Monday, January 30, 2006

B&W Macro



Saturday, January 28, 2006

Winter Color




Friday, January 27, 2006

My Babies!



Thursday, January 26, 2006

Pentax super Takumar fever update

I finally got my Pentax SV camera and a 135mm Super Takumar lens to go with it. The camera feels like the old Pentaxs' I had back in the day. This particular camera doesn't have a light meter so all exposures were done using the sunny-16 rule. The only thing I didn't like was the sound of the mirror slap. I almost jumped the first time it slapped up then down. I thought something was wrong, but after running a short roll of test shots through the camera, I think it is just the way the older beasts were made. These are a few shots from the first test roll.


This is my niece that happened to be over when I was testing the lens. She is quite the Diva and runs the household with an iron fist. Her older brother does just about whatever he is told to do.


I asked her to give me the mean face she uses with her brother--pretty mean. I like the photo, but wish that the flair wasn't there. I will have to watch that with these older lenses. They are multi-coated but still seem to have a tendancy to flair.


I have been waxing philosophical lately and when I saw this sign, I thought that this was a sign. You know, like a sign, foretelling, etc. This is life. Corny I know, but true.


Granite sculpture on-campus here.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Pinhole




I tried another experiment with the Kiev 88 this weekend and the results were a little less than desireable. I was shooting almost directly into the sun, trying to get a landscape shot. There was way too much flair. I will try again soon.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515

These were taken by my Zeiss Nettar 515 120 rollfilm camera. This is a very well built folding camera. The machining on this camera is light years ahead of the Viking but so was the price. The Nettar shoots a 6x6 negative while the Viking a 6x9. The glass on the Nettar is far superior.



Monday, January 23, 2006

Viking camera

These are a couple of more photos from the Viking folding camera that I spoke of earlier. I will post a picture of the camera itself soon.




Sunday, January 22, 2006

Update

Earlier I asked for feedback on the format of the blog and I got a reply by Jeremy. Apparently the initial pageload was quite large and slow so I changed the startup page to show only three days worth of posts rather than seven. Let me know what you think. Feedback is always welcome. Click on images for larger view.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Kiev pinhole


As some of you know, I have a kiev 88 in need of repair. It turns out that the metal shutter curtains weren't working correctly and the speed could not be changed. During repair, I got a little excited, got on e-bay, bought another body and tore out the shutter curtains on this body with some needle nose pliars. That's what happens when no one wants to help repair my cameras.

Anyway, I took the lens and screwed a filter into it that held a piece of aluminum foil that had a pinhole. To get the pinhole, I attached two wires to a 9v battery and alligator clipped one end to the foil and wrapped the other end around a stick pin. I then touched the end of the pin to the center of the foil and it burned a hole through the foil. It needed to be a bit bigger, but it is pretty clean. Just be careful because the foil gets hot and the battery gets hot as well. You just don't want the battery to blow so touch it for a second then let up and do it again.




Dang scratch on the negative. Nice roses though.


Pinhole self-portrait.



Friday, January 20, 2006

Viking

These are from an Ansco Viking 6x9 folding camera that I bought off of e-bay. I think the camera was $10 plus five for shipping. I needed to clean the camera, including the shutter and re-calibrate the lens. I used wax paper rolled onto two 120 format film cartidges to re set infinity because I didn't have ground glass at the time. This photo was from a trip we took to the Oregon Coast this summer. The weather was crummy and the light was bad but we had a good time eating fish, Tillamook ice cream, and saltwater taffy. The plane is atually huge--a person would barely be able to reach the belly of the plane. This will easily print 11x14 and could probably go bigger. The large size of negative is great. Now you know why I want an 8x10 view camera.




1 to 1 crop of above image.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Holga

I just got a brand new Holga camera and thought I would post some pics. The holga cameras have a cult following simply because they are so bad. They are all plastic, cheap, medium format cameras that produce notoriously bad and unforseen results. Even the lenses are plastic. Perfect for serious art. Actually there have been art galleries full of Holga images. I might try to teach a Holga photography class at the university to unsuspecting students. :) The reason I suspect that they are so popular is that newer modern cameras coupled with photoshop make fantastically sharp images that, after awhile, look all the same. Most people can make high quality images with todays cameras and this produces complete boredom. Look in any ten magazines today and you will see what I mean. No fear of taking sharp images with the Holga. Every image is unique and wonderfully different. Can you tell which one was not taken by the Holga?







Old Zeca camera and most fabulous shot

This is another flower pic from a friend of mine at nelsonfoto. He goes by P C Headland there and at photo.net. The camera pictured is a 9x12 1937 Zeh Zeca plate camera. Amazing what those old cameras can do. Who needs digital?


Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Mike Kovacs Link

This link is discussion on photo.net about the camera and process used take the tulip shot. There are other shots with this camera as well.

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00C3LA&tag=

Tulip


This is from a friend of mine, Mike Kovacs. The image was produced using an ancient Voigtlander Avus 9x12, Skopar 135/4.5, and Efke 100 film developed in Kodak HC110. Image posted with his permission. Now I really want a large format camera.

I have had this camera sitting around the house for about four years now that was left by the previous owners. It has a case that says Minolta, but didn't feel that substantial so I put it in a corner and sort of forgot about it. Yesterday as I was cleaning up, I stumbled upon this camera again and decided to open up the case. What did I find?--An all black Minolta 7 SII. Very cool find you say. Well yes, but....there is a problem with the lens. The shutter speed dial does not change. I put a battery 1.35 v hearing aid battery, not knowing what battery it takes, and loaded up a roll of film after being inspired by Craig at photo.net and his minolta succeses. The exposure was a bit off but the meter worked fine and in fully automatic mode, was capable of taking pictures. This is a very fine camera indeed with a better lens than my Canon QL17, IMHO. The shutter turned out fire around 1/30 or so. I took some shots that turned out fine, as long as no one was moving. These ended up being blurry. I love the camera so far, especially the sharpness of the lens, but I am not sure if I should send it off for repair, or just buy another one. The problem is that I looked on e-bay and couldn't find this particular model. There are others but not the all black version for sale. I might just have to have a full stable of these.






This negative was scanned in backwards. Did you notice the chains on the bikes? I would never have noticed this but someone did. He called me on it, and I feel ashamed. Not really, but I do think he has more time on his hands than I do. I really should get it right. Thanks for looking.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Don't forget to add me to favorites

If you happen to come from photoblogs.org, please don't forget to add me to your favorites list. if you would like me to add yours, let me know. It only takes a few seconds. Thank you.

Format?

I have been looking at various blog formats lately, including the one photo per page and the format that I use now. I prefer this format because I like to talk about photography as much as I like to take photos. I notice, however, that the pages most likely marked as favorites are those that use the one photo per day format. Any ideas? I want to keep this somewhat alive and vibrant so that people can come back to it and so it doesn't die. I feel pretty good that I have had around 400 hits now, 395 of those were me checking to see if anyone is reading, but I certainly want the momentum to continue. Wish my blog luck!!

Monday, January 16, 2006

Two new pinhole images



These are from the same camera but I used 35mm film this time to save a bit of cash. I overexpesed/underexposed again--need to work on it. The dang thing is very wide angle so I think that I will cut down the sides so that it will be less of a wide angle. These are of the back of my house and the camera is sitting only about five feet from the house. I need to keep working on exposure.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Pinhole--First one in a long time

I have had this idea for a while now to make a Pinhole camera. I made one a few hundred (read 16) years ago for a college photography class I was taking at the time. I have been inspired to make another since then by all you who post here. I started this before the holiday season, but about then we got a call that we had been chosen to adopt our little girl. Photography got put on the back burner. I decided to stick with the holiday theme and came up with this.


I got to eat the Danish cookies first which is always a good thing for me. The dang thing is around 10" across and three and a half inches thick and would not fit in my changing bag.


This is the shutter that I themed around one of my all time favorite holday beverages. The pinhole is in the O on the Coke. I made the hole using a stick pin and sanding the back. Since the cookie tin is actually steel, I used a refrigerator magnet as the shutter.


This is the film holder. I used cardboard to build up the side to an inch thick and it curves back to nothing in the middle. A piece of 120 negative the length of two negatives from my Ansco Viking fits in the holder. I filed a groove in the top of the lid so I would know which side is the top. It was about this time that I relaized the d*&n thing wouldn't fit in my changing bag. I headed to a dark spot in my house and dove into the middle of a sleeping bag. I had my head facing the foot of the bag and had my son throw a couple of blankets on top to make sure that everything was very dark. I opened up a roll of 120 film and started measuring lengths. I used a piece of wood cut to length that I could use by feel. it was about this time that I started swearing because the film was curled TIGHT. I had to fight to get it in the film holder. I have to confess that I said some things I should not have during this time. I finally got the film in after sweating all over it and getting prints on the film. A sleeping bag and two or three blankets get warm pretty quick.

This is the first attempt. Notice scratches and fingerprints?

This is the second image I took from the same spot. This is my backyard. Obviously I didn't get the lid put on in the straight up position, but I was going to adhere a spirit level on it but I figured that this level of technology, coupled with the fancy cardboard film holder and new shutter, would have Leica and some of the other big boys breathing down my neck. I don't want fame and fortune to ruin my hobby so I left it as-is. I will be much more particular next time.