Mission Debriefing

(As you can tell from my photo, I'm kinda big on the transit of Venus.  
I've been planning this one for months; back in April, I used the 
upcoming transit as my excuse to FINALLY buy a serious digital camera, 
one that I can use on my telescope. )
 Here's my report on how the day went


TRIP REPORT, TRANSIT OF VENUS 2012 (June 5, 2012)

Thursday May 31^st was clear and dry, a beautiful day.  
But the forecasts for June 5^th were calling for clouds.

Over the weekend, I started checking regional forecasts: 
the nearest clear skies were west of Toledo.

I got up Tuesday, and the local forecast had actually deteriorated,
down to “cloudy with 50% chance of rain”.

At noon I was charging up the V1 and was dispiritedly planning 
to go down to my local astronomy club's viewing at the 
Schenectady Museum and stand around with them, 
and hope for a break in the clouds.

But then I was watching the local weather channels - and noticed 
that there were clear skies up on the St. Lawrence: a band of 
dry air was  pushing up the St. L valley, including the south side 
of Lake Ontario. Malone, Watertown are hopeless to get to; 
Plattsburgh was clear at noon, but looked like it would be first to 
cloud up again. 

But the noon forecast for Tuesday afternoon in Oswego was now “Sunny”.

Now, I’ve left the house and been on the State Fairgrounds 
in Syracuse in under 2 hours: 
Oswego can’t be 3 hours away:  I can DO this.
Or, more precisely: I HAVE to do this.

(By 2pm, the local forecast had actually improved, 
to “Mostly cloudy, 20% chance of rain”, 
but, hell: that still didn’t compete with “Sunny”.)

I threw my gear in the car: wheels up at 2:05pm.

(I used the new Civic because I had more gear than
would fit in the Red Menace; AND because I 
wanted to be reasonably certain that I'd get there.)

[Gear: 

Bogen tripod; 
Gitzo tripod; 

V1 bag with camera and “F-mount-to-Nikon-One” adapter,

       Nikkor 300/4.5, TC-300 doubler.  
ETX telescope box with various solar filters.  

Pelican case with F90s and AF lenses;

Second Pelican case with my surviving F3s. 

Film].

(In my rush out the door I clean forgot spare Double-A batteries. 
Because over the weekend, I had lost hope, and didn’t rehearse.)

Note that I never did figure out how to run the intervalometer 
on the fancy new MF-26 control back on the N90s.

Life Lessons: 

Rehearse anyway.

Because: Things can change.

Know your gear.  

DRILL.

Which also means:

Don’t use new gear on a once-in-a-lifetime shot. 

And:  Have redundancy: have lots of back-ups.

Off the Thruway ($3.90) at I-481 at 4:00pm; into town, through 
the SUNY campus, looking for a view of the NW horizon.  
NOT A CLOUD IN THE SKY.  Ah, here we go:

 Bev's Dairy Treat: 
 43 County Route 89, 
 Oswego, NY 13126
 (315) 343-0839.

Two miles from Ground Zero (Bridge St., Oswego), right on the lake, 
just west of the college campus.*    
A beautiful spot, actually.   
 4:40pm, just about 160 miles out. Plenty of time to spare.

I asked if they minded if I set up in their parking lot - they were fine.  
At 4:45, the place was empty.

(...But at 6 o’clock sharp, every parent in Oswego  
brought their toddler out for soft-serve....)

In the course of the evening, I chatted with a few soft-serve 
consumers; one told me that there WAS a viewing up on campus.
But I had lacked enough spare time to find them.)

