Coffee and a Burrito

 We visited Bike In Coffee which is at an old farm west of downtown Albuquerque.  We drove there, but many people do get there along the bike trail that parallels I-40.  I shot most of a roll of Kentmere 400 in the Zorki 6 with the collapsible Industar 22.

The camera and lens performed fine, but I don't shoot the camera enough to be used to the unconventional location of the rewind button which is right next to the shutter release.  I managed to lose about a quarter of the shots by pressing the wrong button.

Still a nice morning outing and I always find a lot of picture opportunities at the place.

 

Margaret wants to go back on a Thursday when the bluecorn pancakes are featured, so I'll likely have some more pictures of the place soon.

Cool Day

 I went to Old Town on Saturday with the collapsible Industar 22 on my Zorki 6.  A little rain and cloudy skies gave me some nice light for the Gekko 100 film.

In spite of the rain there were a lot of cars and people in the Plaza Vieja by noon.  Part of the reason for the crowd was that a Quinceañera was just getting started in front of San Felipe de Neri.

Some of the shops that closed during Covid have changed owners and some are being renovated and reopened.

I have gotten used to handling the Zorki 6 for the most part, though I still need a little practice with parallax adjustment in close-ups.  I'm thinking that the flip-open back will let me use a ground glass to compare the difference between what the lens and the viewfinder see.     I may try making some little close-up marks in the viewfinder.   The film was not tilted this time using the thin plastic washer, but it was slightly too high at the film plane, so i may try centering it with some thin foam rubber on both ends of the cartridge.

Morning Light

Dawn comes into our house through the front door.

The low sun lights up the plants and family pictures on the table beside the door.  Daggers of light slide along the oak floor to illuminate dark corners.  If the door is open to let in the cool morning air the glass bends sunbeams into the china cabinet at the back of the room, causing the teacups to glow brightly. On Fall mornings when the sun comes up over the mountains straight from the east, a beam of light shines through the keyhole of the bathroom door and casts an inverted image of the brightly lit front door on the dark far wall.

Adventures in Photography

I found myself with some free time late in the morning, so I decided to walk over to Old Town with my Leica IIIa to which I had attached the Industar 22 lens, a Soviet copy of the collapsible Elmar.  I finished up the roll of TMAX 100 that was in the camera, making some pictures on the street, at the park and at the Art Museum.  New Mexico's mid-day light is often too harsh for photography, but on this day some scattered clouds softened the light enough to get some shots.

The photographs I made were not very exciting, but it still turned out to be a great photo walk.  I ran into Marco Wikstrom who is a member of our New Mexico Film Photographers group as well as a participant in the co-op which runs a photography gallery in Old Town.  I walked with him to the gallery which he was going to open for the day.  We looked at his photos which he has on exhibit now, and we talked about a couple of his current projects which include an upcoming trip to New Zealand.

On the way home I cut through Tiguex Park and came upon our friend Lana who was a neighbor and the first friend we made when we move to Albuquerque over ten years ago.  Lana and a friend were walking their dogs.  She recalled that I had made a picture of her and her dog, Buddy, some time ago and asked if I would make some more to bring things up to date.  So I did.

Buddy

When I got home I rewound the film back into the cassette in preparation for development; the film strip got caught at the end and broke, and the shutter by its sound was clearly not working right.  I removed the lens, set the shutter to Bulb and when I released the shutter I could see that there was a folded over piece of film stuck under the shutter curtain.  I managed to fish that out with some pliers, and everything seemed to be working properly after that.

I have been getting some thin negatives from my home development, so I decided to process semi-stand in 5ml of HC-110 in 650ml of distilled water.  It is hard to mess up with that combination and the negatives looked ok, but I may abandon HC-110 even though it has been a long-time favorite.  

In looking around on the web I have found that a lot of people are reporting problems with a number of Kodak developers including TMAX, HC-110 and Xtol.  Kodak has apparently had to make changes in the chemical components of the developers which has degraded both longevity and effectiveness.  Fortunately, there are alternatives.  I have Rodinal and PMK Pyro for black and white, and I am happy enough at present with Cinestill C-41 for color work.  I may also try LegacyPro LMAX from Freestyle which is said to be identical to TMAX developer before it was altered.

