Articles Written By: Bubble Level

View From The Window

View
Nikon D300, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6

On August 19, 1839, the French government announced the invention of photography as a gift “Free to the World”.  That was the year that Louis Daguerre created the Daguerreotype process and competitor William Fox Talbot created the Calotype process.

It seems there is some debate who deserves recognition for creating the first practical photographic process.  But I am personally fascinated more by the first successful permanent photograph View from the Window at Le Gras by Nicéphore Niépce taken 13 years earlier in 1826.

Inspired by the newly-invented art of lithography, Niépce created a light-sensitive varnish made of a petroleum derivative.  He applied it to a polished pewter plate, placed it behind his camera obscura, and pointed it all out the window of his country house.

Eight hours later his exposure was finished, and after washing the plate in order to remove the exposed varnish (and reveal the shiny pewter behind) the photograph was complete.  A fascinating side effect was that opposing buildings are evenly lit due to the sun traveling across the sky during the lengthy exposure.

So happy World Photography Day to you all!  And bonus brownie points for the commenter that can identify the location of the window I captured in the image above.

Black And White Reversal

BWReversal
Nikon FA, Zoom-Nikkor 80-200mm f/4.5, deep red filter, Ilford HP5 Plus via dr5 process

Wow, I am seriously impressed with dr5 lab!  I sent them a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus traditional black and white film to be processed into slides and love the results.

Normally black and white film is processed into negatives which can then be printed using traditional photo paper or scanned and turned into a positive image by your computer.  But the dr5 proprietary development process turns the black and white film into a positive image slide just like true (color) reversal film.

They claim that this is superior when your intention is to scan the film and post-process it digitally, and so far I can’t argue against them.  The scan results from their slides are far cleaner (fewer scratches/blemishes) than I am used to and seem to have excellent detail, contrast and dynamic range compared to working with a strip of negative film.

And I have to say the slides also look gorgeous in real life on my light box.  It makes me want to pull the projector and screen out for a good old fashioned slide show.

Maybe I will do just that next time my in-laws visit.  I will see if I can get my mother-in-law to fall asleep during the show just like the good old times…

Put Your Hands In The Air

  HandsInAir

Petri 7S, Kodak Gold 400

The above shot is from that test roll of film I put through my recently repaired Petri 7S rangefinder.

Our boys were amazed when we removed the hard top from our Jeep Wrangler this summer.  We got them sunglasses and don’t take them out when it is too chilly or sunny, but they demand to ride in it every time we leave the house no matter the weather.

I received that roll of zoo shots back from the dr5 lab which processes traditional black & white negative film into black & white positive slides.  I have to say at first glance via loupe they look amazing with great detail and contrast.  This has moved up the queue to be the next roll I scan.

Rest assured I will use my trusty Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 rather than a gimmick like this one.

Spinning Light

SpinningLight
Nikon D300, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6, @ f/4.5 and 2.4 second exposure

The lovely model in the above shot is my Dear Sweet Wife who is known to be an avid spinner of a different kind.  Our almost-three-year-old son is pretending to be Darth Vader in the background, waving his glow stick around (amazing entertainment value with young kids) saying things like “I am your father!” while making wheezing noises.

We spent a long weekend in Cayucos, CA as our end-of-summer beach vacation.  You may think that summer is just getting started, but according to our local school district it is almost over seeing as the school year starts next Monday.

The weather was a bit cold and the water even colder, but good time was had by all (us, kids, Grandparents, Aunt & Uncle, and cousins).  We got our kite flying, sand castling, boogie boarding, and seafood eating in spades.

Our culinary discovery of the trip was Taco Temple in nearby Morro Bay.  The home-made chips and salsa almost filled us up before the meal even came, my wife’s single “taco” dish of halibut was enormous as was my chicken-bacon chimichanga, and the chocolate-covered bread pudding was to die for.  (Burp!)

I had my big camera bag and tripod with me with serious intent to do some landscape photography for the first time in a long time.  It felt great just having it all in the trunk, although the weather barely accommodated one sunset outing in which I shot 24 exposures of Velvia 100 with my Nikon FA.

The sun was almost a no-show due to fog, but I managed to get some shots of the distant Morrow Rock as well as the local pier using wake-boarders, birds, or joggers to add some foreground interest.  Now I just need to come up with something creative to finish off the roll…

We Have A Winner

WeHaveAWinnder
Nikon F100, Nikkor AF-D 50mm f/1.8m, Fuji Velvia 50

Congratulations to the winner of our first joint Sunny Sixteen/Quilt Otaku blog giveway: Zizophora!