Observed weather, copied here for posterity:

Albany  June 05, 2012

19:51 N 3 10.00 Mostly Cloudy FEW040 SCT080 BKN090 62 49 65 61 62%  29.92 1013.1

18:51 Calm 10.00 Mostly Cloudy FEW030 BKN080 BKN100 62 49 62%  29.91 1012.8

17:51 NE 6 10.00 Mostly Cloudy FEW030 BKN080             63 49 60%  29.89 1012.3

16:51 NE 9 10.00 Mostly Cloudy FEW030 SCT050 BKN080 63 48 58%  29.90 1012.6

15:51 N 7 10.00 Mostly Cloudy FEW020 SCT035 BKN065 62 49 62%  29.91 1012.8

Oswego June 05, 2012

19:54 NW 10 10.00 Partly Cloudy SCT080 SCT090  60 49 70 60 67%  29.93 1013.3

18:54 NW 10 10.00 Fair CLR           63 50 63%  29.91 1013.0

17:54 NW 13 10.00 Fair CLR           66 49 54%  29.91 1012.8

16:54 N 14 G 17 10.00 Partly Cloudy SCT080 69 48 47%  29.91 1012.8

15:54 N 12   10.00 Mostly Cloudy BKN070 68 49 51%  29.92 1013.3

(The north view from the lakeshore was even clearer than 
the reported conditions back at the local reporting station:
from 16:40 until long past 19:54, the lakeview sky was still “Fair” for me.)

I had made the correct decision.  

(Yay, me. Yay, satellite real-time views of cloud cover.)

I was set up and ready to go shortly after 5:00pm.
I sat down with the manual and tried to figure out the 
multi-function back I had bought for the N90 - 
but it was new enough that I hadn't even confirmed that it 
was light-tight. 

 In theory, I could have set it up to start at 6:03:30
and take a frame every :30 or :40 seconds, 
right through second contact.
In practice, I wasn't even sure that I could keep 
the ETX on target for that long.  
So I decided to skip film photography.
.

6:03:53: the Transit of Venus begins, 
the last until the year 2117.

I watched from the start until about 8:30, which was 
(effectively) local sunset (a cloud bank on the far shore 

cut the show short by 10 minutes or so).

I saw it, but was under-rehearsed with my gear.

so I didn’t manage to get a good time for the entry, 
(as I was on the smaller lens), and I didn’t see it for
10 seconds or more after the predicted times.

We learn: 
timing the entry is somewhat harder than 
timing the exit (which is what I had seen in 2004).

The V1 kept losing focus, and kept reverting to high ISO settings.  

The ETX gave a lovely view - distinctly better seeing than I had 
for  the 2004 event, much better transparency  -  but I had trouble 
setting up cameras on the back port, and was too busy watching / 
using the V1 to futz with it much..

Still, I got some movies, and close to 250 digital pictures.

(Then again, giving up on the film cameras 
saved me $20-$40 on processing.)

I looked at but neglected to make a note of my GPS position - 
but that must be recorded in the EXIF data (or, hell, I could even 
go back out sometime and recover it if I had to.) 

To a few decimal places, I was near  43.451N, -76.556W, and say 280'

U.S. Naval Observatory  Astronomical Applications Department

 Oswego, NY, (long. W76.5, lat. N43.5):

        Tuesday 5 June 2012   Eastern Daylight Time          

                         SUN
        Begin civil twilight       4:51 a.m.                 
        Sunrise                    5:26 a.m.                 
        Sun transit                1:05 p.m.                 
        Sunset                     8:43 p.m.                 
        End civil twilight         9:19 p.m.                 

(Oswego - being further west - has sunset 12 minutes later than at home: 
I lost the sun behind the clouds at just about my home sunset time.)

All told,  I was surprisingly casual about 
a once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity:

I saw it, I got some images. 

I never even bothered setting up the V1 on the ETX.

What I DID remember to do was to switch the ETX to
high-powered eyepieces. 

It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. 
I decided to spend more of my limited time watching 
and less time fighting with photo gear.  Very few people have 
ever had a chance to see the Dark Side of Venus.

(My other regret is that my family was otherwise engaged and 
couldn't be pulled out of their various commitments to come with me.  
And having TWO scopes set up was decidedly overly-ambitious 
without someone along to assist.  My girls - back home 
under the clouds, but using the solar glasses - think they saw it 
for a few minutes through breaks in the clouds.)

About 8:30, the sun set into a cloud bank on the
far shore of Lake Ontario.  This was only about ten minutes 
before the theoretical local sunset. (This was less than four hours 
after my arrival on-station.)

