Field Test of the SmallRig CT-200

It's hard to exaggerate how much tripods contribute to what I photograph. The most limiting thing I face is how to get the camera stable and unmoving, where it needs to be, to get the image I'm previsualizing. Getting a new tripod, like the SmallRig CT-200 I recently acquired, for me is as exciting as any lens or new camera body you've ever gotten. The 90-degree angle of view EyePA 30 was chosen for a field test.

My pinhole practice is also defined by surveying the city from my bicycle. This thing is big. It reminds me of professional video tripods. At 2 kilograms, it's twice as heavy as my old Manfrotto. Collapsed, it's 60cm, compared to the Manfrotto's 45cm, so it sticks out the back of the bike rack more. The old tripod was already long enough that it took some care to swing my leg over it when getting on and off, so the extra length doesn't make much difference. The extra weight is noticeable, but not that hard. I'm not about to admit that I can't handle what would be one of the smaller hand weights at a gym. It's still less than your digital SLR. Getting it on the rack under the bungee cord didn't seem too different. 

In addition to massive strength, that extra weight gives you extra height: 185 cm. Very handy for keeping verticals parallel. In this kind of situation, I used to collapse the legs to the smallest base that they would balance on to pick up a few extra centimeters of height, which was not always exactly stable.

With one-story compositions, it can get high enough that there is no need for a rising pinhole to manage converging verticals.

It's always frustrating when there is a composition with interesting lighting behind a chain-link fence. With a narrow-angle camera, you can point through the links, but with a 90-degree angle of view, they'll still be in the corners. With the "lateral" center column that sticks out like a boom, and the long legs, I could just get the camera over the fence. Composing the image gets to be a little more guesswork like that, though.

Another example of not needing an off-axis rising pinhole and its resulting exposure gradient to keep the verticals parallel. In this case, less exposure at the top would have been a good thing.

Of course, there's no trouble when the camera needs to be a bit lower to frame the composition.

One tricky situation is to get a level view of an object sitting in the middle of a table. The lateral center column that extends out gives me access to the middle of the table. The problem is the tripod head has to be between the camera and the table. With this one, that means the pinhole is at minimum 130mm up. The head has additional adjustments to swing the camera upside down, getting the pinhole to 50mm off the table, with the camera sitting on its winders. With my square format cameras, I could just position it on its side if that was more convenient.

I have been known to stick a tripod into Elwood's pond, but it's less messy coming in from the edge with the extended center column. Upside down camera again for an almost water-level view of Elwood's quartz and amethyst mute, using the legs spread to a lower angle.

Looking straight down at the Chrysanthemums. It wouldn't be impossible with a tilted, leaning tripod, but this is really easy and really stable.

My old technique of a leaning tripod to get inside a Monstera Deliciosa for the reflections on this particular leaf would have likely disturbed the arrangement. Easy to come in from the side with that arm. The camera is stable, but even in the protected lanai on a calm day, a big sail like this is going to flutter a little. I would guess it was moving for about twenty-five percent of the exposure, but it always returned to this position between breezes.

Another deployment of the lateral center column to avoid putting the tripod in the kitchen sink.

In this case, the tripod was just in front of the love seat with the lateral column extended back over the couch, then the camera swiveled back in that direction.

Finally, using the new gear to get over myself.

I was initially a little freaked out by the size, weight and plethora of adjustments and locks, but I'm warming up to the freedom to put the camera where I need it. I still intend to do a detailed review, partially just because I want to photograph kind of a nice bit of product design.

The EyePA 30 has two, hand-drilled pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Kentmere 400 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

Old and new by available light

Each year Photo Opp holds a themed exhibition with a juried show and four featured artists. This year the theme is ALT., and they picked me! My submissions have not been selected for the juried show before. For the last two years, I submitted three pieces from the stereo solargraphic project, which didn't fit the themes very well. I'm included this time because pinhole is considered an alternate method, but I wanted to take it a bit further alt and show pinhole stereocards with my seven handmade stereo viewers. They don't take up much room, so I can put lots out. I even went so far as to edit some of the early stuff from the Stereo Populist.

