Russian Spy Film

 No, I don’t mean a Russian version of 007, I mean photographic film designed by the Soviets for aerial surveillance, aka spy planes. I love playing around with different film stocks and this one is now made by the Ukrainian company Svema and sold by The Film Photography Project (https://filmphotographystore.com/ ) in handy rolls of 24 frames under the name Svema 64. It’s one of a number of Svema films they offer, but it appealed to me because of its low 64 ISO. I wanted to see if, given enough light, it would carry more detail than higher ISO films, and I was not disappointed.

The above examples are from the river walk in Georgetown, South Carolina, shot on a sunny day. I love the detail in the boats in the background of the top photo and the grasses in the background of the bottom one. The contrast is nice, not overwhelming but nice and crisp.

These above photos from the NC Ferry between Southport and Fort Fisher, also shot in full sun I also really enjoyed. 

But my favorite is below. It’s the Kaminski House in Georgetown and it’s one of the few I shot that day with a lot of shaded areas. I wasn’t sure it would work, but cranked the shutter speed as low as I dared and fired away. It’s nice having an old mechanical rangefinder that has no mirror to flip up and down letting you shoot at 1/30th or even 1/15th of a second with not camera shake if you’re careful. I was amazed at how well this film handled all the dynamic range, letting details show well in highlights as well as shadows. I will certainly try this one again.

The Devil Made Me Do It

We’re heading out on a long road trip in September that will include a search through the Mississippi Delta for some historic crossroads. You’ve likely heard the song Crossroads by Eric Clapton’s Cream. That’s a cover of a song by blues legend Robert Johnson, who, legend has it, sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads in exchange for his unmatched guitar talent. In the Cream song, at the end, you’ll hear Clapton say “I’m standing at the crossroads/Believe I’m sinking down.” That line is direct from the original and that’s Hell he’s sinking down into. 

Some of the story is verified fact, some legend, some….who knows. Robert Johnson was in fact a guitar player at a young age. He played around the Delta in the early 1920’s, including the Dockery Plantation which is kind of the birthplace of blues music. The older men there, Charlie Patton, father of the blues, among them, made fun of him because he wasn’t very good. He got angry and left, on foot, not to be seen in the area again for months. When he came back, he was one the best, if not the best guitar player anyone had heard. That much is fact, corroborated by blues histories who spoke with those who were there. 

Robert Johnson in 1936

Then the legend begins. The idea of meeting the Devil at the 

Crossroads has a long history. In the part of Africa where many of the enslaved people of the Delta had roots, the Trickster god in their pantheon is called The Dark Man. He was the only of the gods who was unpredictable. Praying to him might get you want you wanted, or not. He was associated with places where paths or roads crossed. In America, as the Africans were introduced to Christianity, The Dark Man was a natural fit for The Devil. And so we get the Devil at the Crossroads. A story in the Delta held that you could bring your guitar to the crossroads just before midnight and play. At midnight, the Devil would appear, take your guitar from you, tune it, play some, and hand it back. From then on you’d have great skill as a guitarist, but your soul belonged to the Devil.  This is what many people thought was the source of Robert Johnson’s talent. As an entertainer who depended on a certain degree of notoriety to draw audiences and make his living, Johnson did not discourage the story.

You can believe that or not. But after he became a great musician, Johnson never rested. He never lived in one place and never stayed in one place long. He traveled all through the Delta and the South, up to St. Louis and Chicago, and even to New York and Canada. It’s hard to listen to him sing “Hellhound On My Trail” and not at least entertain the idea that he did in fact believe he was trying to outrun an evil fate. He certainly lived like it. 

The actual Crossroads involved in this story were never specifically nailed down. The “official” spot is the intersection of highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There’s a big sign marking the spot, and I’ll certainly go and get some photos, but it’s a busy intersection and today features such things as a Sonic drive-thru. 