Gear packed back in the car - I struck the ETX first 
as viewing deteriorated -  the first order of business now 
was to hunt for gas, as I had sailed into Oswego 
with only about 12 miles showing on the range meter, 
too nerve-wrackingly low to go back to the cheaper gas 
I had seen on Rt 481 ten miles back in Fulton.

(And it’s now night-time: lots of stations will close soon.)  

Out Route 104 West a couple of miles? No gas.

Rt. 104 East? No.  

Rt.-481South a mile? Yes.

Buy enough gas to get home:   
at 9:02pm  $20.00 @ 375.9 = 5.320g, at 168.8m trip

Back a mile into town for dinner at the Oswego Friendly’s:

(the usual, $9.04 senior (vs $12.74) + a $2 tip)

(This was much easier than finding/trying an alternative. 
“Friendly’s” was the best/most obvious choice I had seen coming in. 
AND they were open until midnight. Too bad they’re always so slow. 
No receipt, either.) 

Wheels up Oswego  ~10:05pm. 

(I checked out the 24hr TIM HORTON’S (!) - who knew they 
were now on the American side of the lake? - on 481-South, 
but they didn’t have anything good left at 10pm.)

                                 

Off the Thruway at Utica ($2.10) at 11:41pm,  
home via the old same route. (5S / 162 / 20)

Home:  ~1:10am, 330.3 miles round trip, with 
 41.0 mpg showing on the trip meter.

  (...'Lightfoot Bob', they called him....) 
   
The return leg was 161.5 miles: 
therefore,  probably about eight miles knocking around Oswego.

So: just over eleven hours round-trip.  About 3 1/2 hours of 
standing on the shore of Lake Ontario.

(“Back at the lodge, we toasted our adventure....”)

This trip cost $6.00 in tolls, $11.04 dinner, 
a theoretical 8.06g of gas (call it about $30); 
plus 330 miles of wear on the car.  
(On the other hand, I didn’t commute into work Tuesday
(saving at least 31m on the car); just going to the local viewing
would have been 18 miles or so.  The cost of the meal is also
negligible: I had to eat anyway - and I had to see the transit.)

All-in-all, this was much cheaper and easier than 
flying to Hawaii to see the entirety of the transit.

(You’re welcome, Mr. Halley.)

*Fun Facts about SUNY Oswego:

 Al Roker  B.A. Communications 1976.  

 Jerry Seinfeld attended but dropped out: 
 (Queens College CUNY,  B.A. in communications and theater, 1976.)

Everybody Needs a Hobby

I bought a German rangefinder from about 1956, with a lovely little 48mm f/2, and a classic Synchro-Compur shutter. See:

http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Argus_V-100

It's actually something called an Iloca 'Rapid' from 1956, built in Hamburg and rebadged as the top-of-the-line Argus.

Rangefinder is in wonderful shape, photocell is dead, the shutter speeds sound 'off', but hey.

And I find myself seriously contemplating opening up the shutter to clean it. The front elements just unscrew; that in itself is some fraction of the way in...

Oh, and look - conveniently enough, the internets provide complete instructions:

http://www.rolandandcaroline.co.uk/synchro-compur.html

I have a reasonable set of tools (check); my corner CVS stocks lighter fluid (check)...



...somebody needs to talk me out of this....

The Internets Have Failed Me

(or, Things Not Learned While Looking Up Other Things)

OK, a couple weeks ago, there were lots of stories on Steve McCurry and The Last Roll of Kodachrome.

I posed the question: "OK, Who's going to get The Last Roll of Tri-X?"

(My answer: Salgado)

So I got to poking around the early days of 35mm. Oskar Barnack, Leica, 1925, yadda yadda.

To compete in this new segment of the photographic market, Kodak bought the Nagel Werkes in Dec. 1931, and brought the first Kodak (Nagel) Retina 35mm camera AND its associated 135 Daylight Loading Cartridge to market in 1934.

