Voigtländer Brilliant

 We took our dog, Roxie, for an outing on the West Mesa to the east of the volcanoes.  She would have preferred to splash in the river, but it is waterless this summer.

 The area has a large network of horse trails with many types of jumps.  It would be fun to see the place in use, but we have never seen anyone on horseback there in the years we have been visiting the place.

 

I was able to finish off the roll of Kentmere 100 in the Voigtlander Brilliant the next day when we visited the Art Museum.

 

The very bright viewing screen of the little pseudo-tlr makes the camera a real pleasure to use, and I'm always impressed with the images delivered by the uncoated Voigtar f/7.7 lens.

No Adjustments Needed

 I am always impressed by how my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim (VUWS)  stacks up against much more sophisticated and expensive cameras in my collection.  I shot a roll of Kentmere 200 in the little point & shoot, aiming it often at subjects which I had previously visited with some high-end cameras.

The VUWS has been one of my most productive cameras over the past twenty years. In the past I mostly shot color with it, but that choice has been relegated by film prices to the digital realm.   The 22mm two-element lens handles black & white just fine.

 

Some Rain Would Be Nice

 I have been carrying around the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim for a couple weeks, trying to finish off a roll of Kentmere 200.  I got close to the end with an early walk to the river.  Only a trickle of water in the Rio Grande these days.

 Just enough for Roxie to get her feet wet.

 The riverside forest looks surprisingly good considering the heat and sparse rainfall.

 I am told that the Yerba Mansa is blooming profusely and there is a. bumper crop of wolf berries, though I may not make it to that part of the river to see them this year.

I was disappointed with the results from the Kentmere 200 as the first roll I tried some time ago showed a much nicer spectrum of tonality.  I can't rule out processing issues, but doubt I'll shoot another roll of the 200 any time soon. 

I'm also unhappy with the GIMP photo editor at present as it seems to be under constant revision.  I had it working pretty well for a while,  but now some of the tools seem to interfere with each other. 

Tingley Summer

 Summer heat crashed into Albuquerque well in advance of the summer solstice.  The city's residents are hopeful now that the monsoon rains will arrive on schedule to moderate the solar blast.

From. a 2005 visit to Chaco Canyon:

* * *

The sun announces

The longest day for each year

At Fajada Butte. 

Fajada Butte rises up out of the Chacra Mesa about a mile south of the Una Vida great house. 

Near the top of the butte is an archaeoastronomical feature known as the "Sun Dagger". The Anasazi carved a spiral there on a rock face on which shafts of sunlight appear at midday to mark the solstices and equinoxes.

* * *

A Walk In The Park

Some clouds and a light rain has provided us with respite from too-early Summer weather.  I  loaded a roll of Kentmere 400 in the pinhole camera and took a stroll through near-by Tiguex Park.

Alternate Realities

The practice of photography often emphasizes maximum control of every vairable.  Pinhole photography on the other hand offers the possibility of relinquishing control to some extent to venture into exploring the unknown and unexpected.

While one has awareness of an ultra wide view and a near- infinite depth of field, exactly how those will be expressed in the captured image is hard to accurately foresee.  I frequently mount my pinhole camera on a small tabletop tripod because I like the low angle views which that allows.  A side effect of that choice is some guesswork in aim that often results in the inclusion of unanticipated elements.         

While sunlit scenes can be captured by the pinhole in a second or two, a shaded subject typically requires an exposure of eight or ten seconds, and picture making in interiors can require many minutes to completion.  In that length of time people may unexpectedly wander through the field of view, leaving behind ghostly traces of their passage.

Much of the above was part of my experience on a recent stroll through Old Town Albuquerque with my pinhole camera.  The subjects at hand were all very familiar, but the pinhole gave me images of a novel character where my other cameras would likely only have duplicated past experience.

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PS:  I lost two frames from this roll of Kentmere because I could not see the dim frame numerals through the ruby window.  So I have poked out the window. I'll report back about the issue after the next roll.