We’ve also tracked down some other possibilities, much more out in the country, and these are what led me to my Devil Made Me Do It purchase of a new-to-me old lens. The Delta is very, very flat. These crossroads are dirt roads through mainly cotton fields. I thought that to capture them the way I’d like required a wide angle lens, so I found a 24mm Pentax for the Spotmatic at Roberts Camera (https://robertscamera.com/) used gear site Used Photo Pro (https://usedphotopro.com/ )for about $60. Buying from them was a breeze, it came quickly packed safely and in great shape. I can’t wait to try it out here then take it to the Crossroads. 

I hope to come back with my soul intact. But if when I return, I’m all of a sudden shooting stuff to put Ansel Adams to shame, you’ll know what happened. 

Analog EXIF Data

 

EXIF data is, at least in part, the camera settings used when an image was captured. Digital cameras attach this to the photo file so you can always see what f/stop, shutter speed, iso and any number of any settings were used. Film cameras don’t do this, of course, which makes it tricky when you’re trying to test one out to see how the camera is operating or how a certain film stock behaves. I’ve run across this problem lately while trying to rehab some antique cameras, particularly my 75 year old Ansco Titan. 

I’ve found a solution in the Analogbook, a handy notebook printed with spots for all the relevant data but without anything you won’t need. It’s an efficient use of page space. There are blocks for frame number, a short description, aperture, shutter speed, date/time, lens, and a block for notes. The notes block even has little icons you can circle to denote things like flash, double exposure or tripod use. The book fits perfectly in my back pocket, so it’s easy to tote around and always have handy. 

I like the idea of using pen and paper to record this info rather than my phone. It seems to me that it just keeps me in the analog mindset.

Mine is specifically for medium format and I’m probably going to get a second for 35mm.

I found the Analogbook at B&H for only $7.95. Money well spent. 

Camera Rehab

Jeffrey’s Home For Misfit Cameras grew by quite few when my friend donated a box of old cameras from her father-in-law’s house. They include a miniature folding autographic Kodak from 1915-17, a twin lens reflex from mid-1930s Germany, an American movie camera from the late 1930s and a simple little point and shoot from Ansco circa 1938 called the Jr. Press Photographer.

That Ansco was in the best working order, so I cleaned it up and took it out for a test run. I found both a PDF of the original manual and a video of how to take the lens pieces apart for cleaning, so with my new set of itsy bitsy screwdriver bits, I got to work. The lenses came much cleaner than I expected them to and the disassembly was a breeze. I put a cloth to the outside and got the dust off and in the end, I think it looks pretty good for a 75 year old toy camera.

Before Cleaning

After

It requires 620 film, which is simply 120 film on a narrower spool, so I bought a roll of trusty Kodak Tri-X from the Film Photography Project store, loaded it up and shoot a few photos. 

I had read that this was a 6x6 for a camera, but after I developed the film, I found that it really shoots in 6x9 format, which is cool. That would explain why I got 8 frames instead of the 12 I expected, though. I had a bit of trouble winding the film onto the spool in the darkroom, so some of the frames are bit wonky, but that wasn’t the fault of the camera, which looks to be in fine working order. It’s sharp in the center and much less so at the edges, but it worked out just fine with 400 speed film on a nice sunny day. I think we’ll get some fun use out of this simple little guy. 

And I can’t ever get enough of the name :-)

Jeffrey’s Home For Misfit Cameras

 I’ve taken to looking at Facebook Memories quite a bit lately. Seems the Plague Times have completely thrown my concept of time out the window and the Memories help me sort out what happened when. In any case, a couple weeks ago Memories told me it had been one year since I bought my first antique film camera, the Folding Brownie. And last week, on our trip back from Alabama, I found the latest addition to the collection at an antique shop on the top of a mountain. 

I never intended to be a camera collector, I bought the first one as an office decoration. But seeing how it was really a quite simple machine that should theoretically work, figuring out how to make it capture images again was fun. 

And that’s the best part of the collecting for me. Some people like the challenge of finding old cameras in the best condition and then using them to create amazing art. I’m more interested in the quirky and then finding out how it works and trying to make it the best it can be. 