(Obscure Fun Fact: Kodak also briefly sold "235" Leica cartridges and "435" Contax cartridges. ("335" was for some stereo camera.))

Now, Doc Augie Nagel HELD the German patent on the 135 cartridge. And so I'm wondering if Kodak bought his company just to get access to the patent, or did he design it out while on the Kodak payroll?

The internet will not answer this.

It's one of those topics where the Internets turn up ONLY the close-to-useless Wiki text, but copied on a hundred different sites.

I can find the patent for the APS cartridge, but not for the 135 cartridge.

I may need a research library with real paper books.

Annals of DIY II

I spent a very pleasant morning running three more tanks of b&w film.

In their wisdom, Kodak has discontinued the one-liter size of XTOL developer... so, if you want to use the stuff, you now have to buy the FIVE-liter package.

Five liters of stock developer is a LOT of soup. XTOL can be cut 1:3, so that's potentially up to 80 rolls of film. A preposterous amount of soup.

Now, I had A FOURTEEN YEAR BACKLOG of b&W film waiting for processing - I've done something like 32 rolls this month - and so far, I've used up a total of three of the five liters. (I'm still a few rolls from being caught up, but I think everything that's left is at least from this year.)

A liter will developer as few as 2 rolls of 120 film (full strength), or as many as 16 rolls of 35mm (diluted).

The stock solution supposedly keeps reliably for two months, maybe six.

So (ignoring my backlog still on hand) I now have to go out and shoot somewhere between (minimally) [four rolls in the Rollei], and (maximally...)[32 rolls of 35mm], in order to efficiently use the developer Kodak sold me. In the next month or so.

Sometime soon I run out of acetic acid, and will have to get myself to a Real City to buy more, as there's none for sale locally, and it's prohibitively expensive to ship. (It comes under HazMat rules.)

Forward, into the past

Around 1978, I bought a pack of 100 negative preservers for 120 film ($12 at State Photo...), to go with my new 6x7 back for my Crown Graphic. I carried it around from apartment to apartment for years. Actually, though, I used most of them here in the 21st century; in fact, mostly since I re-started using film mailers around 2004.

I finally finished the hundred-pack earlier this year - so, on average, that's a whisker over (3 rolls of 120 film) per year.

The hundred-pack took about 31-32 years.

I just finished the 25-pack that I bought to replace it. (It's July....)

Clearly, as digital takes over, I'm doing more and more medium-format photography.

Similarly, I'm just finishing a bottle of glacial acetic, and a bottle of PhotoFlo 200. The latter has a label: "State Photo, $2.07".

State Photo closed in 1986, 24 years ago.

Note to self: order/buy some more negative preservers. Oh, and some acetic acid.

The larger story: back in the '80s, we bought a house, and I installed a home darkroom in the corner of the basement. Then we started having kids, and I discovered that grandparents want to see color prints of their grandchildren. So I largely switched away from B&W and color slides, and shot mostly C-41 for most of the '90s.

I had a developing tank with two rolls of 120 Plus-X that I loaded around 1995 (give or take a year...) - and then went off to chase my kids.

Now that my eldest is out of high school, I JUST got back to that tank, roughly fifteen years later. (Not surprisingly, it has lots of base fog....)

Word of the Day

Or, "I love the interwar period"

In my ongoing quest for the most primitive camera that I can easily use here in the 21st century, I picked up a prewar Voigtländer Bessa, a 6x9 folder (with a 110mm/4.5 uncoated triplet). It fits in a jacket pocket, and takes huge 2 1/4" x 3 1/4" negatives on still-easily-obtainable 120 film.

(There's some chance that this one was assembled post-war, but it's certainly a 1937 model. This particular sample is 'way on the low end of the Bessa option range - mostly, they came with better lenses and with better shutters. But so far, I'm surprised at how well this one seems to work (...stay tuned for film at eleven...) - the bellows seem to be intact, the shutter basically works, the lens is clean, the aperture blades are clean and dry, the focus is smooth, etc.).