You will be sent your prize soon, a copy of Cotton Time issue #82.  Please just send your name and shipping address to Marisa of Quilt Otaku (e-mail: quilt [dot] baby [at] hotmail [dot ] com) and it will be on its way.

By the way the above image is a photo I took a few years back at one of the historic dairy farms located inside Tomales Bay State Park about an hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This one is not operating any more (although most there are).  You can walk around the grounds and easily practice using selective focus with a wide open aperture as I did here.

Jamestown 2006

Jamestown
Nikon F100, Nikkor 28-105mm AF, Ilford HP5 Plus

I recently developed a roll of film which had been long lost.  Well, not exactly lost but merely relegated to the dusty deep confines of my desk for about 5 years.

Back in 2006 when our first son was not yet a year old we made a day trip to historic Jamestown, California.  We also visited the nearby Railtown which contained some historic rolling stock such as the above locomotive.  I shot a roll of B&W film which seemed appropriate given the western, gold-rush and steam train subject matter.

I distinctly recall having to coax and cajole our baby to drink his warm bottle of milk during lunch time.  Nowadays we have to coax and cajole him into eating his chicken or vegetables.  The more things change, the more they stay the same!

This Here Giraffe

Giraffe
Canon S90

Which of these is false?:

  1. Flamingos can stand an hour straight on a single leg
  2. Apes have tails and Monkeys do not
  3. Sun bears like to eat corn cobs

If you had spent the day at the Oakland Zoo like we did then perhaps you would know!  My Dear Sweet Wife spent the afternoon teaching quilting at A Verb for Keeping Warm, during which time the boys and I visited the African savannah, rain forest and other exotic locations without ever leaving the bay area.

I used this opportunity to put a second roll of film through my Nikon FA.  Now that I have worked with the FA a bit more I am beginning to appreciate its strengths and understand its weaknesses.

Its Program-automatic and Shutter-priority modes worked very well.  In Shutter-priority it was smart enough to override my chosen shutter speed (usually the slowest I could stand for hand holding shots) down when the available light wasn’t sufficient, indicating so in the finder display (so I knew to brace my camera against a railing to avoid blur).

However, its meter display in fully Manual exposure mode (when choosing aperture and shutter speed myself) left a lot to be desired.  It merely displays “+” or “-” signs and gives no relative indication of how far off you are from the correct exposure like many other cameras do.

The biggest usability snag I encountered was that in Program-automatic and Shutter-Priority modes you need to leave the lens’ aperture ring at the smallest setting such as f/32.  But when switching between Aperture-priority and the other modes I would often forget to move it back leading to an exposure error message in the viewfinder.

I may have more to say after I get the film back from the lab.  I plan to test the .dr5 lab service to product B&W positive slides from this roll.

And by-the-way, I mixed up the primates above.  If you see a tail, you know you have a monkey on your hands!

Matching Monsters

MatchingMonsters
Petri 7S, Kodak Gold 400

Welcome to my first blog give away, in partnership with Quilt Otaku!  To enter the contest merely comment on this post by August 3rd 2011 midnight PST, and for more details see here.

By the way, the above are examples of the Daphne and Delilah Momma and Baby Monster knitting pattern.  The yellow/green one was made by our friend So Sue for our younger son and the blue/red by my dear sweet wife for our older.

(Don’t tell them that our sons call the larger dolls “Daddy”!)

And now back to our regularly scheduled photography material…  I’m happy to report that the Petri 7S rangefinder camera is working well!

I ran one of my random junk rolls through it for test purposes, this one happened to be Kodak Gold 400.  I got it back from my nearby pharmacy hours later and all the shots came out OK.  (“Is this camera working?” shots are about all I trust to Kodak Gold and Walgreens…)

For the most part I exposed based on the Petri’s around-the-lens selenium cell ring which seemed to be metering accurately.  The above shot was an exception which I metered using my trusty Gossen Digisix.

It was taken inside with filtered light from a partially drawn curtain which was just below the sensitivity of the camera’s meter.  I wanted to test the camera’s capabilities, and this lighting called for a fully open aperture of f/1.8 at 1/60 second shutter speed.  Daylight shots at f/16 and 1/500 second came out just as well.

The shutter release and film advance worked just fine, no hint of the issue I resolved in the last post.

The only problems were that the film counter only caught about every fifth frame (by the time I was done with the 24-exposure roll it only read “5”) and the film rewind crank kept popping out as I moved the camera around.  Neither issue was a showstopper, although the “click clack” of the crank didn’t make for a silent experience.