Parting Shots

Shutters on the Beach Hotel at Santa Monica

San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm (out the window at 70 mph)

On the way to Zuzax

I installed a new beam-splitter mirror in my Leica IIIa with hopes that would enhance the brightness of the viewfinder.  The operation went pretty smoothly thanks to some good on line instructions.  Aside from adding a slight yellow tint to the rangefinder spot, there was little improvement. So, the view through the Leica is still about on a par with that in most of my other old rangefinder cameras.  Fortunately, my surgically enhanced vision makes using any of them more practical.  After slightly readjusting the camera's rangefinder I took it for a photo walk into Old Town.  Mounted on the Leica was the collapsible Industar 22.  The film was Tri-X rated at ASA 200 in anticipation of PMK Pyro processing.

I found the nice old Chevy Wagon parked in front of the church in the Plaza Vieja.  It was one I had not seen before and it looked like it just came off the showroom floor.  Since there is always some nice light in the Museum's sculpture garden I stopped off there too, as I always do when testing any new gear or techniques.

The next day I decided to stick with the vehicle theme and made a short road trip East on I-40.  Leaving Albuquerque, the frontage road is actually a long stretch of  the old Route 66 highway.  There is a big collection of unrestored cars and trucks on the South side of the highway which I have gone by many times, and I decided the time had come to pay it a visit.  This time, I mounted the 35mm Jupiter 12 on the Leica along with the accessory viewfinder.

The yard full of old trucks and cars is on a dead-end off the old highway between Tijeras and Zuzax.  It turns out to be attached to a well regarded East Mountain repair shop, Charlie's Fleet Service.  Charlie and his dogs greeted me at his front door; he said I was welcome to make some pictures so long as I did not open any doors or hoods. 

Part of my plan for the day was to compare Tri-X in PMK with HC-110 semi-stand processing.  After finishing off the roll in the Leica I shot a roll of Tri-X at box speed in the Nikon FE.  The Nikon Series E 50mm and the Rokunar 28mm performed nicely,  but Fate's fickle finger poked a hole in my strategy.

After an hour in the highly dilute HC-110, I fixed and washed the Tri-X from the Nikon.  When I pulled the film off the reel I was dismayed to see that it was a nearly opaque gray color with the images barely discernible.  It looked like a problem with the fixer, so I stuffed the strip of film back in the tank and soaked it for another ten minutes.  The gray was cleared and the negatives looked normal when I took them from the tank again.  I don't know if I just misjudged the time, or if the fixer was near exhaustion.  So, I got some reasonably good pictures from the Nikon after all, but the comparison test was mooted.

Still, a good day.

East Meets West

My combination of Soviet lenses with a classic German Leica IIIa has worked out pretty well; I am expecting it will be more successful than the infamous 1939 German-Soviet Pact which lasted just over a year.

The Industar 22 and the Jupiter 12 lenses seem to be performing equally well, though I have mostly shot them so far in bright light conditions and at small apertures.

The last roll of film I put through the camera was Kentmere 100 which I processed in Rodinal at 1:50 dilution.  I'm looking forward to trying some other films and developers, including some PMK Pyro.

I have ordered a replacement beam-splitter mirror for the Leica.  It turns out that the mirror coatings used on the Soviet Leica copies was actually superior to that used by Leitz in the Barnack-style cameras, and my IIIa has no better rf contrast than most of my other cameras from the same era.  If the surgery goes as hoped I'm expecting I'll have more confidence in using the Leica in low light, and that should provide a more significant challenge for the German-Soviet alliance.

I check the lens listings on ebay every once in a while, but the chances of finding a good Leica lens at a reasonable price remain slim.  In any case, I'm happy enough with the experience so far, and it is nice to have an excuse to get back to using all my rangefinder cameras more.