The Brownie was just a matter of finding a way to make modern film work, the camera itself was performing exactly as intended even after 100 years. The Petri I bought mostly because it was a rangefinder and I wanted to try that out, it’s the least quirky I own and has become my go to if I want to make sure I get the shot. The Canon EXEE is a work in progress. I’m still shooting in different conditions and at different settings to try to noodle out why some images end up a bit foggy. Once I do, I’ll maybe look into how to fix it so it always gets a good image.

The Ansco Titan in all its glory

The latest addition is the second oldest and is another folding camera kind of like the Brownie. It’s nearly 75 years old but is in pretty good shape. With a folding camera, light leaks through the bellows is the most common issue, but this one seems fine there. The shutter seems to be firing correctly and the aperture opens and closes smoothly. But the focus is a bit off, and that needs to be addressed somehow. Thanks to YouTube, I have a plan and the proper tools are on the way. 

I’ve never been a tinker kind of guy, not mechanically inclined at all. But I have always been curious and always interested in how things, especially old things, work. These cameras are right on the edge of my comfort zone, and push it a little which is fun. The oldest ones are simply mechanical, with no electronics at all, and since there are really a limited number of operations that have to happen for a photo to be captured, I’m finding I’m able to figure them out. 

The design of this camera is just so cool. And that case! 

I’m also leaning into my general “glass half full” attitude. When I got the Brownie I was happy all the mechanical parts worked rather than frustrated that it had been decades since they made film to fit it. The Canon is fun to use despite some of the images coming out wonky, and again for a 50 year old camera, it has held up well.

Not the sharpest images, but I think we can fix that

The latest project is, as I said, 75 years old. It was made right after World War Two by an American camera company called Ansco and was the last of their cameras to be designed and produced in New York  before they moved those parts of the business to occupied Germany. So I look at it as a real piece of history, and the fact that everything but the focus is fine makes me happy. 

I’m looking forward to my tool set arriving and trying to bring this relic back to full working order. And I wonder what will have joined the collection by this time next year…..

A Strange Little Camera

 

I took some money I’d received as birthday gifts and went looking for a new old camera. I wanted a 35mm slr (as opposed to the rangefinder I already have in the Petri 7S) produced sometime around mid-century. What I found was the Canon EXee. 

This was a transitional product in a couple of ways. It represented Canon following the public’s shift away from rangefinders. It wasn’t the company’s first slr but it was one of the first. It also sought to reach that transitional spot among photography amateurs turning into serious hobbyists. 

I think this sort of wishy-washy positioning is what led to some of the weirdness that I also think has left this camera model relatively undiscovered by the new breed of film photographers. I kind of like a misfit, though, and because they aren’t widely sought after, these cameras can be had in good shape for under $100. 

The first strange feature is its interchangeable lens system. Many mass-market, non-pro level cameras, such as my Petri 7S, have a lens that is built entirely into the camera. The Petri lens is great, but it is what is, there’s no option to go wider or telephoto. The upside is a simple, light design and a lens that can be closer to the film plane making it easier to capture sharp images at slower shutter

speeds. Professional cameras at this time had interchangeable lenses with a huge variety of options in one of many lens mount designs. 

The Canon EXee sort of splits the difference here. The base of the lens, the part closest to the camera body, is built in, but the outer piece can be unscrewed and changed up with a few options. I bought a model that came with the most common 50mm lens, but a 35mm wide angle and both 95mm and 135mm telephotos are also available. That isn’t nearly the number of options available for Canon’s EF mount lenses made for the pro-level cameras of the time, but it does offer some flexibility. Also, because you’re really buying essentially half a lens, the EE lenses are, and were at the time, very affordable. The other advantage is that this camera retains some of a fixed mount lens camera’s slow shutter speed stability. It’s definitely strange, but I think it’s also pretty cool. 

Canon also got creative in its attempt to split the difference between fully automatic and manual controls. This camera has very strange aperture controls. I guess they were trying to simplify the exposure triangle by putting one side of it completely in the hands of the camera? They were pretty proud of their idea, I guess, because that’s where the EE designation comes from. It stands for “Electric Eye”, which sounds more ominous than they intended I think. In EE mode, you select the film ISO and a shutter speed (from 1/8 sec to 1/500 sec) and the light meter selects an aperture for you. The light meter gauge you see in the viewfinder tells you the aperture, rather than the scale of under- to overexposure in other cameras. There is a manual mode for selecting your own aperture, but you kind of have to guess as the control only has the max f16 and minimum f1.8 settings displayed.

