The short and long of it with the Variable Cuboid

Another roll of the XPired XP2, this time in the Variable Cuboid, which I hadn't used for a while. Starting out with the 35mm front, I set out for Menomonee Park. 

I think I've photographed this couple before, but they were both in the same hammock. With the wide-angle camera, I was pretty close and asked for permission to photograph them. 

"Go for it."

One of the cabbages looks like it might provide something for us to eat in addition to feeding the caterpillars.

 

Doesn't "A Sunbeam on My Telecaster" sound like a great surf song title?

 

Several years ago, I started photographing the bridge tenders' houses on the drawbridges over the Fox River.  After all the bridges in Oshkosh, and a few I just happened on during Photowalks, I made an effort to get all of them. The last one to finish the set was the Mason Street Bridge in Green Bay, on a four-lane, limited-access road. The day I did the other Green Bay bridges, it was cold and raining. It would require walking about a kilometer to get near it with a wide-angle, or by using a narrow-angle of view from under the bridge, which would require a half-hour exposure. I decided to come back some other time for Mason Street. I was going up there to drop off some photographs for a gallery show recently on a brighter day, so I put the 200mm front on and did it from the shore.

There was originally a smaller-than-the-equations-specify, .50mm, hand-drilled pinhole on the 200mm. When some perfectly sized, .60mm Gilder electron apertures turned up from a long-ago purchase, I changed it. Much to my surprise, I found that I liked the old pinhole much better, which I misplaced as soon as it came out. I drilled a new half-millimeter hole. Might as well spend the rest of the roll to check it out. A sunbeam fell in the living room, with the camera all the way across the room.

The only mature oak in the line of trees along the shore of Millers Bay.

Filling the frame with a large shiny hopper on top of a factory.

Shiny titles in the darkest corner of the living room at f333 for an hour,

These definitely seem better than the larger Gilder aperture, but I'm not sure if they're as good as the original. I still have more XPired XP2 to experiment with. It might be interesting to try a smaller pinhole to see if a tinier spot of light wins over optimal diffraction, even at the expense of a higher f ratio. It's the Variable Cuboid, so it's not really any trouble to switch pinholes mid-roll.

The Variable Cuboid uses a 6x6cm frame. The 35mm front has a .23mm hand-drilled pinhole on a continuously adjustable rising front with 14mm of travel above the axis. The 200mm front has a hand-drilled .50mm pinhole. The XP2 was semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

This is getting personal

After digging a trench, burying the water pipes, and refilling it the entire length of the block on our side of the street, they began laying the new sewer pipes on the other side of the street.

After that, they began installing innocent-sounding laterals, the pipes that run to the private plumbing systems of each house. That requires removing a good bit of your front yard.

All summer, they have been painting things on the sidewalks and putting flags on the lawn to indicate where to dig and where not to. Wye is simply a spelling out of the letter Y, indicating a pipe that branches off a main line.

The before picture. We were hoping these indicated the limits of the trench.

We were wrong; the whole front sidewalk, which we finally had leveled two years ago, came out.

A trench box in our yard. They were nonchalant about me being out there with a pinhole camera and agreed this was the best angle.

They knew where the main internet fiber line was, but not how it branched to individual houses. Fiber optics don't do well when confronted with a backhoe. They came and fixed it right away. Now, our path to the internet lies on the surface with the junction box about a foot from the torn-up street. 

An unusual three-box tower.




The current state of Central Street. Half meter diameter pipes started showing up in everyone's yard. Hard to believe they still have room.

Wyes of some sort?

Also scattered about are giant concrete castings with holes conspicuously the same size as those big pipes.

It's been pretty noisy this week.

The Crackon has two hand-drilled .27mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is my last roll of vintage Fuji NS160. I finally broke down and mixed a new C41 kit.