About the time the invitation came there was a conversation on the Negative Influence podcast lamenting how much of photography was on electronic screens. People used to sit and look at albums of prints.  Hmmm.  That sounds like books. I had experience with print-on-demand projects as soon as it was available in 2003. Then an operating system upgrade killed my educator discount license to pre-subscription Adobe Creative Cloud, so making books became a tedious exercise without a specific page layout program. Recently I found Scribus, an open-source program that's probably equivalent to a late-90s version of PageMaker, which is quite a capable tool. Exhibiting a pile of books seemed like an alt process. I even redid the earlier ones with hard covers and premium inks.

Sharp-eyed regular readers may have noticed in the last post and in the first photograph above that the blue striped chairs have been reupholstered. One day when Sarah dropped into the furniture store about something else, they had a roll of very lush fabric they just happened to have left over. They put her in touch with their upholsterer. He even came and picked them up. It's really neat working with local craftspeople like this.

Just another sunbeam with the chairs in the background.

In a similar vein, I had learned the benefits of big fat frets and a straight neck from the renovation of my black solid-body Ventura guitar. The reason my hollowbody sunburst Ventura was hard to play was that it had very flat frets. Luthier Matt Hayes told me that, in the '60s, when this guitar was made, jazz players with a light right hand liked them so they could lower the action. I do not have a light right hand.

The pickups were chrome-covered humbuckers similar to the ones we replaced on the other Ventura, with the chrome worn off the bottom end. I suppose that looked pretty punk, but I didn't like it. After removing them, the cutouts in the body matched dog-eared P-90 pickups like those that would be on a very similar Epiphone Casino, popularized by the Beatles. Modern Seymour Duncan versions went into them. (Irrelevant note: The theme for the Fox Valley Photo Group this month is Bridges.)

The Fender Mini-Twin Tone was an impulse purchase at the counter at Heid Music, with the idea of marching in the streets leading protest songs. I installed strap buttons on it. Surprisingly beefy for a 1-watt amp with twin 3-inch speakers running off a 9-Volt battery. Haven't gotten up the nerve to take it down to Opera Square.

Some of this was driven by the most common feedback I got from my experience at the University open mics last year: "Could you turn your guitar down?" and "Do you ever play acoustic guitar?" Maybe the hollow body and the little amp would help with that? The Provost who organized these events got the job as Chancellor at my Alma Mater, Eau Claire, and no one has taken up the mantle. To stay motivated, I'm trying to work up a YouTube character or, leveraging my history degree, an educational performance: "Vietnam War protest singer covers the Little Red Songbook in the post-Ramones era."

After delivering the artwork to Photo Opp, we made an impulse decision to circumnavigate Lake Winnebago to visit Heritage Orchards and Polly's Pumpkin Patch. They include a diverse selection of pumpkins.

A very knobby green? blue? example.

Pale yellow.

Extremely warty.

They also have a petting zoo. Let's just say these animals are conditioned to expect a reward when someone approaches the fence.

While I adjusted the tripod and pointed the camera, there was a continuous discussion with the little horse as to whether the camera was food.

My favorite Manfrotto tripod suffered a fatal break of a leg extension and had to be demoted to iPad support duty (see above). I didn't like any of the combinations of features in the current Manfrotto offerings and had been admiring the SmallRig CT200 4-Section Lateral Center Column Aluminum Tripod/Monopod for a while. It was on the porch when we got home. This is obviously a life-changing experience. I have plans to do an extensive review, but just let me point out that extensible center column.

Getting close to things for pinhole photographs with very wide-angle cameras usually requires leaning the tripod onto the edge of a table or the piano keyboard, often involving easily disturbed arrangements. It's lots easier to set this thing on the floor and extend that arm toward the subject. It's a little tipsy at full extension, but my camera only weighs 90 grams.

