Moving up to a ten dollar camera

I haven't used my yard sale Nikon EM much since acquiring it about four years ago.  The main reason for that is that I have a couple of other very good Nikons including an FE and an F2.  The EM does have some nice features, though, and I'm going to try to use it more.  The camera is compact and light weight.  With the Series E 1.8/50mm lens mounted it is easy to carry and even shoot one-handed.

With the nice Spring weather we've been having I was pretty sure I would find a Friday morning car show in progress in the Old Town Plaza.  

Hikari + Takumar

As expected, the Hikari and the Pentax K-mount lenses work fine together.  Any deficiencies in the images is due solely to the operator.

The only thing I can find to complain about so far with the Hikari is the split-image viewfinder.  I don't like the canted split-image or the little crinkly doughnut around it.  That's just a personal issue, though; others may find those features advantageous.

I think my next step with the Hikari will be to give the Hikari zoom another round to see if a little more familiarity will produce a firmer opinion on its capabilities.  As with any zoom, getting used to the handling of the focus, zoom and aperture rings requires a bit of practice.

Dumpster Diving for Cameras

Figuratively speaking.  Actually, I found this Hikari 2002 in a thrift store with a five-dollar price tag.
The top and bottom covers were plastic, but the camera had a solid feel, and it was compact and relatively light weight.  The protruding grip makes one-hand shooting easy.  The film advance and the zoom lens were smooth in operation.  The shutter worked at all speeds.  The Hikari is a great camera.
Let me explain.

At home with the camera I inserted some new batteries and the meter came to life and seemed to be working properly; exposure is set manually, and a green LED glows when you've got it right.  I was pleased to discover when I looked up the camera on line that it accepts Pentax K-mount lenses.  It also features a shutter speed range from 1 sec. to 1/2000, a self timer, a double-exposure selector and a depth of focus preview button (which was lacking in the Pentax K-1000).  The Hikari was marketed under several names including the Vivitar  V3800N, the Promaster 2500PK Super and the Phoenix DC303N.  I shot a quick roll of Kentmere 100 to test the camera, and it performed flawlessly.

I'm withholding judgment on the Hikari macro-zoom lens.  Most of the shots made with it looked ok, but a few were not sharp.  That may just have been some focusing error by me; the max f3.5 aperture does not provide a very bright view.  I' m looking forward now to using some of my excellent K-mount Pentax lenses with the camera.  Perhaps due to my long experience with the Pentax Spotmatic I am most comfortable with cameras that let me have the final say about aperture and speed settings.

Saguaro

We spent a couple days in Tucson.  It seems to have a dynamic economy and it makes Albuquerque look rather shabby by comparison.  Margaret commented that Tucson seemed like another country.  The highpoint for me, as is often true, was the nearby wilderness areas.  We enjoyed a sunny morning visit to the west portion of the Saguaro National Park.

I have always enjoyed the drive into Phoenix from the north because of the views of the saguaros there.  The saguaro forest just west of Tucson is something else again because of the density of the huge cacti which cover whole mountainsides.

"An adult saguaro is generally considered to be about 125 years of age. It may weigh 6 tons or more and be as tall as 50 feet. The average life span of a saguaro is probably 150 - 175 years of age. However, biologists believe that some plants may live over 200 years."
- from the NPS Web Site

There were a lot of blooming ocotillo cactus and a few wildflowers, but we were a bit too early to see the blossoming of the saguaro.  A day's visit was certainly too brief to explore the park with my camera.

Cholla

Nopal

Saguaro Carcass

My original plan for the trip was to carry two cameras, the meterless H3v mounting my 24mm Takumar and the Spotmatic SP with the 135mm Mamiya-Sekor.  On the fourth frame through the H3v, the mirror jammed up against the rear lens group of the 24mm.  I should have known that would happen as the early H3v has the same problem with the Takumar 1.4.  Luckily, a bit of fiddling with the focus unjammed the camera and I was able to finish off that roll and another in the SP.

On Dorothea Lange

That is the opening paragraph from an essay on Lange by George P. Elliott published in1966 in the Museum of Modern Art book, Dorothea Lange, which accompanied an exhibit of the photographer's work shortly after her death.  Elliott's observations seem ever more relevant today when "mass journalism" has been replaced by mass social networking.

Elliott's brief essay is one of the best things I have ever read, both about Lange and about photography in general.  It gave me new insight about the photographer and her work that Linda Gordon did not quite get to in her big biography of Lange.  The essay and the book are also revealing of the process of mounting a major museum exhibit and how then Department of Photography Director, John Szarkowski, pulled it off.

How Elliott came to write such an excellent essay about photography is somewhat mysterious.  His work as a novelist had mixed critical reviews and he was best known in literary circles for his short stories and essays. Elliot does not appear to have any connection to photography other than this essay and one other in The Hudson Review.  He was a contemporary of Lange and of Weston who he also admired.  The author went to school in Berkeley and lived in San Francisco, so perhaps he actually knew Lange.