Rustic Repast

 Thursday morning found us eating a breakfast of blue corn pancakes at Bike In Coffee.  I made a few digital shots for the color and used my half-frame Olympus Pen FT for black & white.

 Getting to the end of a roll of film with a half-frame camera is always something of a challenge.  This time I rolled half the Kentmere 100 into a reloadable cartridge, and still got forty shots.  Even that tactic took me a couple sessions to complete.

A Bentzin Folder

I had just one roll of 120 Kentmere in my refrigerator so I dicided to use it in my Bentzin Primar folding camera which I had used only once before since its acquisition in 2018.  I bought the camera on ebay because I had been very impressed with the quality construction of my Benzin plate camera.  The camera's features are an interesting pre- and post-war mix.  The Compur shutter and the uncoated Meyer Gorlitz Trioplan lens definitely look  to be from the 1930s.  

 On the other hand the self-erecting feature and the plastic advance knob are typically found on folding cameras made after 1945.  This camera also has two ruby windows on the back, indicating an option of getting sixteen frames from a roll of 120 film.  However, my camera did not come with the half-frame mask which would enable that choice.  The Bentzin looks like it was little used, including a faultless bellows and no Zeiss bumps in the covering.

 Being a Friday morning, the old guys and their restored classic cars were available in the Plaza Vieja to help with camera testing.   

 

 

 One of the old guys had come for his last ride.

 

For a three-element lens, the Meyer Gorlitz Triplan lens delivers impressive performance.  I have the same lens on one of my KW Patent Etui plate cameras and on my Certo Dolly SuperSport, and they make images as sharp and undistorted as the four-element Tessars.

I remembered that the Rada rollfilm adapter for my  Bentzin plate camera came to me with a thin cardboard mask for half-frame images.  It does not quite fit in the Bentzin folder, but it would be just a few moments work to cut one to fit.

A Kodak Mystery

I went late one recent morning to the nearby Tiguex Park with my Kodak No.1 Autographic Special.     After 10 o'clock the New Mexico sun is often an impediment to getting pictures I like, but on this day there was a helpful slight overcast.  As I worked my way through the eight frames of the Kentmere 400 film I listened to the persistent complaints of a critic up in the cottonwoods, a Coopers Hawk.

I am a bit out of practice at using the camera, but as always, the uncoated Tessar lens yielded images with a unique look. 

 

From when I first acquired this old Kodak in 2007 I have always regarded it as the most interesting camera in what has now become a rather large collection.  The camera's design, materials and construction were all state-of-the-art a hundred years ago, and it still remains a practical and competent performer.  

What prompted the rescue of the No.1 Special from the display cabinet on this occasion was an email from Scott Rust:

" Hey Mike - I'm curious to see what you think about this one! Early model? Late model? Special order? Is the back a transplant from a different camera?

It's been fun trying to figure it out, but I've hit a wall on any additional information.

I found this on Craigslist probably 7 years ago - seller left it on their front porch and I put $10 under the mat - very clandestine now that I think about it. Maybe it's some sort of geeky nerd illegal photography syndicate fencing unauthorized modded cameras.

At any rate, that mask was a big surprise when I looked at it earlier this week. It'd been there the whole time but I didn't notice it and assumed the camera was a 6x6. 

LMK if you want any additional shots. 

Scott "

 Scott included some photos of his camera which looked much like my 1915 model, but it had a number of different features, the most significant being two ruby windows on the back, and a 6x6 mask to enable the option of getting twelve square images from a roll of 120 film.

 

 

Scott, in a subsequent message, also gave me a link to Pacific Rim's collection of yearly-issued Kodak catalogs which included the twelve years during which the No.1 Autographic Special was offered by the company.  None of the catalog illustrations or descriptions show or discuss the unique dual-format features of Scott's camera.

 

So, we would both be interested in finding additional information about this interesting variation of the Kodak No.1 Autographic Special.  Scott can be found at the Bluesky site were he posts about his camera adventures, and there is also a link there to his photographic work. 

 

1915