And the light meter still just tells you your aperture, not whether it not you are exposed correctly. The system isn’t so much difficult to use as it is just weird. It will take some practice and experimenting to figure out how to make this camera do what I want it to do rather what it wants to do.

My first test did not go well, but it was due to old processing chemicals rather than the camera itself. My results with a second roll of 400 speed B&W film were truly encouraging. One thing I noticed was that the images I took in the late evening (when I was really pretty sure there wasn’t enough light) came out much better than the ones in full sun. I’m not sure if that has to do with the metering of the camera, the accuracy of the settings or the film I was using, but time will tell. I’m excited that the camera did so well in low light, actually. Some of these photos that I thought would be throw-always turned out to be great. 

My next step is to try a lower ISO (200 speed in tis case) B&W film to see how that fixes the problems in full sun. After that I’ll venture into color films. I’m looking forward to the adventure and may even try to get a wider angle lens from eBay before a trip to the mountains of Alabama (yep, Alabama apparently has mountains) early next month. 

Nostalgia & Progress: 50 Years of Walt Disney World Photo Project

 This is my first attempt at an organized, thought-out photo project, and I’m super excited to dive into it. To understand this, you’ve got to understand that I’m a Disney Geek. My family went to Disney when I was growing up quite a few times. My parents took the Lovely and Talented Lisa and I to Disney World as a graduation from college present. Lisa and I have taken John as often as we could, and have instilled a love of Disney in him as well. Disney to me is all wrapped up in the best aspects of nostalgia, but at the same time the fun of it still comes from its constant change as they push the boundaries of what is possible in immersive entertainment. But that’s getting away from the point, I was talking nostalgia.

I remember most of the trips we took to Disney well, some less well, and one not at all, because I was not quite two. Some of what has kept these earlier memories so vibrant is the photos my dad captured along the way. I have my dad to thank for much of my love for photography. He always had a camera, and he had it out at not just the “special” times, the birthdays and holidays and vacations, but at the regular times. Looking back on those photos, the ones of just random weekend car rides and everyday stuff mean the most. Most of our life is not holidays and vacations, right? He definitely took the camera on vacation, too, but he took his “regular times” eye with him, I think. There are posed photos in front of things that represent where we were of course, but there are also others that just seem kind of random. And I love them. 

Dad shot on slide film and those early slides of our earliest trips to Walt Disney World have come under my care. I’ve scanned them all, but still have a screen and projector that, as far as I know, still work. The look of slide film, and I think this was specifically Kodachrome, just says “childhood memory” to me. I went looking through these old Disney photos when we decided to make a trip for Walt Disney World’s 50th birthday. I gift to thinking how different it looked then, but at the same time how much the same. Nostalgia and Progress were in those images. 

I got to thinking it might be cool to try to recreate some of those photos, to go to the same places and seek the same angles and framing and see that mix of nostalgia and progress. But I didn’t want to step in too much as the photographer. I think that taking those photos with a modern DSLR would be just jarring, and probably say more about the change in technology over the last 50 years than the story of nostalgia and progress I’m trying to tell. So I bought a 35mm slr film camera that was made in the mid to late 60s, something that might very well have been carried by the tourists during those first years. I can’t get my hands on Kodachrome any longer, it’s not been made in over a decade, but Kodak did re-release another slide film. It’s not the same look, but slide film is distinct from negative film and I thought this would get me closest. 

I’ve gathered 15 images from dad’s collection, only two of which feature me or my mom. They are scenic shots, and some of them a bit random. I asked my dad why he was taking photos of the rest rooms on Tom Sawyer Island and he said he had no idea. But he did, and so will I. I’ve chosen images of places I am fairly certain I can get to and put myself in the same spot as dad. I’ve checked Google Earth and pinpointed as best I can where he was standing. I feel like I’m ready.

A truly epic view of the restrooms on Tom Sawyer Island, from, I think, the fort. 

