Easily influenced

 

I recently corresponded with someone to whom I had given several cameras. One comment I found distressing was that they didn't use them because they were "afraid to wear and tear them because they are so lovely." My cameras are made from packaging materials, and the ones in question were beer cases, which were protected with spray acrylic. Think of what that goes through in your shopping cart. It's pretty tough. I'll admit to occasionally needing a little maintenance, but that is usually a drop or two of glue. They're also pretty invulnerable to falls. My tripod goes over at least once with every roll of film. The EyePA 30 has exposed 10 rolls of film and is currently in an art exhibit. 

Then I thought, "Do I do that? Do I avoid cameras because I'm afraid they'll get blemished?" 

The Little Black Cube immediately came to mind. It's made out of about the lightest material I've ever used, although wonderfully opaque and maybe a little extravagantly thick for its original purpose as an envelope. Because it has the same internal film holder as any of my Compact Series, it doesn't feel crushable, and doesn't seem any more delicate than any of my other cameras when you're holding it. It's one unique feature is the glossy Chanel logo against the matte surface. If I covered it with glossy or matte protectant, that would disappear. The tiniest bit of moisture would disfigure it. There have been only two rolls of film exposed with it and all of that in the house and the garden.

I've been mostly using color film lately, because when you mix a C41 kit, the clock starts ticking as it oxidizes, and the data sheet practically dares you to exceed the recommended capacity. I finally declared my latest mix expired at 60% over capacity, thrice the recommended storage life, and two new kits waiting in the darkroom. So now I'm free to use some black and white film.

A good bit of that color film and the last roll of black and white were extremely expired, so I loaded The Little Black Cube with a brand new roll of top-of-the-line Ilford HP5+.

Another influence was my recent return to using an extreme-for-pinhole-narrow-angle-of-view, 53-degree, 6cm camera, which I wanted to continue.

At about this time, Photo Opp had a rummage sale of a lot of the things that were donated during their first fundraising efforts. They kept the best stuff for their educational mission, but there was still a lot of usable photo paraphernalia. Inspired by the look in Wes Anderson's Asteroid City, Sarah told me to see if there was a good-looking, quirky rangefinder. After rejecting a few Kodak Retinas, I picked up this camera. It's a Beauty. In the late 50's, Taiyōdō Camera changed its brand name to Beauty and offered this 35mm Super II with a Canter 45mm/f2.8 lens. It's in absolutely mint condition and everything works. The rangefinder patch is bright and as easy to focus and frame as any rangefinder, even with glasses on. It's presenting me with a philosophical crisis.

Among the heavy-duty video and cheap point-and-shoot tripods, this Star-D Aluminum tripod really stood out. One of several rebrands of the classic Marchioni TiltAll (including Leitz!), it's as big and primarily the same design as the Davis & Sandford RediTilt I've had since the 80s, but it extends a bit higher to 72 inches. I was volunteering at the sale and thought I'd talked someone into buying it twice. At the end of the day, I couldn't leave it.

The Kohler faucet in the kitchen, installed in the mid-90s, began to drip when completely closed, but was fine if you left the handle a few degrees from its full stop. We had it adjusted when the plumber came for something else and he told us it was on its way to total failure. It's now been replaced by a Moen product named after the city Andy and Kristin live in.

What the plumber was here about was the bathroom faucet that had failed explosively one morning. This Moen was the best one they had in stock at Lowe's, so the plumber could come the next day.

This is supposed to be about seeing if this camera can stand up to normal use. Sticking it in the sink is not normal usage for anyone but me. Taking the minor precaution of nice weather, I strapped the tripod to the bike rack as usual, with the camera mounted.

A nicely restored Model A.

The cloud above the geometric blocks of the YMCA with its shiny sign seemed quite modern.

The new doors in the highly anticipated Truffle Pig restaurant. With the narrow camera, I couldn't get far enough back. The tripod was already over the curb.

The shiny Masarati sports car that's always parked on State St.

In the window of the bridal shop at the corner of Main and Church. 

Some basement reorganizing revealed this oil lamp.

And a vase with rose decorations. I don't think I quite captured its translucence.

I can't tell any difference in the condition of the camera after this. It was very nice to use. It has the problematic take-up reel stops that I've later modified, but the film advanced really smoothly. One risky practice that's not apparent is that the interiors totalled six hours of exposure.

The Little Black Cube has a .30mm hand-drilled pinhole, 6cm from a 6x6cm frame. The HP5+ was semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

More old film

The theme for the Fox Valley Photography Group this month is Composition in your home, another one I suggested. That gave me an excuse to try out another roll of professional Fuji NP160, expired in 2001.  Lately, I've been using mostly the extreme 90-degree wide-angle commonly associated with pinhole. For a change, I pulled out 53-degree Paterson the Pinhole Camera, still somewhat wide angle by traditional standards, but a few standard deviations above the mean in the pinhole community.

The view from my normal seat on the couch. Another pillow on the tufted loveseat in the diffuse light of the sheer curtains in the sunroom. The bunny seems to be trying to figure out what the camera is.

With that assignment taken care of, I got on my bike to document the holiday weekend when I encountered two giant cherry pickers with crews disconnecting electricity up and down the street. This spring, all the trees near the street on the block were cut down, except our magnolia. We are scheduled to have the street converted into a large ditch for a few weeks soon. The power company is taking advantage of having the street closed to traffic.

There were well-attended games between high school-aged baseball teams at all the diamonds in the park. The lowest seat on the bleachers behind the dugout was available for me and my tripod. The entire team stood up while their side was at bat. 