Voices

My best, most-used cameras are in a glass front case.  One morning recently as I walked near the cabinet I heard a faint murmuring sound coming from the inside.  I could not see anything moving among the cameras, but the noise persisted.  I put my ear up against the side of the cabinet and I could then distinctly hear a chorus of small voices.  They were chanting "we need a Leica... we need a Leica...".
     I was astounded and, of course, one cannot ignore such a singular phenomenon.  I immediately went to my computer and began searching the big auction site.


I found a 1936  Leica IIIa body nearing the end of its listing with no bidders.  The asking price was about half what the model often commands.  The seller's description stated that the camera had been recently serviced and was working perfectly.

When the camera arrived I was pleased to see that its appearance supported the seller's assertions. There was a little brassing on the bottom plate, but the outer covering and the shutter curtains were new.  The shutter action was very smooth and sounded good at all speeds.  I mounted one of my Soviet M39 lenses, an Industar 22, then and shot and processed a quick 24 frames of TMAX to verify that the shutter was working fine and there was no unevenness in the frame spacing.

For the second roll through the IIIa I used my Jupiter 12 lens to shoot a roll of Kentmere 100, paying more attention this time to gaining familiarity with the camera's controls, and shooting a variety of subjects at different distances to achieve a sense of proper parallax allowances.  I processed the Kentmere in HC 110-B and was happy with the results.

The last shot of my cat is a tight crop of the image that was made with the Jupiter 12 wide open at f2.8, showing the good performance that lens can deliver.

Since I am using the same Leica Thread Mount lenses that I use with my Zorki and FED cameras I do not expect any significant differences in the quality of the images made with the Leica from those out of the Soviet cameras.  However, it is a real pleasure to handle and operate a camera that was made with the finest materials and best craftsmanship available in its day.

Phoenix

I am always invaded by a sense of unreality when I get to Phoenix.  I was there for a few days recently to attend a wedding.  The disorientation was even greater on this occasion as on arrival we ran into a massive traffic jam occasioned by a an accident on I-17 which slowed our progress into town to a crawl.

After a day or so, and following some contact with our family there, I get a bit more comfortable with the place.  However, when I drive down the long streets and avenues, the thought creeps back into my mind that I am in some kind of alternate reality.
    It seems there is just one dominant idea of the good life in the great sprawl that comprises Phoenix and it is replicated every few miles in each community that you pass through.  Each place has a strip mall with the same collection of chain stores and fast food joints which serve as a facade for endless tracts of ranch-style homes punctuated by long-stemmed palms.

My observations and my imagination lead me to the idea that the residents of Phoenix  are uniformly detached from any connection to national and international political concerns, directing their attention instead to sporting events and the acquisition of large motorized toys.  That is likely an unfair judgment, but it is hard to shake the idea that Phoenicians conceive of the rest of the world as a kind of fairy tale to which they have only a remote connection.

I have to admit that ignoring the rest of the world is an understandable strategy if you feel that you have little or no real control over the course of world events.  And, of course, there are a lot of nice things to be found in Phoenix.  We rented a beautiful three-bedroom house for just a hundred bucks per day -- about what we would normally pay for a hotel room.
    There is also the fact that Phoenix is an island in a vast and amazing desert.  The saguaro  cactus lend a somewhat exotic look to the land, but the endless grass-covered rolling hills, dotted with junipers and cut by shallow arroyos and steep canyons make me feel at home.  It is a part of the landscape that stretches from the Snake River to the Rio Grande in which I chose to live out the better part of my life.

The camera I took to Phoenix and used to photograph the little carnival near where we stayed was a Zorki 2-C.  A friend gave me one about ten years ago; it had a mismatched bottom plate.  I bought another on line for parts for next to nothing that turned out after a little cleaning  to to be better than the first.  I have made a lot of pictures with the 2-C which has a very smooth film advance and an accurate shutter.  I have collapsible FED and Industar lenses for the Zorki that are very sharp and compact, and I also often use a Jupiter 12 wide-angle with an accessory finder.