That’s me in the red overalls and yellow shirt. I may have someone else shoot this and try to ride that horse again. 

I began this thinking it was a tribute to Walt Disney World. But the more I look at these photos and the more I think about it, the more it becomes a tribute to my dad. Thinking about him walking around the Magic Kingdom with my mom and little me, camera swinging on his neck, shooting things that struck him reminds me of just how much he has given to me. And when I think that just a few years before he was walking around the jungles of Southeast Asia armed with much more than a camera, well, I just hope that someday I can grow into the kind of man he is. 

I hope this works out like I’m envisioning it. It’s a little squirrelly working on film and not knowing until you get photos back from a processor what you’ve captured. But I have high hopes. I mean, it’s Walt Disney World, it’s the Magic Kingdom. I feel like Walt would approve.

One big difference will be the missing Sky Ride. 

Pinocchio Village Haus doesn’t really look any different today

Road Trip!!!!!!!

 It’s been soooooo long since we went anywhere for any length of time. We’ve done some fun day trips and we’ve been on a couple overnighters to go see the boy, but we haven’t proper been away since before The Plague Times. Tomorrow morning, though, we drop the News Hound off at Pet Camp and head to a fancy resort in Greensboro for four whole nights! It’s not quite really a vacation, though. It’s the annual conference of the North Carolina Association of Municipal Clerks, during which my lovely bride will become the new president of the Association. I’m very proud. I’m also really happy I get to tag along. Lisa will be in classes all day, so I will actually have a bit of vacation time. Naturally, I’m planning to use it to play with cameras.

We’ve been to Greensboro enough that I have a start of an idea of some things I need to see and hopefully shoot. The city has a fun little downtown area that we’ve mostly just driven through, so exploring that is high on the list. Greensboro prides itself on its green spaces, too, so I have some gardens and parks and trails on my list as well. It’s supposed to be sticky hot, but partly cloudy with just a chance of thunderstorms rolling through, so should be pretty good photography weather. And since Lisa’s classes start early, I can easily get my butt out for morning light and come back to do some magazine when the light is harsh (and it’s super hot.) That’s the plan anyway.

I’ve not been anywhere on photo safari since I began messing about with film photography, so I was’t sure what I wanted to bring. After thinking about it a it, I settled on pretty much everything. I have a good sling camera bag and also a fairly large backpack, so I have the room. I’ll leave the Brownie at home because folding it is a little iffy, but I’m bringing the Holga and the Petri 7 and the Eos R. I have the two RF lenses as well as the telephoto and the wide angle zooms. I figure I can look at the day’s weather and where I’m going and pack the sling with whatever I’ll want for that trip. Or throw the backpack in the car, who knows? But as far as cameras and lenses, I’m pretty well covered.

The Go Bag

Film left me putting in a little more thought. I’m leaving the slide fil at home because that’s for my Disney Project and I’m not confident about being able to replace any that i would use in Greensboro. The medium format film for the Holga was pretty easy as well. I’m taking three rolls each of Tri-X 400 and Lomo 400, that way I’ll have both color and black and white. I’m thinking it might be fun to load the Holga with color and the Petri with B&W or vice versa, so I always have both as options. That means I’m able to bring some pretty funky 35mm film. I have my Washi “S” 50 ISO sound recording film as well as both the 50D and 500T Vision3 Kodak film stocks from Film Photography Project. I’m also packing a couple rolls of the tried and true Gold 200 as well as two rolls of the very normal but new to me ProImage 100. 

I think that gives me a wide variety of film speeds in both color and monochrome for the Petri. I’m expecting lots of light, so the low ISO stuff should work well, especially in the urban areas. I can go to the 200 for the shady spots in the woods if I end up there. That’s the plan anyway. 

I’m hoping to have the chance to branch out a bit with my subject matter. Not only is it a new city, but it’s also much more urban than even Wilmington, so should offer a different style of shooting than I’m used to here at the beach. If there are people around, I could try some street photography. We’ll see if I get up the nerve. Maybe shooting strangers won’t seem so weird in a city. We shall see. 

