Perkins Pier, Lake Champlain, Jan. 1, 2012

Gave my rangefinders a break to test out the Canon FD  100mm f2.8 on my Canon EF. I had recently picked up. Turned out to be a bit awkward as I had a sore wrist and the camera is really heavy. Still, a beautiful machine, well made and solid.

Canon EF Vivitar 19mm f3.8 - not exactly the rig I was shooting with.

This was shot with my 50mm f1.2, the lens I had on the camera at the time because had been shooting indoors that morning. I hadn’t used this lens in a while and I forgot how shallow the depth of field is wide open – little room for focusing error. Quite a few frames turned out with focus just a bit off. The EF body is like an old F-1, but with a fixed prism and shutter priority AE. You can see both the shutter speed and aperture in the finder.  There’s not much written about this camera but Wikipedia has a pretty good overview here.

Balda Super Baldina

Back to writing about cameras again, rather than photographs. This is a Super Baldina with the down-market Baldanar f2.8 lens. It does the job. I love the pop-out lens and good to be shooting a real rangefinder again. The camera fells solid, well-built. I like the heft and decently bright viewfinder. The shutter travel is long and took a bit of getting used to. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a real chance to give it a work out as my life is kind of full right now.

A couple of samples shots taken on expired Fuji Superia 100.:

Altix Altissa Classic 35 with Meyer-Optik Trioplan 50mm  f2.8

An old viewfinder camera, rather than a rangefinder, with the down-market triplet  lens. I’m just happy it works. The Altissa is from the late 1950s, heavy and solid with a less than squinty viewfinder. This one is bit fogged so it’s even more difficult to see, so I ended up using an auxiliary viewfinder for many of the shots. I only shot a test roll, then left it at the camera shop for weeks because life intervened. In fact, I haven’t had much time for my cameras of late.

A couple of shots from the Altissa on Ilford HP5:

Shime-daiko

Just a random shot taken at our local taiko-dojo with my Canon P.

On the shores of Lake Champlain

Welta Weltix

An August evening on the shores of Lake Champlain.Pretty popular spot for a walk in the summer.  I eye-balled the light and the distance. That meant aperture wide open and the lets focused to infinity. I was testing a Welta Weltix, a 35mm folder at least designed in the 1930s, although made, I believe, even after the war.

There isn’t much more to the camera than the lens and the shutter. The shutter speeds  run T, B, 1-1/300 sec, and the lens is a Steinheil Munchen Cassar, 5cm f 2.9. I’ve had the camera for a couple of years, but I never bother to put film in it until recently.

This was not an easy camera to shoot despite the lack of controls. You have to look at the lens to set the aperture and distance, and cock the shutter manually before you can squeeze off a shot. The viewfinder is also  very dim and small. None of this makes for a quick snap. The upside is that I tended to think a bit more about a photo before pressing the shutter release.

Drumming hands

These three drummers were beating the skin outside of an opening for an exhibit on Haiti – photos, paintings by Haitian artists and a documentary. The exhibit was in at the Flynn Dog in Burlington, and the people involved included members of our local Taiko troupe. That’s Stuart Paton, founder and artistic director of Burlington Taiko, on the far left.

This photo is from the same roll as the last few San Francisco photos – an orphan roll that I didn’t finish off until I got home – all taken with the Canon P rangefinder with the Jupiter 8 50mm F2 FSU lens on Ilford HP5 film.

Here’s what the drummer look like:

Drummers

Surfers at Pacifica Beach

One last shot from our Bay Area trip. A weekday afternoon on Pacifica Beach, which also goes by Pedro Beach for the San Pedro Mountains that crowd against it.  This is the south end of the state park, with houses crowded right against the water. We wondered how they fare when a storm hits. The jumble of wooden buildings over the water reminds me of some of the waterfront scenes I remember from  Southeast Asia. I like the way the line of rocks gives way to the line of sand, then to the surf and finally the water.

Tarrantino's on Fisherman's Wharf

One more shot from Fisherman’s Wharf. What I like about this photo is that unless you look closely at what people are wearing, it’s difficult to tell when the picture was made. Certainly the subject, the retro-looking sign, but also the tone and graininess gives it a vintage feel that fits mood of the street scene.

Crab guy at Fisherman's Wharf

I don’t do much street shooting, but this is a photo I like. We ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf because we had business nearby and decided why not? The place may be touristy, but we still had good food in a restaurant with a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m noticing that many of the shots with the Canon P are underexposed, which leads me to suspect that the shutter speeds may be off on the fast side. Have to remember to compensate for that until I have it checked out.