To me.

The Ukiah Photography Club’s theme for February 2022 is “something important in your life”. Hmm . . . my family, but they are camera-shy or unavailable. The cats? No, I mostly tolerate them. Baseball? Nothing happening there. Jazz? Perfect, but I have only one decent photo of Pat Metheny and no clear opportunity for more. So it has to be . . . photography. But how do you photograph photography? Another hmm . . . my cameras! Not all of them, just the ones for which I have a special connection. I can rephotograph them, this time with the Fuji X-Pro2 with the 90mm lens, stopped down to f16 to maximize depth-of-field, on a tripod. This is a good opportunity to refine my research on each of these cameras and to consider why they are important to me.

Book review.

Other than an apparently factual error in Chapter 6 – she used an “old Leica” in 1918 – this Dorothea Lange historical fiction was fascinating. The story fit into what I know about her actual life, focusing on her time as a portrait photographer in San Francisco, with the historically vague “Ah-yee” or “Chinese Mission Girl” fleshed out as “Caroline Lee”. It seemed a little hurried when it raced past the Migrant Mother episode to Dorothea’s and Caroline’s closure meeting in Paris years later, and I would have liked a little film/developer information (or at least speculation) to go along with the frequent references to her Graflex. Four out of five f-stops. (A new Lange bio has just been release and I’m sure I will be reading it soon.)

Finally (2021).

In our 11th year.

A funny thing.

First of all, why? (Because.)

Secondly, what? Everything? Only Minolta? Old? (well, of course). Duplicates? Buy? Trade? Receive out of nowhere (“I’ve got this old camera – do you want it?). Decorations? Shooters? It’s about the photo, not the camera, stupid! And why are cameras black so they show all of the dust?

The stories – oh, the stories. My dad’s Balda Jubilette, me squinting into the sun waiting f-o-r-e-v-e-r for him to take the picture. My Mom’s Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, which produced only tilted photos; the Rolleicord later owned by a member of the Dutch resistance in World War II; my first SRT-101.

Camera collecting is a funny thing.

Where it all started.

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie Super 27, a Christmas gift from my parents when I was 13 years old in 1963. What really appealed to me was the flash compartment for AG-1 bulbs (this was pre-flashcubes) with a pop-open door, much like the hidden Corvette headlights which I also thought were very cool at the time. The Super 27 was a viewfinder camera taking square images on 127 film (hence the “27” in its name). It was made in the USA from 1961 through 1965. The Kodar lens had only two apertures – “SUNNY” / “FLASH” (f13.5) and “CL’DY BR’T” (f8). There were two focus zones, “CLOSE-UPS” (3.5-6 feet) and “BEYOND 6FT”. The shutter had two speeds, 1/80 when the flash door was closed and 1/40 when open. Winding the film cocked the shutter, preventing double-exposures. I only used black & white film because color was too expensive for my allowance – until my family took a vacation to Crater Lake and I was amazed by the deep blue of the water, so I had to go to the gift shop for some color film. I did my first panorama, two shots that I later overlapped in my photo album, which I still have. The camera disappeared sometime after I started shooting 35mm. Years later I found a Super 27 at a garage sale and it holds a proud place in my camera collection.

Book review.

This could have been better. The first problem came before I even opened the book – a cover photo of a Nikon F2 (with the logo erased) representing what we soon find out is an Olympus Infinity HS-10 (not a real camera, as far as I can tell, although there were lots of Olympus Infinity cameras with various words, letters, and/or numbers, all plastic point-and-shoots, not “heavy, black, and silver” as described here). And what’s with all the talk of “clarity” (not sharpness, not contrast, not saturation) before anything is established about the magical qualities of the camera. And how does a 35mm cassette show that it came from an old, not a new, camera? The editor must have been daydreaming when he passed over all of the Old Spice references – one would have been enough. The story concept is intriguing, how “the camera never lies” but the author overplayed his hand when the pictures started changing, sometimes right before the characters’ eyes, like something from Harry Potter or Back to the Future. One f-stop (out of five).

An old film.

In response to Shooting a Forty Year Old Roll of Plus-X Film from Casual Photophile:

I’m holding a roll of Plus-X in its original unopened box, dated Oct. 1953. Unopened until . . . now! I had to find out if it was in one of those cool yellow cans . . . it is! But what’s this? The cap is light brown. And the film canister is dark brown with yellow lettering. Nowhere is there any indication of film speed (it would have been ASA back then) other than “fast” (my memory of Plus-X from the 1970’s is 125). The canister is more robust than current models. If I shot this (it probably should go in the Argus C3 that I’ve never used) I would guess at some combination of increased exposure and development. For now, though, it will go back on the shelf, definitely next to the C3.

A life well-lived.

Here’s my Rollei story. My wife was a nurse in a medical office. Although I’m sure she treated all patients with kindness and professionalism, one gentleman in his 90’s was her favorite. He always had stories of his adventures, first as a member of the Dutch resistance during World War II and then as a professional photographer across many continents and decades. He often invited her to drop by his home and to bring her husband (me) whom he knew was interested in photography. She finally took him up on his offer. We arrived on a Saturday morning and he was a gracious host. At some point he pulled out a Rolleicord III, his personal camera (he used a Leica for work). He handed the Rollei to me and explained the buttons and knobs and answered all of my questions. When I gave it back to him he said “No, you keep it”. I told him I couldn’t possibly do that – we had just met. He insisted (I suspect it had something to do with Suzanne being his favorite nurse) and I ended up leaving with the camera. He was an avid sailor (still, at that age) so the only way I could think of to repay him was to make a nautical photograph with the Rollei and then present it to him (the photograph, I now know, wasn’t very good, and besides, it was a fishing boat). The camera reminds me of a life well-lived. I need to shoot it again (dim viewfinder and all). I know the ‘flex has more prestige than the ‘cord, but I wouldn’t make that trade.