And I’ll also always have the mirrorless Eos R with all its bells and whistles and options and a  big pile of memory cards to go along with it. 

I’m looking forward to spending some time just focusing on photography (heh, see what I did there). If all goes well, I’ll be busy in Jeff’s FotoMat and on the computer when we get back. And let’s be honest, this is a dry run for the Disney trip, so any lessons learned will be valuable. It’s all very exciting :-)

The Holga 120N: Socialist Photography

 The Holga was developed in China to provide a camera to the Chinese working class. They were fans of 120 format film at the time, so it’s a medium format camera, made of plastic so it was easy and cheap to produce for the masses. The original had two f-stops (f8 and f11), a fixed shutter speed of 1/100th of a second, and a plastic lens that could be focused from 3 ft to infinity. It was, and if we’re being honest still is, an total piece of crap of a camera. 

The Holga is poorly made. The plastic that makes up its body isn’t particularly good plastic. It either comes straight from the factory with light leaks or tends to develop them over time. The lens is plastic and also not well made so focus is entirely random between cameras. You may get one that is sharp in the middle to varying degrees, or you may not. There is heavy a vignette. The camera back gets looser with use and will eventually just randomly fall off if you don’t gaff tape that sucker on. It’s bad.

It was also, in its time, hugely popular in China. The Chinese loved taking photos and this was the camera they could buy. There were no options, no free market with other cameras with different or more features or cameras that were better made at a higher price point. It was an option of buy the Holga or don’t buy the Holga. And they bought the Holga. Until 35mm film penetrated mainland China and became popular. 

With fewer people buying the Holga in Mainland China, the government manufacturer expanded sales into Hong Kong, and eventually into the rest of the world. And then options became available, because all of a sudden the Holga needed to compete on a free market. It got a cold shoe for a flash and a tripod mount. But that was about it. It didn’t do well and production was stopped. 

Then Westerners discovered it. Frustrated and maybe a little worn out with modern cameras and all their amazing features, a small but dedicated group of film photographers fell in love with the Holga and its bare bones, Communist simplicity. Once photographers made the conscious choice to use a plastic piece of crap camera all its flaws became features. The vignette became artistic and the lousy focus of the plastic lens became “soft focus,” again, artistic. Production resumed. The free market had saved the communist camera. Now they come in all sorts of varieties. Some are panoramic, some have multiple colors of built-in flash, there’s even a 3-D model, I think. Also, they now come in fashion colors, not just the proletariat black of the original. 

This thing is so ugly it’s cute. Here it’s set on the sunny f-stop and the “mountains” focus. 

It’s still plastic and still, really, a piece of crap. But it’s a $35 medium format camera and I had to try it. And I love it. It really is fun, after using a camera that can do pretty much anything I ask of it, to use a camera that will do what IT wants no matter my thoughts or wishes. 

Shooting with the Holga is easy. You just put the aperture setting on the clouds or the sun depending on if it’s cloudy or sunny, try to noodle out if you should use the one person, two people, group of people or mountain focus setting, aim the camera in the general direction of what you want to shoot (the viewfinder doesn’t show you what the lens will see) and click. 

I used the “one person” focus and Lisa came out in focus!

As I mentioned earlier, each Holga is different. Some people buy several and then pick which to use based on each camera’s peculiarities. I only have the one and feel like I lucked out. It is really pretty nicely focused at the center of the frame but drops of to a kind of wavy out of focus-ness at the edges. The more light I have the heavier the vignette is. I don’t have any light leaks yet. I’ve run a roll of color and a roll or black and white film through it and was pleased with the results. I wouldn’t use it for any sort of professional purpose or to shoot a once in a lifetime event, but as something to carry around and play with, it is absolutely a blast. And it weighs almost nothing, so carrying it around is easy. 

In bright sun, the vignette is heavy, but I like it

I’m grateful to live in a capitalist country where my options for pretty much everything are almost inconceivably wide. I wouldn’t want the Holga to be my one and only photography option. But it is really cool to be so blessed with high quality photographic equipment at prices I can afford that I can buy a truly bad piece of equipment and love it for it’s flaws. 