The MOMA book is out of print and examples are often pricey.  I picked up mine for fifty cents at my favorite local thrift store.  For those without my good bit of luck, the complete book is available on line as a pdf file.

Cesar Chavez Day

I rode my bike over to the Hispanic Cultural Center on Saturday.  Albuquerque has been celebrating Cesar Chavez Day for about twenty-six years.  This year's event was well attended, honoring the farm worker organizer and also the rise of many women to positions of leadership at all levels of government.

I tried shots of the Chavez poster from several angles, deciding finally on this image reflected in the windows of the Cultural Center.  The day's speeches were interspersed with dancers and singers.

No event in Old Town or Barelas is complete without this fellow officiating en dos idiomas.

Of course, at least one mariachi group is also mandatory.

The star performer was this little girl who danced for her mother and Cesar Chavez.

Our new mayor, Tim Keller, made a brief appearance at the beginning of the celebration, but the ladies owned the stage.  Michelle Lujan Grisham, the newly elected Governor of New Mexico, is always the shortest person in any assembly of politicians, but she has a personality at least seven feet tall.  The woman under the fedora to the right is Dolores Huerta, native New Mexican, co-founder of the United Farm Workers and keynote speaker for the Cesar Chavez Day celebration.

Next to the Governor in this shot is Deb Haaland, one of two Native American women who made it into the U.S. House of Representatives this year.

Quite a day for New Mexico.

I shot two rolls of Tri-X at the celebration, but brought home fewer pictures than I had hoped for due to some apparent malfunction of the Minolta X-700.  Most of the photos were under-exposed and some in full sun were grossly so.  Not sure if the problem is electrical, mechanical or the the result of creeping senility -- possibly a combination of all three.  The manual says that in aperture-priority mode the camera should work properly with about any Minolta lens, but I'm wondering if using the old MC 135 lens may be a source of problems.  I'll work with the issues as I really like the camera and the set of lenses I have for it.
    My plan was to develop one roll in the usual HC110b and the other using semi-stand development.  When I saw the results of the first roll, however, I decided to forego the stand dev as the complications left no room for meaningful comparison.  I still feel I'm making some progress at sorting out variables in the results of my photo efforts, but it is slow going.
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Update:
I shot a test roll with the camera to systematically compare results from the three lenses I have for the Minolta X-700.  The camera works fine in all three shooting modes with the normal and wide-angle lenses.  The shots from the 135mm lens degraded in quality as I moved through the roll.  On closer examination I see that the aperture stop-down mechanism is sluggish, probably due to dirt on the aperture blades and other moving parts.  I'm not sure I have the energy available to tackle the dismantling of the lens a second time.  I have gotten some satisfaction from figuring out the problem and verifying that the camera and two of the lenses are working properly.

Recalibrating

I've had some inconsistent results from my home film processing lately, so I decided to try to iron out some of the variables in the process. I got a new bottle of HC110 developer and a new digital thermometer from Freestyle along with a batch of TMAX and Tri-X film. I am thinking I will also do more stand and semi-stand developing as that makes time and temperature less important as well as providing some improvement in b&w tonal qualities. The last couple rolls I shot were processed normally in HC110 dilution B, so I'll try the next couple using semi-stand for comparison.

We have had some good ballooning weather lately.  This Stars and Stripes model came slowly down our street last Sunday at just over roof level.  I grabbed the Leica and walked along with the balloon thinking I might get some shots of a landing as that was pretty clearly what the pilot was aiming for.  However, there were really no likely landing spots on the course chosen by the wind, so about six blocks on the pilot gained some altitude and speed and left me behind.

A few days later I took my Retina Reflex loaded with another roll of TMAX 100 to the botanic garden.  I was the first one through the gate at 9:00 AM and it was nice to have the place to myself except for a few groundskeepers doing their watering and weeding.

Today is Cesar Chavez Day in Albuquerque, so I'm hoping to get to the celebration at the Hispanic Cultural Center with the Minolta X-700 and some Tri-X.   Lots of new photo opportunities on the horizon with the arrival of Spring.

Newhall's History

I like reading about the history of photography, but I've been haphazard in pursuing the subject.  I was pleased recently to locate a copy of Beaumont Newhall's The History of Photography at a library book sale for just a couple bucks. This last edition looked nearly twice the size of earlier ones.

Newhall was a pivotal figure in drawing attention to the "straight photography" style as practiced by such notables as Adams and Weston.  His "History" first appeared as a companion publication to an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1939. Besides a stint as a curator of photography at the MOMA, he also got the photography gallery under way at the George Eastman House in Rochester.  Newhall spent years as a teacher at the University of New Mexico and developed the school's photography program.

As an art historian Newhall developed an early interest in photography and brought a scholarly focus to the subject.  His recounting of photography's heroic 19th Century phase gives a clear view of the technical developments of the period along with the amazing stories of the major actors who took their giant wet plate cameras into the wilderness along with their darkrooms on wheels pulled by mule teams.  As a curator, Newhall championed the work of Stieglitz, Strand, Weston and many others whose stylistic innovations dominated fine art photography into the mid-Twentieth Century.

