San Felipe de Neri

  A clear and cold morning meant there were few tourists in Old Town.  A good day to visit the church in the Plaza Vieja.

At the Botanic Garden

 

Adventures in Film Photography

 My repair of the meter coupling on the Nikon EM seemed a success, so time for a test.

 I mounted the 50/1.8 Series E lens and loaded the camera with a roll of Arista 200. As sometimes happens I did not get the tongue of the film into the take-up spool quite right, so I gave the rewind knob a couple turns back and opened the camera back to try again.  I then saw that I had rolled the film leader completely back into the cassette.  I threw the film with disgust into the trash -- only to retrieve it seconds later as I remembered that I had a reloadable cassette to which the film could be transferred.  I put everything into the dark bag, pried open the Arista cassette and had the reel and film in the reloadable cassette in  a couple minutes.

I carried the Nikon EM around for about a week to finish the test roll and the meter worked smoothly as expected under a variety of conditions.  I finished off the roll with a couple shots around the house and then proceeded to crank the rewind knob to get the film back in the cartridge.  The plastic rewind knob cracked in half on the first turn.
 

The whole thing went back into the black bag so I could fish out the exposed film and get it into the Paterson tank for processing.  As I expected, all the images looked to be properly exposed.

This through-the-window shot was made with a Vivitar 70-210 f/3.5 Macro Focusing Zoom

 
The prospects for repair of the rewind knob looked dim.  In a search on the web I found that a broken rewind knob on the EM is not an uncommon problem. Replacements are available on ebay, but they are generally priced higher than what I paid for the camera. The same knob is on several Nikon models, so perhaps something will turn up to get the camera back into operation. I hope so, as I like the light-weight and compact Nikon and its little Series E lens.

TLR

 I found a couple rolls of 2006 Delta 100 in my refrigerator film drawer, so I loaded one in my YashicaMat and took some walks through the neighborhood and along the trails of the riverside forest.  

The last photo was made in the park near our home.  The girl's mother said she liked my old camera and added that her grandfather had been a photographer, possibly using a similar camera.  She said one his nature photos made it into National Geographic.  The little girl was very interested in our conversation; when I asked if she would like me to make a picture of her, she gave an emphatic "yes", and her mother helped her to pose for the camera.

Venturing Out

 A weekend of fine weather prompted me to get out with my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim loaded with some well-expired Agfa APX 100.

To compensate for the age of the APX 100 I developed it in Rodinal 1:25 for a couple minutes over the recommended time.  The sunny morning park shots looked fine , but the dark interiors produced very thin negatives requiring some careful photoshopping.

Handy Portability

 One of the Leica's nicest features is its compactness.  I carried it along with me for several days while running errands and doing some pinhole work; it fits in about any available pocket, even with the Jupiter 12 and its wide-angle finder attached.  The first two pictures here are from the Elmar 3.5/50.  The rest were shot with the Jupiter 12.