5222

 I retrieved some Kodak Double-X(5222) of unknown age from my refrigerator drawer and shot it in my Olympus XA. I started the roll on a walk by the river and finished it up at the Albuquerque Art Museum where there was a landscape exhibit including some big camera obscura works by Shi Guorui.

I shot the roll at ASA100 and processed the film in hc110b for 6 minutes.  The negative density and the grain looked good, but the gray tones were kind of muddy.  I probably would have been better off shooting at box speed and allowing less time in the developer.  The real expert in 5222 is jon caradies who shoots that film almost exclusively and processes it in D-23.

My little Olympus XA has an excellent lens and it works fine in bright outside light, but the dim rangefinder makes low light shooting a frustrating experience.  

Third Thursday

The Albuquerque Museum puts on an evening event on the third Thursday of each month.  The theme for September was Lowriders.  Five convertibles were parked on the lawn in front of the museum.  Inside were a variety of family activities and a bar.  A musical program matching the theme was presented in the outside theater.

I shot the cars with my Olympus XA loaded with some Arista Edu Ultra 100. I'm not sure where I got the film, but I was pleased with the way it looked after semi-stand processing in HC-110 at 1:160 dilution.

Parade Gloss

I carried along my Olympus XA to the Marigold Parade loaded with Kodak Gold 200.  The rangefinder image is lacking in contrast, so this was not the best choice for shooting in a very fluid environment.  Still, the camera always turns in nice images and I was happy enough with the results.

Lowrider Meetup

On Saturday morning, the street in front of the Albuquerque Museum was filled with Lowrider art.  I took along my Olumpus XA to record the event.

We followed up the car show with lunch at a Wells Park community event where I was able to finish off the 36-exposure roll of ColorPlus 200, and  Cate got her face painted.

My color film gets processed with the Unicolor C-41 kit from Freestyle and then it goes into my digital darkroom.

I had to replace the router yesterday after a close-by lightning strike.  Most of the rest of the hardware and software is close to fifteen years old.  The Dell 690 running Windows XP was purchased ten years ago, having been retired from a long career in government service.  The Epson 2450 flatbed scanner works with Silverfast SE and Photoshop cs2.

xa

Marigold Parade - 2014

We had our windshield wipers going all the way to the parade site, but I don't think a drop fell during the actual event.  In any case, nobody seemed at all concerned about the prospect of a little rain on the parade.

I wore my skull mask most of the time I was making pictures.  I added a few flowers to lighten the mood a bit. No one was shocked by my appearance, but I think it did give me a little more freedom of movement.

The theme of this year's event was "El Agua Es La Vida, No Se Vende Se Defiende".  So, the weather was appropriate, and it made the photography a little easier as well.

Quite a few causes and social issues were represented in the parade, but I didn't identify any actual politicians in spite of the nearness of the election.

A couple cars and a diagnosis

My compact Olympus XA often gets to ride along in a pocket when I'm out for a walk with no particular photographic objective in mind.  The 1938 Chevrolet was parked at the west end of the Plaza Vieja early on Friday morning.  The owner was sitting on a nearby bench; he said he had owned the car for about 35 years.  

The XA also often gets to go along as a backup when I'm out to make pictures with one of my big 6x9 folders like the Monitor which only have a capacity of eight frames per roll of 120 film.  The XA also allows me to shoot easily in low light environments without the need for a tripod which is really essential with the long-lensed Monitor.  The spiffy sports car was in the shop where Saturday's car show was held.  I'm guessing it is a Ferrari 328, but I could be wrong.

The XA had also accompanied the Monitor when I visited the Nuclear History Museum earlier in the week.

When I scanned the aircraft shots, which had a lot of sky in the background, I noticed that the upper third of the image contained a number of round dark spots which can be seen clearly in the B-47 image.  The spots were present and in the same position in all the images shot that day.  This was clearly something going on in the lens.  The XA shutter has no bulb function to allow keeping the shutter open, so I was only able to examine the front and rear elements and found no trace of anything that could have caused the spotting

I was relieved to find that images made before and after the Museum visit did not have the spots on the negatives.  My fear when I had first noticed them in the aircraft pictures was that fungus had invaded the lens.  In fact my first XA was a victim of such an infection, and there is no easy way to correct that issue in the XA outside of an Olympus repair facility.  My conclusion at this point is that the spots were the result of condensation on the inner lens surfaces, which evidently dried up after the session with the aircraft.

The Rail Yards

The Blacksmith Shop at Albuquerque's Rail Yards is currently hosting a crafts, performance and food fair each Sunday from 9:00 to 3:00.  Visitors to the site can also view some of the other buildings that made up the massive Santa Fe locomotive repair shops.

The Santa Fe Railway Shops were Albuquerque's biggest employer for a couple decades.  At the height of their operations in the 1940s they were photographed by Jack Delano under the auspices of the FSA and the OWI.

Delano's assignment from Stryker at the Farm Security Administration and at the Office of War Information was to photograph the railway and the people who worked on it all along the east-west corridor.  The best compilation of his work in New Mexico and at the Albuquerque rail yards is in the Museum of New Mexico Press book, Far from Main Street.  Also featured in the same book is the work in New Mexico by two of Delano's colleagues, Russell Lee and John Collier Jr.