Just look at the difference in focus from the center to the edge. 

Funky Film

One of the most fun parts of film photography is getting to try out different films. Traditional films each have their own special look, but with the huge reduction in film production, the film shooter community has gotten creative, using found stashes of expired films and even films not entirely meant to be run through a still camera. I have three of these oddball stocks in my collection now and I’m looking for just the right use for each.

The most normal one is a roll of the Film Photography Project’s Retrochrome 400. This is government surplus 400 speed Kodak Ektachrome color positive (slide) film that expired in 2004. They say it performs perfectly well still so they’re pretty sure it was in some sort of deep freeze for the last 15-some years. I’ll probably save this for my  little project I have coming up in the fall that I’ve not written about yet. Soon. Oh, and those two other rolls of Ektachrome 100? They’re for the project as well. Stuff is becoming hard to come by and I wanted to make sure I had enough.

I’m also sitting on a roll of the Film Photography Project’s X-2, made from Eastman’s Double X black and white motion picture film. This is the film stock used to shoot Raging Bull, but hand-rolled into recycled 35mm film canisters. It’s a 200 ISO film, so it will have a pretty wide latitude. I might try shooting this one inside so I can open up my lens wider than I’m able to outside with 200 speed film. 

The last funky film is, I think, the funkiest. It was also purchased from the Film Photography Project but produced by some folks called Washi. They make a series of films at a variety of ISO’s and this one is called Washi “S” and the “S” is for sound. That’s because it was made to record audio, not images. Apparently, recording on 35mm film was the high fidelity thing back in the day, to the extent that several of Frank Sinatra’s albums bragged about being recording on film. It’s a 50 ISO black and white film, which will be great in my camera outside. The folks at FPP say it’s super high contrast and very low grain. Aside from outside, I’m not sure what I’ll shoot with this one. 

I have my eye on some other non-traditional films, such as a few other motion picture films, a still camera film made for security cameras and one made for high altitude surveillance photography. One of the rewards of getting comfortable developing at home is that I feel confident trying these other stocks, and since the cost of processing is so small, I don’t feel bad spending a few bucks on a film that may or not give me anything worthwhile. 

Road Trippin’ with Pedro

 Now that the lovely Miss Lisa and I are vaccinated against The Plague we have ventured forth into the world again. That was the toughest part of the Plague Times, the staying at home. We’re not staying at home people. At all. In the Before Times we were always hearing people ask us where we were going next or telling us they liked following us on social media to see where we would end up next. People would ask, “Aren’t you ever at home?” Doing what, I wondered. Mowing the grass? Dusting the house? Watching TV?

 I really don’t know what the stay at home crowd does at home. It’s not a part of my experience. Growing up, we were always on the move. We’d just “take a ride” on the weekends, with no particular destination in mind. Going for the sake of going has been my normal. So, fair warning, you will begin seeing blogs about getting out into the world, because when we go, the camera (or, now, cameras) goes too. Photography was always a part of the roaming life for me, and the two combined remain one of my life’s great joys. 

Last weekend we took a ride up I40 to the Meadow community in Johnston County. It’s really kind of in the middle of nowhere, but as Raleigh grows it’s becoming closer to somewhere. We were there for the pie. Chocolate cream pie, to be precise. You see, the lovely and talented Lisa stops at the Meadow Restaurant for lunch on the way home from business meetings in Raleigh. She raves about the place, or, I should say, the pie. It’s a country buffet restaurant and the food is pretty standard country buffet food. The desserts, however, are amazing, especially the chocolate cream pie. It was killing Lisa that I’d never experienced this pie, so off we went to lunch, a few hours up the interstate to a crossroads in the Middle of Nowhere, North Carolina. As one does. 

Lisa had heard from someone that there was a Meadow Museum. We’re suckers for museums and a museum named for a town that isn’t even actually a town and that contains exactly one restaurant, one gas station, one fertilizer store and said museum……well, we had to go. It did not disappoint. Neither, by the way, did the pie.