I still have to test the Canon IV-S with the patched shutter, not to mention get even more familiar with my Nikon FA and Petri 7S.

Rangefinder Repair

rr-a

Nikon D300, Micro Nikkor AF-D 105mm F.2.8

I had two fixer-upper projects sitting on the back-burner for a while that I’m happy to say I made progress on this weekend.

My Dad gave me a 1952 Canon IV-S rangefinder a while back which was in decent operating state except for having a hole burned into its shutter curtain.  This is a common affliction in Leicas and other classic rangefinders with cloth shutters, as the lens can easily act as a magnifying glass when sunlight shines directly into it.

Feeling a bit intimidated by the very old-school IV-S, I had purchased a 1963 Petri 7S off eBay at a bargain price (under $20) in order to ease my way into rangefinder shooting.  But despite the description reading “camera operates fine” I discovered the film advance lever was stuck.

rr-bI tackled the Petri first, having found a clue online to check the springs underneath the bottom plate.  However, the screws holding the plate on were stuck and wouldn’t budge at all.

I purchased a can of Kano Kroil “The Oil That Creeps” which is supposed to be better than the average penetrating oil, and it did the trick nicely.  After leaving a drop sitting on the upside-down screws for a minute I wiped them off and the screws came right out.

rr-cWhen I first received the 7S the shutter fired for me once, but then when I tried the lever it barely moved. It was somehow obstructed and I couldn’t advance or cock the shutter again.

With the bottom plate removed the problem was obvious:  the gear on the bottom of the advance “axle” had a peg which was hitting a small plate in the corner preventing it from rotating clockwise.

rr-dFor a minute or so I puzzled through why the plate was stuck in the wrong place.  But then I literally hit on the right solution when I pushed the long arm located to its right towards the plate.

It was a temporary “stuckness” and the arm and plate moved a few millimeters to the left, freeing the advance gear and lever to… well, advance!  Perhaps I will need to grease some parts later, but I have cycled the shutter and advance many times since.

rr-eEmboldened by this feat of skill (er… ok, good luck) I proceeded to the Canon.  Looking in through the lens mount into its shutter crate it seemed pretty obvious to me where the light leak was coming from.

The left shutter (in place after an exposure) looked practically brand new.  But the right shutter (in place when cocked) had an obvious hole in addition to a previous patch attempt with black fabric paint by my Dad.

rr-fHe had encouraged me to try patching it again when he gave me the camera, but I read on the above referenced Leica forum that Star Brite Liquid Electrical Tape was the way to go.

I gave the can a good shaking, opened it up, and then applied some over the hole and a few other places for good measure using a fine artist paint brush.  The shutter sat exposed on my desk overnight to ensure it was fully dried, and when I tried it just now it seemed to be working smoothly.

Well, I guess I have two more rangefinders to play with and test out.  I will report back on that later.

Back To The Future

Exploratorium
Nikomat FTN, Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5, Nikon Y44 light yellow filter, Ilford HP5 Plus

My Uncle was asking a while back if I had heard about the Fujifilm FinePix X100.  It is perhaps the spearhead of a recent resurgence of “retro” styled digital cameras.  Of course, Leica has never strayed from their design aesthetic as well as traditional function with their digital cameras.  But the X100 does not require you to take out a second mortgage on your home to afford it so we may see more mid-range photo enthusiast pick it up, or the Olympus PEN EP-3 or rumored retro Canon PowerShot.

Is there a resurgence in classic camera interest behind these releases?  Are the camera manufacturers trying to appeal to those of us still clinging on to our film cameras?

I have to admit all of the above mentioned cameras have some appeal to me, despite some of their claims seeming false.  (The X100 is referred to as a “rangefinder” even though the focus-assist is digital, as is its manual focus control which has no mechanical linkage to the lens.)

My Uncle also pointed out an interesting opinion article by Froma Harrop where she speaks of this trend away from the high-tech and towards the high-hip and high-touch.  It really hit home with me, as I personally feel the exact sentiment she makes reference to about needing to escape high-tech.

I work with a computer all day, use a smart phone for all sorts of tasks, and am constantly swapping out my digital gear year-after year.  When I want to have fun with photography I get a big kick out of using a 40 year old camera which still works pretty much as good as the day it was made to take shots like the above.

But don’t worry, I am not crazy enough to try sticking my beloved manual Nikkors onto my phone using this abomination just to get better looking Hipstamatic shots.  (Thanks for that lead, Sharon.)  I may live in both high-tech and old-school worlds, but I don’t plan on mixing them up quite like that!