Newhall endeavored to keep his history up to date with four editions after the first, but in reading the later parts of the book questions seem to pile up faster than answers.  An overview is provided of major trends such as the development of documentary and photojournalistic work and some of the major players are mentioned, but there is not the same focus on style and substance which Newhall brought to examining the luminaries of the 1930s and '40s. Newhall lists the well known names of early Life magazine photographers and ticks off the war reporters such as Capa and Duncan.  He pays attention to those who struck out in new directions such as Cartier Bresson, Winogrand and Arbus.  However, in the final edition there is, inexplicably, no mention of the whole Civil Rights era and its chroniclers.  Where, for instance, is Gordon Parks and his history with the FSA and Life?  Where is Roy Decarava who was a fine arts star promoted by Szarkowski with solo exhibits at the MOMA? Based solely on Newhall's account, one would have to assume that there were no black Americans who owned cameras. By 1982 when the last edition of Newhall's "History" appears such omissions are unforgivable.

I think there are at least a couple important factors which contributed to the inadequacies of Newhall's final "History".  Firstly, the book is not really a history of photography.  It is a history of the elitist fine arts establishment; there was a lot more to photography than that by 1982.  The other likely source of problems is that the book was promoted by the publisher as a text book and it was likely used widely in university photography programs.  Such texts are typically updated annually with additions of dubious value to ensure that students buy new books rather than relying on the second hand market to meet class requirements. I do not know to what extent teachers in higher education relied on Newhall's book as a basic source for instruction, but I would hope that they drew on other sources to supplement the view offered by Newhall's text.

This is not a test

At least it is not a test of the camera or the lens.  The Leica IIIa is ... well, a Leica.  The Jupiter-8 is a superlative 6-element Sonnar design which the Russians appropriated along with the whole Zeiss establishment as reparations after WWII.

The question to be addressed is that of compatibility.  There is a lot of angst expressed in on line forums about slight differences in the lens mount to focal plane distances between Leicas and their Soviet counterparts.  People report making precise measurements with their micrometers and even shimming their Soviet lenses to compensate for the perceived problem.  So, when I confront a matchup of my Leica with a new Soviet lens, I make sure I shoot at a variety of distances to assure myself that both the lens and the camera are performing up to the expected standards.  The following shots are from a roll of TMAX shot on a recent neighborhood walkabout.

I'm not seeing a problem.  In fact, I've shot several Russian lenses with the Leica including FED, Jupiter and Industar models in 50mm and 35mm focal lengths without any loss of sharpness that is apparent to my eyes.  There may be a real problem lurking out there and maybe I'll encounter it one day, but I'm not likely to lose any sleep over the possibility.  I also have failed to find any apparent difference from the results I get when the Soviet lenses are mounted on the Soviet cameras they were built for.

I've had a Jupiter-8 lens for my Contax-copy Kiev IIa for a long time.  That lens is about ten years older than my recently-acquired Leica-Thread-Mount Jupiter, but it is also an excellent performer.  I haven't used it much, partly because I usually prefer to get out with the the Jupiter-12 35mm lens on the Kiev.  However, The Kiev also does not offer the same level of compact precision as the Barnack Leica.
     Besides adding a nice tactile dimension to the shooting experience, the Leica's slick operation instills confidence while also providing some practical enhancement to my shooting results.  For instance, that buttery-smooth film advance mechanism yields a strip of exposures that are very narrowly separated and perfectly spaced, with the result that I can often get 25 frames from a 24-shot roll even with the long tapered leader the Leica requires.

The bottom line for me on the issue of the compatibility of the Leica and Soviet lenses is that the combination provides a practical and economical way to the Leica experience.  If the Leica were my only camera, I would be more concerned with the likelihood that there could be a problem with lenses with a focal length greater than 50mm.  Obviously, I have a lot of other choices of cameras if I feel the need to use long lenses.

Walking the River Trail

Albuquerque's weather has taken a turn for the better and I was able to get in a couple walks this week in the riverside forest.  My first walk went from the Rio Bravo bridge to about half a mile north.  Fisherman take trout from the irrigation channel near the bridge, but there are not many walkers and bikers in the area and I saw no one else on the trail.  I'm thinking I'll try walking the whole three-mile stretch between Rio Bravo and Cesar Chavez sometime soon.  That is about my limit these days, so I'll probably drop off my bike first at the Hispanic Cultural Center to give me a way to get back to my truck.

There is a long unbroken barrier of flood control jetty jacks along this section of the river.  Many of the jetty jacks are far from the river's course now and serve no useful purpose other than as a reminder of the complicated history of water management along the Middle Rio Grande.

I carried along my Minolta X-700 on both walks and shot with all three lenses I have for the camera.  They all performed well, though I still need to get some lens shades, particularly for the 28mm.