I’ll write more about our photo-tour of this museum another day, but for now I’m bringing this back to those road trips of my youth. My favorite trip was the drive to Florida. One of the best things about driving to Florida from Pennsylvania is watching out for the increasing numbers of South of the Border signs as you approach the NC-SC state line and that glorious piece of roadside kitsch. Most of the signs feature Pedro, the South of the Border mascot who would, I’m sure, be considered a bit problematic today. He’s a caricature of a Mexican guy and he’s the king of bad Spanish-English puns. Here today, gone tamale and stuff like that. And the signs worked. By the time you’d passed your hundredth one, how could you NOT stop? And stop we did. Never to eat (my dad said he’d eaten a burrito there once before I was born and it almost killed him) nor, heaven forbid, to sleep in their motels, but we’d browse the junky gift shop and I’d beg for fireworks. It was great. 

How’s this relate to the Meadow Museum? As it turns out, the man who owns the museum once worked for the Department of Transportation and he’s gathered some discarded highway signs, including those advertising South of the Border. These weren’t the huge billboards with the puns, but they were classic and looked exactly like South of the Border signs were supposed to look and they brought me right back to the back seat of our station wagon rolling down I95 to go see Mickey.

I had the old 35mm Petri film camera because Lisa asked to use the mirrorless that day. It was the perfect camera and it was loaded with Kodak Gold 200, the iconic vacation color print film. I’m going to say that there’s not a better way to shoot old South of the Border signs than with a 1960s vintage camera and Kodak Gold. 

Three of the signs were outside and one was inside, but there was plenty of light and the film has incredible exposure latitude. It’s hard to screw it up, really. I’m very happy with the images I brought back. They remind me of my childhood and of our return to the road after this past horrible year, so they serve double duty of making me happy. 

That Old Time Film Look

 Ever have an idea in your head of something, creatively, that’s you’d like to bring to life and you sort of bumble your way towards that idea without really knowing if you’re on the right track or not until all of the sudden exactly what you’d been hoping for happens? That’s the feeling I got when these photos appeared on the first roll of color film I developed myself.

I bought the Petri 7S rangefinder camera I used because I wanted to try a rangefinder camera and because I had this notion of recreating the sort of vibe of the vacation photos of my childhood. Having seen how the old folding Brownie produced photos that just have the feel of 100 years ago, no matter what the subject, I thought getting a camera from the early 70s might do the same sort of thing. 

This idea was brought on at least partly by Walt Disney World’s 50th birthday. We are incredibly happy that Lisa and I will be joining a couple friends in the Magic Kingdom on October 1st, the actual 50th anniversary of the park’s opening. I thought it would be fun to bring back photos of the event that had the feel of photos taken 50 years ago. 

So after running a roll of black and white through the Petri and finding that it seemed to be working just fine, I ordered some Kodak Gold 200, a pretty classic-looking consumer grade film, and headed out to see what I could do. Luckily, I live at a vacation spot so taking “vacation pictures” with my old camera and vacation film wasn’t a challenge. 

We headed out to the pier because nothing says vacation like the beach, right? I love the top of these two photos above, but the beach photo was the one that let me know I’d bumbled right into completely nailing what I was after. That could have been taken in 1972. I am so happy.

This is also the first roll of color film I’ve ever developed myself, and it turned out great. I’ll write another blog about the process, but it wasn’t hard at all. And it gave me all of this!

I even tried a few portraits, because what are vacation photos without the people? Focusing the rangefinder close up is weird and takes a bit of time and practice. I’m finding that the exposure meter in the camera is pretty trustworthy, though. I couldn’t be happier with these photos of the lovely Miss Lisa (before and after her first post-plague haircut).

That top one really has me excited. The light coming in is great without blowing out and the out of focus background is just perfect. Managing to get the Petri 7S version with the 1.8 aperture lens is going to prove fortunate, I think. 

Over all, I’m super excited. This little camera will be just what I wanted and I think the Gold 200 will be perfect. I have a roll of Kodak’s more pro-grade color film in there now, so we’ll see how that turns out. It is supposed to give more realistic colors, but that isn’t what I’m looking for in every case. Figuring out which film is right for which project will be a fun experience.