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.

* * *

Shooting the Olympus Pen-FT

It took me a couple weeks to work my way through a long roll of Kentmere 100 in the Pen-FT.  I have mostly shot 400-speed film in this half-frame camera as I like the faster film's ability to handle a wide range of lighting.  However, to fully appreciate the qualities of the 38mm F.Zuiko lens one really needs to shoot a slower film.  With processing in PMK Pyro I think the results rival what can be asked of full-frame 35mm images.  

These are the results from two sessions including a stroll in the riverside forest and a walk in our side yard garden to portray Margaret's prolific artichokes.

Plants & Animals

 Albuquerque is having fine Fall weather.  Daytime temperatures are in the 50s, while the nights are cold enough to cause the mulberry trees to lose all their leaves.  I spent the week walking around with my Olympus  Pen-FT, visiting the botanical garden, the riverside forest and the Rio Grande Nature Center.

The local wildlife rescue group put on their yearly education event to give visitors to the Nature Center an opportunity for a closeup look at the area's common raptors, a Kestrel, a Red-Tailed Hawk and a Great Horned Owl.  All three had wing injuries preventing them from living free in the wild, but they were all healthy looking and well behaved.

Full-Frame

 I shot some Arista 200 in the Leica IIIa with the Elmar 3.5/50mm for the purpose of comparison with the images I have been getting from my half-frame Olympus Pen-FT.  At the size I normally show on-screen I think there is little difference, but at larger sizes the full-frame images from the Leica do show some better sharpness and finer grain which allow considerably more enlargement.

On a bike ride along the Bosque trail north of Central Ave. I came across the firetruck and a group of firefighter recruits being trained in the use of portable pumps for fighting fires in the riverside forest.

Some cloudy days are bringing nice light to both Old Town and the Bosque.

 

(The chromework on the Harley suggests that some care should be exercised in getting on and off the bike.)

Verde que te quiero verde.

Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas la están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.

Romance Sonámbulo
Federico García Lorca (1928)

Walking my mju

The Olympus Infinity Stylus (mju) metering system has an uncanny ability to get the exposure right under any condition of lighting.  

This was my fourth roll of color film in my current Unicolor C-41 kit.  I was pleased to see that the kit is mostly performing as it should.  I decided to see how it would work at a lower temperature and longer time, so I processed for six minutes at 95F.  That seemed about right,  so I'm going to stick with that time and temp, adding 2% on the time for each subsequent roll.  The normally recommended developing time of just 3.5 minutes at 102F is a little too short for comfort, and I'm thinking that a lower temp will also be a little gentler on the emulsion.

June in the Bosque

The cottonwood forest along the river is bursting with life in June.  The Yerba Mansa is particularly impressive this year and I am seeing more varieties of wildflowers than I recall in past years.  Even though it has been warm and rather wet this Spring, there are no mosquitoes in the bosque; that makes riverside walks more pleasant, but may not bode well for the ecosystem.

Cottonwoods

Yerba Mansa

Siberian Elm

Pale Evening Primrose

Sandbells

I have had poor luck with my C-41 color processing for some time compared with the results I was getting initially when I started with it a few years ago.  I am seeing quite a bit of color shifting and red staining.  Both the Unicolor and Cinestill kits are giving me only half the number of rolls before exhaustion that I was getting before.

The Bosque in Winter

The cottonwood forest beside the river seems to be in a state of sleep this time of year.

Shooting the Hikari 2002 is a nice way to make use of my Pentax-M lenses.  The roll of Tri-X was developed in LegacyPro L110 at 1:31 dilution for 6.5 minutes at 20C.  I might give the next roll another thirty seconds, but I thought the L110 nicely handled the grain in this instance.  Semi-stand development would likely reduce the contrast a bit.