Author Archives: stoatly

Polaroid Mailers & Misc. Inserts

Not really manuals, but interesting (to me at least) as historical information.

I got Land Camera 210 information when I picked up another 250 at a thrift store.

Thorough. A manual to tell you where to find your manual.

That’s a lot of patents on one of the simpler Land cameras.

A lot of old Polaroids come with cases and paperwork. The mailers for getting copies of your prints are interesting. I lined these up in what I think is chronological order based on the prices. I scanned the whole thing for the oldest one. In typical Edwin Land fashion, it is logical and well laid out.

Fold the sides & bottom, insert prints, & seal.

Visa was still “BankAmericard” & Mastercard was still “Master Charge”.

I guessed this one is later because B&W prints are $0.05 more.

The tidy package when it’s all folded up.

This is another example of how much thought went into this little mailer. You can see the instructions on the inside right below where someone would lick to seal the package, “Reminder – Tear off California address if you live closer to Massachusetts”. Both parts of the flap are gummed to seal the envelope. I made a GIF but decided it’s annoying.

Keep the flap and the California address shows.

Tear off the flap and it exposes the Cambridge address.

I may have 1 and 2 transposed. The kids seem like an older ad and the 1st one has a “new product” the “11 X 14 Custom Gallery”. It also makes sense that PS181S-2 comes before PS181-X. Now I’ve convinced myself that the 1st one should be in the middle. Oh well, I’m not going to rearrange everything now.

Pretty sure this is the newest. It has an effective date, prices are higher, and…

Polaroid is no longer paying the postage.

The outside of the 1974 mailer. Groovy.

I have no idea if Edwin Land had anything to do with the copy order mailers but it seems like the kind of thing he would obsess over until it was perfect.

Have a GIF. It is annoying. Muahahahaha!

52 Cameras: Canon Al-1 QF

The viewfinder graphics are a screen grab from the amazing Photography in Malaysia site.

Glittery ‘O’.

Goober contemplates the snow.

Second roll – expired Kodak T-MAX 400.

Radio Flyer.

Hank.

April.

St. Valentine’s Day bouquet.

52 Cameras: Yashica FR II

Fujifilm Fujichrome Provia 100F.

One of M’s pots.

Old timers tell me they used to be able to skate on the pond.

Hogging the bed.

Deflating balloon. Not all of the colors did this.

52 Cameras: Canon Sure Shot Ace

The “Phound Photos” post for this camera: http://exit272.com/?p=4897

This is what I meant in the video. Down low = “Hey, whatcha got?”

Ristra at the Santa Fe Convention Center.

Sculpture at the Santa Fe Convention Center.

Poor Jem with his eyes blown out by the flash.

Trip MD – Playing With GIMP Filters On A Ruined Roll

Kind of a long post so scroll down or go back if you get bored.

I mentioned the failed 1st roll (Alaris 200 color print film) in the Olympus Trip MD post. My C-41 developer was too old so most of the negatives came out really bad. The scanner has to boost the gain to get something and it introduces a lot of noise. Once I saw them, I didn’t really take care of them and they got dust and scratches. I scanned them any way but results were not pretty. While another roll was scanning, I played with some GIMP filters to kill time.

Peach tree.

Peach tree – edge detect filter.

Peach tree – neon filter. I can’t remember if neon was added to edge.

Most of the filters can be tuned so the effects aren’t so drastic but I was messing with scans I didn’t really care about any way.

Our friend’s horse. I seem to have gotten my shadow in a lot of these too.

Our friend’s horse – “old photo” filter.

Grass & Flower.

Grass & Flower – cropped to the grass.

These filtered versions of the grass aren’t really identifiable, but they came out kind of cool.

Grass – “circuit” filter.

Grass – “lava” filter.

Mean turkey and a rooster – a lousy image without the dev problem.

Mean turkey and a rooster – edge filter.

Propane tank, apple tree, & truck.

Propane tank, apple tree, & truck – “graphic pen” filter.

Dragon kite.

Dragon kite – cropped & neon filter.

And the best for last.

Trinity is not happy.

Trinity is not happy – cropped & neon filter.

Trinity is not happy – cropped & “little planet” filter.

GIMP has gotten really good. I can’t find the Photoshop Elements 8 installer I got with the Canon Scanner. I re-bought PSE (version 15) since Adobe doesn’t have installers going back that far, even if you have your serial number. I think it was installed on a drive I wiped without freeing up the license so I don’t know if it’s doable even if I find the disc. PSE 15 kind of sucks compared to the older version. I just have GIMP 2.10 on the laptop. The workflow is different but it easily rivals PSE now and maybe full Photoshop. I hate the software as a service model so even if I thought PS “Creative Cloud” was worth the extra money, I probably wouldn’t get it.

52 Cameras: Chinon SLR

Winter orange.

Storm blowing over the Truchas peaks.

52 Cameras: Olympus Trip MD

The site with the lens construction info:
http://www.optiksammlung.de/Olympus/TripMD.html

The manual is under Manuals & Ephemera.

I’ll do a separate post about the failed 1st roll. I ended up having some fun with it.

Jem – gray and orange always go together.

A new (to us) stray in the neighborhood. King Tux. Those are some honkin’ toe beans.

Central Ave. in Albuquerque.

Old firetrucks and wreckers.

I couldn’t decide so here’s a cropped version too.

In the above two images, I like the barbed wire and fence receding into the distance in the first one. I also like the focus on the vehicles in the second one.