Anyway, it's guess-focus, so it has a Depth-of-Field table on the back, helpfully labeled

" Voigtländer Tiefenschärfentabelle "

(literally, "deep sharp table" / so, "depth of sharpness table") - labeled in meters, of course.

I'm not sure if it's the two words together, the two umlauts in quick succession, or the 21-letter compound noun, but somehow "Tiefenschärfentabelle" just tickles me.

My father always used to claim "This is why the Germans lost the war: they couldn't understand each other."

"Was bedeuten der Tiefenschärfentabelle sagen?"
"Was?"
"Was sagt' der Tiefenschärfentabelle?"
"Was?"

...und so weider....

How did I not know this?

OK, with the death of Kodak processing, I've been dusting off my medium-format gear.
(Kodak mailers were cheap. Local processing is now relatively expensive. So I'm being nudged back to DIY black&white. If I'm to be relegated to doing home darkroom, I suppose it might as well be stuff that I can contact-print....)

So I've been playing with my old Zeiss Ikonta. Which brings to mind Eric Newby's pictures from "The Last Grain Race", taken on his late-'30s Zeiss Super Ikonta.

During my Lost Decade (...those years lost to parenting...), Newby published a coffee-table book of JUST his photos from aboard the Moshulu: Learning the Ropes, 1999. (But, since I missed it when it was new, it's now scarce and expensive. Grrr.)
Somehow I never really noticed that this was a different book from his "A Traveler's Life", also a Newby coffee-table book. So there's that.

But it's Thing Two that's really remarkable:

The Moshulu is not only still afloat, but it's
a floating restaurant in Philadelphia. (!)

Now, I read The Last Grain Race nearly 30 years ago. For most of those thirty years, I've been IN Philadelphia about every other year. I've SEEN the shipping at Penn's Landing. And yet, this factoid never entered my consciousness.

It makes me wonder what OTHER obvious bits of knowledge have so far evaded me.

Note to self

(Attention Conservation Notice: I could try to dress this up as some sort of commentary on modern capitalism, but it's just me comparison shopping. This is boring EVEN FOR ME, so feel free to skip this entry.)

I've been buying some interesting point'n'shoot cameras (...for certain low values of "interesting"...) - and they each need batteries. Sometimes I'm lucky, and it runs on ubiquitous (and cheap) AAs - but sometimes it takes something preposterous like the now-rare "223", or a PAIR of 123s.

So I buy a $3- or $5 camera... and then I need to find a $10 battery to see if it works.

A 123 lithium cell is:
- $14 for two at my corner drugstore;
- $12 /2 at Home Despot;
- $10 /2 at Walmart;
- $9 for one ($14/2) at Walgreens.
(All these prices are plus my local 8% sales tax.)

All of those options are pretty ridiculous to fire up a camera that was $3 in a thrift-shop, or a $5 camera from eBay .

Going on line, I bought eight of these 123s for $18.95 delivered. Say, $2.38 each. Let the record show that that that is less than half the price at Walmart, about a third of the price of my local drugstore. And if you're willing to try weird-ass Asian brands (and wait for delivery from Hong Kong or someplace), you can get these for less than two bucks a piece in small quantities.

Now, this little hobby of picking up amusing cameras at thrift shops becomes a lot more viable when it takes only an additional buck or three to power it up. Seven dollar 123s or $14 2CR5s are just untenable.

The downside is that I have a new cute little Canon waterproof WP-1 that arrived Friday - but I have to wait a few days now for batteries to come in the mail. Because I simply could not bring myself to spend $10 on batteries for it.

Deader'n' Vaudeville

It's really too bad that film photography is dead, because I'm really enjoying the bargains to be had in used (film) cameras.


A couple of years ago, I was in a local GoodWill, and they were just putting out a Vivitar 90mm/2.5 macro lens. Beautiful lens, very well regarded when it came out in 1978. I picked it up, looked at it - but I didn't have a Pentax "K"-mount camera, so ten bucks seemed like too much.