That goes double for getting directly over a subject. That used to involve laying the tripod across a couple of chair backs (or pumpkins, see above).

It, of course, came with some accessories. An adapter for a very large camera, a cell phone holder – amusingly for such a heavy tripod (2kg, almost as much as your digital camera) – and a hex wrench, different from the one for all the other tripods. The very nice case has become a receptacle for all the tripod cases I also don't use.

An additional gift was a little bag in case you need to carry around a few pinhole cameras. Displayed here on Leigh Bardugo's conclusion of the Ninth House trilogy, which came in the same delivery.

It's kind of a tall tripod, but with that center column out like that, the legs become very easy to adjust to lower angles, and the arm makes it easy to get over things even on the ground.

We have had a good yield of hot peppers, which go through color transitions as they ripen. Initially, a desaturated green.

Orange transitioning to red.

Fully outfitted appropriate to their capsaicin content. Note the lower-angled tripod leg.

One of them fell off the vine (probably aided by a critter who later realized their mistake), so I used it to provide a little contrast to the last green tomatoes.

Morton has two .23mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is a 220 format roll of Kodak Pro 400 MC, expired in 2001, developed in a C41 kit I mixed in March, now finally at its rated capacity, but it looks fine.

Photo Opp Loot Deep Dive

In a number of occurrences at Photo Opp, John Adams and I have had conversations concerning tripods. One was about a very sad event involving a headless set of legs from a vintage mid-century travel tripod John had found in contributions to Photo Opp, and an eBay prize I had acquired of a similar model, from which I had broken a leg section. The two could be married for one useful device. In a very humbling episode, I disassembled the two and then inserted the 3/8 inch screw from the legs into the 1/4 inch camera mount hole of the head instead of its base, and made sure I tightened it firmly, thereby completely ruining both parts when the jammed screw broke trying to undo it.

About a year later, John encountered a very nice example of one of these shiny devices at an estate sale and thought of me. When he gave it to me, I assured him it would be featured on Pinholica.

It's beautiful, but like its unfortunate predecessor, it's quite delicate. Designed to hold a lightweight folding camera for one exposure at a family gathering, I have been afraid to subject it to the rough and tumble of pinhole photography. 

I did, however, immediately think its glistening three-axis mount would make a really cool subject for close-up stereo photographs.

I will present them here as pairs set up for cross-eyed viewing, which is easy to learn. They are also displayed as red/blue anaglyphs, which require an appropriate pair of 3D glasses. Incidentally, I used Photoshop to make these anaglyphs since Anaglyph Workshop doesn't have enough sideways adjustment for these extreme close-ups. At this link is a PDF file with stereocards set up for a classic Holmes stereo viewer, which are also appropriate for parallel viewing (if you can make a picture out of those Magic 3D pictures, you can probably view these without the scope).

Despite the non-existence of extreme wide-angle in lensed stereo photography, I chose the 90-degree angle-of-view Badgersette to do cha-cha stereo, where one camera is moved between left and right exposures. The Unseen Library project was done with a regular stereo camera with a similar angle of view, and I have successfully done very close-up stereo with a 67-degree camera. The half-again-wider device should be fine.

The front of the joint from about 50mm away with a 10mm baseline between images.

From the other side. Look at how different these two images are. Can you believe your brain does this all the time without trying?

It seemed appropriate to show it with another object chosen for it's beauty, the Beauty Super II rangefinder from Photo Opp's rummage sale, also still innocent of film since I got it. Still pretty close up for stereo. The sideways adjustment on the quick release adaptor on the K&F tripod only travels 20mm, so I had to revert to using a ruler to keep the camera parallel while it was moved 30mm between exposures.

