Notes From The Top Left Corner

I read the date as 1978, Wes, but the previous owner of the camera has said that the holiday was 1973.
I love the composition of the one with the 3 gondolas heading for the same spot near the corner of the building - it's perfect, to my eye.

 

I'll show some more.
I love this one of a street artist showing his work to the tourists.



I love this one too.



I contacted the gent who donated the cameras and told him that I had developed the film and would love for him to be able to see the photos after all these years.

"The two girls on the bumper cars are my daughters. The younger one, Fiona, had her 5th birthday while we had our caravan at Lido di Jesolo from where we had a day in Venice. So the elder daughter, Janet, was 7 and the year was 1973.

"Venice wasn't planned. Our destination had been Austria, via the Schwälderhochstraße, but Austria was just continuous rain and we heard it was hot in the Dolomites so we went, and after a few days realised we were only a hundred miles from the coast so off we went again".



"In the lake and mountain picture, which would be in either Bavaria or the Dolomites, in the bottom right hand corner, the left hand two of the 3 children are Janet and Fiona, and I've no idea who the others are. The car isn't mine as I had a Volvo 144 at the time and it had a proper boot, not a hatchback".

 

A few more photos from the streets over the last couple of weeks to add to the ones that I've given their dedicated threads.




Whatever You Do, Don't Look at Him!



Go!

 

The Goodies spring to mind for some reason!

Love that bike seat / window shot. And the following one is very effective too. The brollies are great as well. Love that you can see no faces.

 

The Goodies were certainly on my mind, Pete.
I was very pleased with the bike seat window shot, even though glass does seem to be featuring more and more in my work lately.

 

Well, after about 5 rolls of film and over 18 months after I thought I had this camera working properly, I've finally got the last of the light leaks sorted out. I took it out yesterday with 2 rolls of sorely expired HP5, one which had been stored with some care by a retired professional photographer I know. The other roll has been kept in perhaps the most questionable manner possible. I don't even know how old either of them were, but probably both from the early nineties.
So, this was a soak test of sorts - shoot 2 rolls come hell or high water.
I got high water, because it was slinging it down with rain yesterday!

 

I pushed both rolls to ISO1600, because I wanted to use zone focusing. That meant I was able to stay at around f/8 or 11 for most of the day. I had to resort to f/5.6 for one or two really dark places but shutter speeds never strayed from 1.125 and 1/250th. No sign of a light leak over either roll.

 

I have to say that I do like this little Yashica FX-3, despite its humble budget consumer origins. It's fully manual, with no pretensions of automation, except for a simple light meter. It is small and light and their abundance makes them cheap, verging on nearly disposable. I have a single 50mm prime in Yashica / Contax mount, but I also have Adaptall adapters, which open up a whole slew of options for me, since I own lenses ranging from 17mm to 250mm which will work nicely on it. The above shot was taken with my Adaptall 28mm f/2.8, which I love but rarely use. I have also snagged an M42 adapter which opens up another massive range of options from my collection. It's quite funny to reflect on the fact that the camera was so cheap that it cost less than one lens adapter, yet the results I am getting from it are as good as any of my other 35mm slr cameras.

 

A few days away in the Borders, I spent the day yesterday mooching about in the woods close to Duns castle, about 15 miles from Berwick. A bit of autumnal juiciness. The lake in the photo is called Hens Poo (not chicken shit).

 

I see a face in the orangey coloured tree there!

 

Looks a bit like Rob.

 

Great photo Chris, I see the face! The colours are particularly rich, what was this shot with?

 

It was the 5D and 85mm, Wes.

 

There has been a lot of experimentation going on here over the last few weeks. Mostly related to using films at high-ish ISO ratings, in order to allow me to use zone focussing in the dull Lancashire winter light.
I've taken ORWO UN54 (a 100 rated film) and Ilford FP4 (125) up to 1600. I also took HP5 and Delta 400 up to 1600.

Another source of fun has been to use 35mm film in a Zeiss Netter folder, designed for 120 film, giving 60mm wide frames. I think this little camera is great as it is, but I like to fool around with stuff, so I gave it a go. Framing and getting the correct spacing for the photos has been a challenge, but not insurmountable.

Zeiss Nettar folder



Most folks buy little adapters to get the 35mm cassette to stay in one place and feed across to the take up spool. The problem with this, I thought, is that if you are out and want to put another roll in after you finish the first one, you are going to need to have remembered to bring a dark bag with you. So I thought it might be a nifty trick to get two sets of adapters and tape the leader of the film onto the tail end of a used film cassette to replace the take-up spool, so winding the film into a light tight box as it is used. Green adapters went on the unexposed film side and red ones on the exposed side.


Nettar Loaded



Taking part in an evening event with the local photo society gave me an ideal opportunity to try hand holding for 10 second exposures, while people fooled around with sparky, shiny stuff.







I am getting about 19 exposures on a 36 exp. roll.
The next experiment will be to try the same trick with the Ensign Selfix folder which will allow me to do 90mm wide frames.

 

Nice idea on the adapters. I guess you just have to estimate the number of turns when advancing the film. Trial and error.

 

Actually, Brian, I was slightly more careful than to use trial and error (but only a little!) I just counted the sprocket holes across the film plane and added a couple for each side. Advancing that number of holes needed two turns of the advance knob at the start of the film. I did that with a dud film, so I was able to wind it on to somewhere around the middle of the roll, where I found that it takes one and a half turns. Towards the end it needed about one and a quarter.

 

Sounds like trial with maybe not so much error. Well done.

 

I sold my old Canon dslr last week, a 50D, with which I've taken some of my favourite photos. It made me think about all of the manual lenses that I have which can't be used on my current full frame 5D because of the potential for a clash of the mirror at infinity focus. Now, that's a terrible waste, because I do love a lot of them and tend not to use many of them for digital shooting at all nowadays, as my other digital camera has that great Sigma 30mm f/1.4 mounted as an almost permanent feature.

I felt that this problem had to be remedied, so I dusted off the old Canon 20D that hasn't been out of its box for years, and strapped on something appropriate. Reacquainting myself with its features, I noted several things missing which I have become used to having.
A decent sized screen
Mirror lock up buried deep in the menus
No live view
No ISO setting displayed without deliberately calling it up

I guess most people would bemoan the lack of megapixels, but I'm comfortable with that - no problem there.

My first foray with it was a shot I've been meaning to take for quite a while now. I actually ended up taking two 20 second exposures and stitching them together.



Castle Park, Lancaster.
Canon EOS 20D,
Pentacon 30mm f/3.5 at f/11,
2x 20 sec. exp.

 

I loved the constraint of it all!
I'll be going back with some film.