I left the store and was a mile away when it finally occurred to me that I COULD BUY A PENTAX CAMERA BODY. There must be literally a million K1000s around. So I turned around, went back and bought the macro lens. And as I was buying it, they were just putting out the K1000 that it had come in with. A K1000 and its SMC 50/2 for all of twenty bucks; plus 10 bucks for the Vivitar macro lens: $30 plus sales tax.

I've hacked around with it a bit - the K1000 is a crude but useful tool. The 90/2.5 lives up to its reputation.

Recently I saw this same lens go by on eBay: Vivitar 90mm/f2.5 Macro - where it sold for $400 plus $13.50 shipping.


In a related story, last fall I picked up a late Alpa SLR, one mass-produced by Chinon once Alpa could no longer afford to hand-make their cameras in Switzerland. I played with it a bit, but, once my curiosity was satisfied, I turned around and sold it on eBay. (I wasn't planning to invest in a bag full of M42 lenses just to use the thing.) What I learned, though, is that it really was beautifully made, which gave me some respect for Chinon's capabilities.

Last week I spotted a Chinon CP9-AF SLR on GoodWill.com. It was in a kit consisting of the AF SLR, its standard 28-70 AF zoom, a 70-210 AF zoom, a dedicated flash, a neveready case, the instruction book, a polarizing filter, etc. I was about to pass it by when I remembered that Chinons were K-mount bodies. So I bid, and got the whole kit for $31 plus shipping.

It's pretty much awesome. It has a built-in intervalometer. And, with non-AF K-mount lenses, it works in "Auto" mode as an aperture-preferred autoexposure camera. So I can use my two existing K-mount lenses with it, for a pretty powerful kit. It's got speed, it's got close-focusing, it's got a wide range of focal lengths - all it lacks is something wider than 28mm or longer than 210mm. I'm trying to think of a project that requires my K-mount macro lens and my new intervalometer-equipped camera: maybe a time-lapse sequence of seed germination?

Now, at some level, this seventy bucks or so would probably have been better spent toward a DSLR. But then again, this kit is quite a bit of fun, and by the time I'm done playing with it, the price of a DSLR will come down in price by that much, so I won't really be out much of anything at all.

Yes, I know film photography is dead - my kids certainly don't hesitate to remind me - but I'm having a ball collecting film cameras.

Reanimator

I still use and collect film cameras.

My spare F3 finally came back to me, March 10, 2010.

(Four years ago, I loaned it to a friend's son so that he could use it for a photography course in college. (Nov. 15, 2005)
Last fall when I WORE OUT my first-line F3, I finally asked my pal to return the loaner. (Oct. 9, 2009.)

My "dead" first-line F3 had developed unreliably short long exposures - anything longer than 1/60 was now iffy, rendering slides inaccurately dark.

I have enough cameras that I have absolutely no need to use a wonky camera. But I'm committed enough to the F3 - I have a drawer full of its goofy accessories - that I really should have a first-line F3, and my F3/T lacks good flash capabilities.
Therefore, I called in my loaner.

So my first-line F3 is retired awaiting a CLA, and it became the parts hulk that I used to revive the loaner.

First off, swap the chrome replacement shutter-button-collar on the loaner camera for the stock black shutter collar from the hulk.

First hurdle: the AA batteries in the motor drive had leaked. Throw them out, clean up the battery holder with vinegar and Q-tips, install new set of batteries.... and then decide that the battery holder in my parts hulk was cleaner, and swap it out.

Power it up, and discover that the meter head (what is that? a DP-3?) is dead.

Take two seconds to swap it out with the HP head from the parts hulk.

Take it out for a test drive, everything's nominal. Switch the drive to "Continuous", let loose a burst - and the motor drive DIES. Just dies.
(Oops. That's a new one, too: I have now worn out an F3 AND killed an MD-4. Wow.)

Grimace, shrug, and swap out the MD-4 motor drive from the parts hulk.

While I'm at it, the door on the hulk looks nicer - swap that out, too.

Voila: I now have a nominal F3 created largely from the accessories and parts from my dead F3.