The maximum height of the new tripod is only 1.2 meters. I also have a tripod that extends to two meters, acquired at that same rummage sale, but it's only held a camera for two or three photographs. Using a stick to keep the camera parallel during the move and the ruler to get back to the normal 60mm baseline.

Another acquisition from the sale was a light stand and umbrella, which I also haven't made any use of photographically, but makes a great subject for stereo photography. This time sliding the tripod along a broom handle, also at a baseline of 60mm.

Expired film from the 20th century picked up from my association with Photo Opp has gotten well used. A five-roll pack of 220 format Kodak Pro 400 MC and the specially adapted Morton to use it in, with a roll of Ilford XP2 depicted on the iPad behind them. Back to sliding just the quick-release adaptor to its maximum 20mm.

The Badgersette has two hand-drilled .23mm pinholes on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film was Kentmere 400, semi-stand developed in Rodinal 1:100. The tripod with the sliding quick-release adaptor is from K&F Concepts.

Augustine rambling

In the past, I mostly used ISO 100 film, mainly because at ISO 400, I was afraid of sunny-day exposures faster than my poor human hands could manage, leading to overwhelmingly dense negatives. After choosing the faster films in workshops to allow interiors and gloomy-day exposures, I've become less concerned, and kind of seduced by the shorter exposures. My use of semi-stand development, which suppresses overexposed highlights, probably has something to do with it. I recently read a blog post that claimed you could measure with any ISO you wanted with semi-stand development and get a usable negative. 

I found a roll of Kentmere 100 in a bag, left over from those days of slower film, which wasn't getting any younger. It went into the Diversity 30, which had some adjustments made after its last outing that need checking. Summer sunshine was a reliable bet with the slow film.

The camera sat on the tripod under the kitchen table for a while. After our new dishwasher was installed, I turned it in that direction and made an exposure. Yes, I know if you hang a towel on the dishwasher handle, it will drag on the floor every time the door is opened.

Modern standards for city water include storing a large supply above the level of any flood possibility. Oshkosh's century-old "clear wells" are underground, right next to and lower than Lake Winnebago. A new project has begun to construct new ones safely above ground. Sure would rather have that than a triumphal arch or a ballroom,

When everyone else got their new sidewalk done, ours was temporarily paved with asphalt since the maybe-it-has-some-lead-in-it water line to the house, which still needed replacement, was too near it and would have to be torn up again. They didn't tear it up to do the pipe, but left a large divot in it. One year after they removed the street, we might be seeing an end to it.

Illustrated here are two reasons why I haven't done a blog post in a month. The recent translation of the Odyssey, which I've discovered I only knew from a young adult adaptation, and one of a new series of books by some guy on the internet who's in an IRL gallery show in a couple of months.

How about a little new architecture in Oshkosh? The Mill on Main, a "distinguished residential community gracefully positioned along the Fox River," includes this white arbor on a concrete pad with nowhere to plant anything to grow on it.

A corner of the renovated Miles Kimball building.

The entrance to the new downtown hospital with its height clearly marked in case someone drives a particularly tall vehicle onto the sidewalk.

After decades of looking like a ruin, the east side of the 600 block of North Main Street is now filled with The Corridor, an apartment complex whose website includes an FAQ page headlined "The key to understanding affordable housing." It includes a similar arbor as the posh development on the Fox, but at least there's somewhere to plant something to grow on it on one side.

After an excavator crew removed the asphalt, swinging the machine within inches of the magnolia and driving over its roots, one lone, very precise workman came and built the forms. After another near-miss with an excavator for the gravel layer, a large crew arrived and poured the walk, finally respecting our request to stay away from the tree.

Cherry tomatoes and purple basil from the garden.

The resulting caprese salad.

A few days later, they came and filled in and seeded the edges and the holes impressed into the lawn by the excavator and cement truck. Is this finally the end?

The Diversity 30 has two .23mm hand-drilled pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Kentmere 100 semistand developed in Rodinal at 1:100.