As I was winding the film, Number 16 turned around and asked, "What's that?" 

"A pinhole camera. Do you know what that is?"

"No."

At that moment, there was the crack of bat on ball and a brief cheer until it was caught, signalling the end of the inning and their return to the field.

A new elementary school nearby with lots of shades of grey, planes and angles, which consolidated three now-gone elementary schools on the east side. It often looks to me like modern architects cut and fold flat pieces of patterned cardstock into boxes to design these buildings. Maybe it's just me.

The Parks & Recreation Department offers free sailing lessons a few times a week. On this very hot, humid day, the students were more interested in capsizing so they could get dumped into the lake, causing repeated megaphone instructions to get back in the boat.

I saw them working on the cross bar of the T-dock, but the stem was the only part that got new wood.

This year, the fireworks were launched from Ames Point, a little further from people and easier to transport gear to than the former site on Monkey Island. Is it more acceptable to stake out your viewing spot with a collapsed canopy than leaving it fully erected? There were several other sites well-supplied with blankets, chairs and coolers with a single occupant playing video games on their phone, at least 6 hours before the display.

On summer weekends, with picnics spread along the shore, I'm often reminded of Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Part of my reason for choosing this narrower camera was this photo - in order to be farther from the nearest group, yet not have the expansion of depth a wider angle would portray, separating the groups. If Seurat had been composing with a lens, it would have been a bit telephoto.

 

Another view near the beach.

What's become of that line of tomato blossoms.

In early June, the rose vines on the arbor seemed moribund, so I cut them to the ground. We planted morning glories and a clematis. The roses took up the challenge, and we now have a diverse ecosystem wound around the arbor.

Paterson has hand-drilled .31mm pinholes, on the axis and 15mm above it, 6cm from a 6x6cm frame. The expired film was the thirteenth roll developed in a Cinestill Powder Liter C41 kit, mixed April 6th, which makes it quite expired as well.

Green Bay Retrofuturism and ordinary Oshkosh.

In anticipation of a Photo Opp photowalk at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, I loaded another roll of vintage Portra 400 NC, at least a decade and a half old. In 220 format, it has no backing paper. To prevent issues I previously encountered, I lined the entire interior of Morton with backing paper from a recent roll of Portra 800, including two extra layers over the counter hole. That should make it opaque.

Without numbers to guide me, this time I tried one and a quarter turns for the first eight pictures, one and an eighth for the next eight, and just one thereafter. That would have worked great except for the fact that I forgot to wind it twice and advanced about two and a half frames, with the shutter open, while having a conversation. Accounting for those errors, I would have gotten twenty exposures, and there was enough film left for three more pictures. Another issue that reduced the yield from this roll was that increased reciprocity failure is also an issue with film gerontology, and there were a few unrecoverable underexposed interiors.

The location was interesting for me because, other than Madison, there were more statewide meetings I attended there than any other campus for the alphabet soup of LTDC, EMTC, CIO Council, and a couple of our Oshkosh building committees. I haven't been there in ten years.

Most of those meetings, some of them radically virtual for the time, included showing off Mary Coffrin Hall Room 204, the Distance Education Laboratory. Built in 2001, it could connect to two properly equipped remote sites for two-way live communication at VHS quality. With a giant "bridge" in Madison, all thirteen campuses could connect Hollywood Squares style. There were two pan-tilt-zoom cameras, three projectors to display the two other sites and a computer, the document camera, or from their cutting-edge video server. It cost millions. Now we can do it on a $30 burner phone. They did offer a lot of courses to smaller two-year campuses for years before on-line classes replaced that sort of thing. Tania Nelson was Photo Opp host and the designated watcher of gear.

UW Green Bay was established in the late 1960's when America was still great enough to realize the societal benefits of an educated population and critical research. That timing led to a rather exuberant embrace of Brutalism, so the campus sometimes looks a little like a sci-fi movie, especially when it's completely deserted late on Saturday afternoon in the summer.

The six-story David Coffrin Library rises above the campus with views of Green Bay to the west. Not unlike Polk Library at Oshkosh, it's going to come down in a few years because the legislature has been withholding the necessary budget to maintain HVAC and other systems and provide a decent education. I left the magenta stripe along the bottom. The film wasn't in its wrapper when I bought it, and it's leaking just a bit at the edges.

One modern feature is actually pretty enviable. With the school in northern Wisconsin just off the east shore of windy Green Bay, all the campus buildings are connected by tunnels, which really enhances the sci-fi effect.

In some places, it's almost monotone.

These blue tables, wooden arbor and random brickwork on the Student Union provide a little relief.

 

Brandi Grahl and Morgan Kirchenwitz and their children were my companions for some of the time, but pinhole photography wasn't compatible with two pre-teenagers in the lead. At the end of the day, I tried for a group photo, but the kids were off again while their mothers graciously posed with Leonardo. 

Upriver in Oshkosh, another in my series featuring the north inlet to Miller's Bay. Brutally treated by the ice, the T-Dock gets a makeover.

 

Encasing utility enclosures in stainless probably saves paint and reflects light in a more interesting way than a white or brick building.

A splash of tomato blossoms.

A rather severe crop of a white peony featuring the fast film's grain.

A pink peony.

Another variety of pink. After the rain, you have to get under them and look up to get a face-on view.

Morton has two hand-drilled .25mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Portra NC was the 12th roll developed in a Cinestill liter powder C41 kit.