard to the potential for meeting both the current health crisis and the longer term challenge of achieving excellence in universal public education.

The pandemic has unquestionably caused great hardship and suffering, but the interruption in every routine of daily life has also enabled a reexamination of assumptions about all our institutions including the whole process of education.  There is currently a vast - unplanned - experiment in progress regarding the value of on line instruction, and I hope that academic researchers and entrepreneurs are jumping quickly to take advantage of this extraordinary chance to evaluate performance  and develop practical applications.  We will also have to hope that the money becomes available which is needed to support the realization of the full potential of this opportunity.

In the near term, particularly in New Mexico, there is a pressing need to find many more teachers, in part because of many older experienced educators leaving due to increased vulnerability to contagion.  Also, the State was already critically short of teachers because of low starting salaries.  Network access and hardware availability  are getting appropriate attention in many school districts, but there likely needs to be a greatly stepped-up increase everywhere in technical support staff that are critical to making it all work.

The sense of urgency for getting children back into schools is understandable, but if all that is accomplished is to return to what we had before, then it seems a great opportunity will have been lost.

Field Trip

It has been months since I last took a walk around the UNM campus.  I went there yesterday morning with my Pentax H3v loaded with HP5+ which I shot at box speed and developed in L110b.  The lens on the H3v was a 35mm/3.5 Super Takumar that I've had for a long time but not used before.

Not unexpectedly, the campus was deserted except for some maintenance workers and a few people lounging around the duck pond.

There used to be a totem pole  from the Northwest in this courtyard behind the anthropology museum.  The pickup carcass seems a much more appropriate totem for the Southwest.

Near the main library I ran into a fellow carrying a digital camera with a long telephoto.  He was Mike Sandoval, a student in the UNM photography program and a photographer for the student newspaper, the Daily Lobo.  He said the Lobo is being published only on line at present.  We talked a bit about what re-opening the University might look like.  He said classes were scheduled to start up in August, but that the details were still very sketchy.

I gave some more thought to school re-openings as I continued my walk.  I think it likely that an effort will be made to get back to what existed before the pandemic.  It seems to me a better option might be to take advantage of the current situation to re-think the whole educational process (along with issues of over-population, public health, equitable resource allocation and environmental degradation!).  Suggestions are welcome.

More from the Signet

I spent a couple days walking around with my Kodak Signet 35.  The camera is small enough to jam in a coat pocket and the Ektar lens always performs well.

The old car enthusiasts are back on the Plaza Vieja on the weekends.  This was the first time I've seen this well-restored Buick; I think it is a 1950 Special Jetback.  The lines in sideview are very graceful, but that massive grill kind of ruins the look for me.

The '54 Chevy 4-door is a work in progress.

Fins and quad lights.

6x4.5

I have always like the 6x4.5 film format because of the large negatives and the fact that I can get sixteen shots on a roll of 120 film.  The format also inspired camera makers to produce a lot of attractive compact designs.  I have examples from Zeiss Ikon, Welta and Kodak. , including four of the Duo Six-20 model from Kodak's Stuttgart plant with different shutter and lens combinations.

I recently shot a roll of HP5 in my Duo Six-20 that has a Tessar lens and a Compur shutter with a 1/300 top speed.  That 3.5/70mm Tessar is a bit inconsistent in its results, possibly due to the fact that it is uncoated, though I have gotten better and more consistent pictures in regard to sharpness and contrast with the same lens on my older Model I.

My liking for the Duo Six-20 got me started re-rolling 120 rollfilm onto 620 reels.  That turned out to be a lot simpler than I had imagined for a long time, and it only takes me a few minutes now to get ready for an outing with the camera.

It has been a while since I shot any of my fully manual cameras and I'm finding I have gotten a bit careless in making sure I have focus, aperture and shutter all properly set before making an exposure. There is also the issue of getting the frame spacing correct through the ruby windows when most modern paper-backed films have frame numerals that can only be seen dimly in bright ambient light.  However, those are all issues which get resolved with more frequent use.