Author Archives: stoatly

52 Cameras: # 136 — Ricoh 500G

It’s been a while. Life gets busy sometimes.

Another car in Silverton, CO.

Love those old fish mouth Buicks.

Near our campsite at Little Molas Lake.

The workout from hell — hiking up scree.

52 Cameras: # 135 — Meikai EL

I’ll post more later — the images take a bit of effort because of the funky film.

Zoe in her favorite spot.

He sticks the landing! The crows goes wild!

12 July 2017 — SUPPORT NET NEUTRALITY

Without net neutrality, a manky little blog like mine won’t even be in the slow lane — I’ll be crawling along the ditch on the side of the road.

Send the FCC a letter via Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The deadline for comment is 17 July 2017. FCC notice here (PDF).

A funny site that explains the issue pretty well. They also have a link to the express comments form at the FCC.

Do you want to see ads from cable companies or Trinity?

52 Cameras: # 134 — Polaroid Sun 600 LMS

Scanned on a CanoScan 9000f at 600DPI. These are resized to 1024 pixels on the short side.
The first two are also in the video. There are 8 frames in a pack of Impossible film — it’s not like I have 36 images to choose from, plus, I really like them.

Zoe. No idea why it happened but I love the colors on the white walls.

Most RVs run the gamut from butt-ugly to “meh”. Airstreams are cool.

This is a lame picture but it’s the result of an experiment so I included it. I used a telephoto adapter for a Canon AF35ML/Super Sure Shot/Autoboy Super (which sadly, I don’t have working yet). I framed using the adapter lens held over the viewfinder lens and then moved it over the taking lens. I was a little sloppy with the framing (no tripod) and got my finger in the picture but it works! That means I can use an even longer telephoto, a wide angle, or even a fish-eye adapter. I do need to adjust for the loss of light next time — there ain’t no free lunch.

There’s a hummingbird in there somewhere.

Another developer-didn’t-quite-reach splat. Still, not bad for film that’s been expired for 2 years.

My sweeties, chillin’ on the couch.

Just after sunset using flash override. Highlighting the foliage in the foreground would’ve looked weird.

My other swwetie, Trinity. She has a 6th sense like Zoe, and starts moving when a shutter fires.

Last frame in the pack — walking into the sun on our street.

Update 9 July 2017: One camera is for sale. $45.00 shipping included. I’m keeping the other one for film experiments.
Includes camera, original strap, and case.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/527824466/1983-polaroid-sun-600-lms-shipping

A sexy little beast.

Frog tongue.

Nice clean film chamber and rollers.

Original case.

Detail of the strange override button.

52 Cameras: # 133 — Sears FF35 Motor Drive

Some color correction from the old film — this camera got the other half of the 1997 Fuji 400 roll.
I hope I can fix/remove the weird drips. I like a couple of the images enough to try with swabs and distilled water.

Wisteria in Santa Fe

Cool stump in the yard.

Pizza piñata — what’s not to love?

My sweetie lurking at the top of the stairs.

This guy decided to shoot with cameras he could get for 99P (under a pound UK) and the Halina Speedy 33 was his first project camera: https://austerityphoto.co.uk/halina-speedy-33-poundland-camera-no-1/

The Owner’s Manual is posted on the Manuals page.

52 Cameras: # 132 — Olympus Infinity Zoom 2000

I did a LOT of color correction on these. The film in the camera in the video is not what I used — that’s a bad roll of Polaroid I use to test film transport, etc. The images are Fuji ISO 400, expired in April of 1997 and it shows. Really grainy and it has a bluish tint almost like expired slide film. I processed this at home (Unicolor C-41 kit) so temperature variation might be part of it. It’s not the camera’s fault.

Cropped pretty far into this so it’s extra grainy. A truck pulled up right when I pressed the shutter.

Another random cat.

The Koni-Omega. A project camera taking a picture of a project camera…

A cool cat scarf M picked up at a pop-up store in Santa Fe.

Jem is so chill.

Dried up roses. I got a lot of mileage out of these flowers as a subject.

52 Cameras: # 131 — Nikon Action Touch

While editing the video, I thought of a way to do exposure compensation. The lens is smaller than the glass covering and well above the CdS sensor. A bit of neutral density filter material over the sensor but not the lens and it’ll over-expose. Over the lens but not the sensor will underexpose. I have some 3-stop from using Instax in pack film Polaroids…

The film is Fuji 200 i got with a camera lot from a Craigslist ad. It was in his garage and I have no idea how old it is. Pretty grainy so I did some noise reduction and minor tone tweaks. Processed and scanned by Gold One Hour Photo in Los Angeles, CA.

Eastern side of the Salton Sea.

There were some other tracks but not many.

Lattice above a picnic table — now a good 1/2 mile from the sea.

Salton City on the west side of the sea.

Looking down the coast from Salton City.

52 Cameras: # 130 — Bell & Howell 414PD 8mm Movie Camera

The film in the video was shot last year. We went back to the Salton Sea again this year and I shot with a couple of still cameras I’ll review shortly.

The film page at Spectra Film & Video shows what they currently have. I got two rolls of the Agfachrome 200D with processing before it sold out and it worked well and the processing was really well done.

Spectra’s telecine can seem pricey but after working on two 8mm projectors and an editor just to be able to look at the film, it’s feeling cheaper and cheaper: Shooting video of the projection looks awful. Neither scanner is suited to a reel of film of any size. Kludging a slide duplicator is a possibility but that’s going to take forever to shoot frame by frame.

I have 3 or 4 other cameras, a mix of 8mm and Super-8, plus a bunch of found 16mm reels, so I have to decide whether to: A) farm it out, B) buy something, or C) make something.

A has the advantages that I don’t have even more clutter, I don’t put in a bunch of time, it’s done by professionals, and I only spend the money when I have something. But, it’s expensive.

B is a one-time investment, but it’s time consuming, good telecine gear is also expensive & I don’t want to do conversions for others for it to pay for itself. And more stuff to store.

C is cheaper in money but time consuming to design and make it. A good design could be set it and forget it once it’s built. I love a challenging project but I have several in line ahead of it.

Probably A or C or a mix of A and C. I’ll let you know.

52 Cameras: # 129 — Pinhole cameras WPPD 2017

Links mentioned in the video:

Drill Your Own Precision Pinhole Apertures

http://www.mrpinhole.com
http://pinholeday.org

I like to show different images here but I was processing as we went to check exposure so we only got 3 from the paint can camera.

A chart from Mr. Pinhole showed 2.5 minutes. My meter app showed 1.5. We split the difference at 2 minutes and ended up overexposed. It was bright out.

I tweaked the levels a little bit.

I backed off the exposure time for this one.

You can’t see the close-focus distortion from the curved plane in the video.

Poeh Cultural Center

The scanner at work, a Canon print/scan/fax thing, was giving me bad reflections from the clear plastic on the Instax frames so i had to adjust. They’re underexposed to start with — f/256 is pretty dim.