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. 

Perspectives

 I have mostly shot color in my little Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim, but it handles black and white well too.  These are from a roll of Arista Edu Ultra 200 processed in HC-110e.

Theory vs Practice

I had a fresh roll of Arista Edu 100, so I decided to shoot it in my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim and process it semi-stand in RO9 (Rodinal) at 1:100 for an hour.  I thought that should give me good control of contrast and tonality.  Wrong.  The pictures were excessively contrasty and the tendency of the vuws to vignette was emphasized.  Here are the best ones from the roll.

The rest had mostly blown out highlights.  I may have not gotten a fair test for my idea behind semi-stand processing.  I'm down to the dregs on my old bottle of RO9 (Rodinal), so there's no telling if the results would have been better with fresh developer.  

Cinco de Mayo

 I needed some color film to shoot on Cinco de Mayo, so I dug around in the film drawer of the refrigerator and turned up a roll of Kodak Professional 400UC.  There was no box, so no date.  I looked it up and found that 400UC was discontinued in 2009!  I loaded it in my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, which would mean a shutter speed of 1/100 at f11.  There was no officially scheduled event for the day in Old Town, but I was pretty sure some of the old car guys would show up.

Since I didn't know if anything was actually being recorded on the film I decided I might as well shoot the whole roll while walking around Old Town, looking for anything bright and colorful.    My Cinestill C-41 had already processed at least sixteen rolls; so I give the 400UC some extra time, eight minutes at 95C.  The negatives needed a bit of color and levels adjustment, but I thought the old film wore its age well.

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.

Albuquerque Autumn

 I was able to get back to shooting my Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim thanks to the gift of a roll of Agfa Vista 100.  The use-by date was 2007, but I thought the colors looked pretty good with a little PhotoShop help.

I found I had forgotten a few things about shooting the little wide-lens Vivitar.  It is necessary to frame scenes tightly as the viewfinder shows less than what will appear on the film.  Keeping the camera level is also important to avoid out of control verticals.

I have another roll of the Agfa Vista.  I'll probably give it an additional minute or two in the developer to compensate for the film age as well as the depletion of the Cinestill C-41 which will be on its fourteenth roll.

La Quinta

 Thanks to my friend, Bob Eggers, I recently enjoyed a bike tour of the Los Poblanos ranch.  I had visited the restaurant at Los Poblanos several times before, but was unaware of the extent of the property and its interesting history and architecture.  La Quinta is the name given to this building adjacent to the main ranch house which was designed expressly for large meetings and cultural events.  The architect was John Gaw Meem, famous for his Pueblo Revival and Territorial Revival designs.  

These pictures were shot on expired Kodak Gold 200 in my little point-and-shoot Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim (vuws).  Perhaps not the camera one first considers when talking about architectural photography, but  the two-element 22mm lens is surprisingly sharp and produces wide views with little apparent distortion.

I had some previous familiarity with Meems' work as a result of many hours of walking around the UNM campus where there are twenty-five buildings designed by him, most in the Pueblo Revival style. He regarded the Zimmerman Library as his crowning achievement.  The Library has been the subject for many of my old cameras including the Ansco Folding Buster Brown and the KW Patent Etui.