I got up too late to get pristine snow but it’s still pretty.

Red picnic table at the Camel Rock Valero.

The background colors were “meh” and there were some weird red flares on the wall so I desaturated everything but the table.

52 Cameras: Nikon Coolpix L310

Nikon still has the manual here.

A photo that was on the SD card when I got the camera.

The previous owner had a lot of bird images.

I’ll do a separate “Phound Photos” post. The card had images from 14 Dec 2012 to 11 Jul 2013.

McPigeons in Bernalillo, NM.

Goober.

Storm over the Jemez Mountains.

Not a scene mode but it has settings for B&W, sepia, cyanotype, & vivid.

Doorbell & shadow.

A minor mod of a SodaStream® Jet

Update 20 Jan 2020:
I emailed SodaStream with two questions. I didn’t save the emails so I can’t quote exactly.

1) Where are the dishwasher safe bottles? If you searched, you got a hit for the bottles at the SodaStream site (they’ve fixed this for the US site, a UK hit still shows up). If you went to their site and browsed for them, there were no dishwasher safe bottles. They answered that they no longer make the bottles. Kudos for fixing the site and for responding honestly and quickly.

2) I asked them to improve the labeling. I don’t know if they will but they wrote that they wanted to keep their customers happy. They asked for my address and sent me two of the correct bottles for free. I didn’t even have to pay shipping.

I have no financial interest in SodaStream. I don’t hesitate to nuke companies when they treat me poorly so it’s only fair that I offer praise when I’m treated well.

Back story: I stopped drinking sweetened sodas a long time ago but I still polish off about a liter a day of plain or flavored/unsweetened fizz water. That adds up money-wise and worse, it’s a lot of plastic. Santa Fe has a decent recycling program but it’s at the mercy of the market and it only takes one lazy moron to contaminate the drop-off dumpster and divert a lot of material to the landfill. M had given me a SodaStream Jet a long time ago. I used it for a while, got lazy, and stopped using it. For the new year, I decided to find more ways to reduce my footprint and dug out the carbonator.

They’ve expanded the product line a lot and there is a bewildering array of options.

Compatibility matrix – I should have taken this to the store with me.

By mistake, I bought the 1L Slim instead of the 1L Classic bottles. For whatever liability reason, the bottles are not returnable. A 2-pack is $20. Buying (licensing actually) a new gas cartridge was another $30. If I bought another set of the right bottles, I’d be in for $70 and have 2 plastic bottles I don’t want or need.

Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be fiscally prudent.

In my defense, all the packaging just says “Carbonating Bottles”.

Have to read the fine print. Not that I remembered the model name any way.

Never shop without reading glasses.

The slim bottles are a little bit taller.

Maybe I can slip the bottle in from the bottom? Nope.

The threads are the same on the slim bottles so I just have to be able to get it into the machine. Enlarging the hole to insert the bottle through the bottom would mean removing a lot of plastic and the swing-out mechanism releases the pressure for unscrewing the bottle.

The bottle can fit, it just won’t swing in.

Measuring for the cuts.

I should have used the Dremel tool but I want my fizz NOW!

I used a coping saw for the vertical cuts, a razor knife to score, and pliers to snap off the plastic (it’s pretty soft). A little touch up with some 200 grit sandpaper and it fits.

With the spill catcher, it’s not even ugly. Obviously, have to take it off when filling.

Mmmm, fizz.

Figuring Out F-Stops – Olympus Trip MD

Like the Konica Tomato/Pop-10, the brightest f-stop is the only one given in the manufacturer’s literature. Unlike the Tomato, I couldn’t find information on line so I had to do it myself.

If you don’t care how I arrived at these values and trust a random web page, here’s a table:

ISO	Flash	F-Stop
100	yes	4
100	no	8
200	yes	5.6
200	no	11
400	yes	8
400	no	16
1000	yes	11
1000	no	22

These values are rounded to the nearest whole stop. YMMV. Not responsible for ruined shots, hives, divorce, or any negative outcome resulting from the use of this information.

The camera is dark gray or black but the LED lights made it look blue.

Trusting that 35mm really is the focal length and f/4 really is the brightest f-stop:
35mm / 4 = 8.75mm diameter with the lens wide open.

You only get F4 at ISO 100 and the flash popped up.

The area is what’s important for exposure. Focal length/diameter=f-stop only holds for circular apertures. For most, I treated the shapes like diamonds and used (b x h)/2 for the area. To keep things simple, I cropped in to the edge of the lens and then resized to 875 pixels so 100 pixels is one millimeter. Once I had an approximate area, I used the equivalent circle area to get a diameter. SensorsOne has a great calculator so I could just plug in the area instead of using a calculator and working backwards from area=π r² every time.

ISO 200 with the flash came out to about f5 so I rounded it to the nearest full stop at f5.6

ISO 100 w/o flash & ISO 400 with flash are ~ f8 (7.2 calc’d).

ISO 200 w/o flash & ISO 1000 with flash are ~ f11 (10.3 calc’d).

The last one was still approximated to a diamond but I had to be more accurate as the apertures got smaller.

At ISO 400 & no flash, the shape got less diamond-like so 2 circles and 2 squares give f14.

ISO 1000 w/o flash is a pill shape so a circle cut in 1/2 and a small rectangle approximate the area for f18.

Exit 272

Humor, art, photography, and random things I find interesting.