The loaner is happily restored to working order, and my F3 parts hulk now has
- a wonky shutter,
- a dead metering head,
- a dead motor drive,
- a dirty battery holder,
- a brassed film door,
- a replacement shutter collar (in unpainted aluminum, rather than black).
The hulk is in pretty sad shape now.

But wow, is it fun to tinker with an "F" series Nikon. Just tinkering with the thing fulfills most of my photojournalist fantasies.

The hulk was about $300 in late 2004, and was my first-line camera up through our 2009 vacation.
The spare (loaner) wasn't much over $200, in early 2005.
Then - because I had always lusted after one -
I picked up an F3/T, which was also about $300, later in 2005. (Which sounds like a lot, until you realize that the D3 is five thousand bucks or so. I can buy a LOT of film for the $4000 difference....)

When I found myself with THREE F3s, I happily loaned one out in November 2005. (That went out the door in a rush, as it was needed by my pal's son for a college course.)

When the hulk died last September, I finally called in the loaner. (When the loaner didn't come back right away, I was desperate for a fully-working F3, so I spent all of $140 last November to replace the loaner with a non-HP F3 - which temporarily became my new first-line camera. Now, with the return of the loaner, I seem to be back to THREE working F3s.)

Which, admittedly, is probably in excess of requirements.

(...And then, while I was looking at Nikon SLRs on eBay, I also picked up TWO N90s for under $80 for the pair. THESE might just be my first-line cameras now. My eyes might need AF by now. The N90s are not quite pro grade, but they're awesome cameras, and they give me AF and matrix metering.)

Anyway - now that I have a parts hulk, I'm considering harvesting the flash contacts off of it to replace the corroded contacts on my F3/T. And, if I'm successful, its death will have revived TWO other F3s.

UPDATE: And a look at the F3 repair manual shows that harvesting the flash connector requires some very finicky soldering. That might be too much effort for too little reward. (I keep the F3/T loaded for outdoor photography. Come to think of it, I rarely use a flash on any of the F3s....)

The Death of Film, Chapter 31

Yesterday (September 8, 2008), my local supermarket took away their Drop Box for film processing.

The C-41 machine was pulled out of my corner CVS a few months ago. (They still do prints from digital files, and they still accept film for processing.)

For a brief interval, there were FOUR drop boxes and TWO One-Hour processors within walking distance of my house. (Eckerd when they were down on the corner, CVS when it was in the local strip mall, Hannaford, and the local PhotoLab about a klick away. This would have been back around the year 2000? 2002? (When did my local lab close? 2006?))

Now, there's only the CVS drop-box.

John Henry Was A Steel-Drivin' Man

All my adult life, I've been a Serious Amateur photographer. I've developed my own 4x5s, I've done hundreds of rolls of my own E-6.

Now - like millions of dads before me - I have other priorities staring me in the face, things - like orthodontia - that I need to spend money on, things that keep me from buying expensive cameras.

But I did started buying professional-grade film cameras - Nikon F3s - soon after the June 2004 Transit of Venus, when I realized

a) I needed (heck, deserved!) more and better gear

and

b) every pro photographer in the world was dumping their film gear on eBay as they made their transition over to digital photography.

So I picked up some cheap used F3s, and a couple of bags full of fancy Nikkor glass.
Let's say I paid $300 for an F3-with-motor-drive at the end of 2004.

Now, let's assume I'm shooting 80 rolls/yr since then (I don't have a complete count in one place, but this is the ballpark - I've used about 220 mailers (...at ~$2 each) in the three seasons since May 2005, plus a couple dozen rolls at Walmart, at my local pro lab, etc.)
Three full seasons (2005, 2006, 2007), and now just starting the high season of 2008.

That's about 250 rolls @ about $4/roll = about $1000 in film costs.

(Stores have been liquidating their film inventories: I bought a pallet of print film at 50¢/roll, about 80 rolls of Kodachrome at ~$1.75... and, over on eBay, two hundred mailers at about $2 each.

So - an average of $4/roll is certainly in the ballpark.)

In late 2004, the D2 was what? $4500? The early-2005 D200 was $1600?.
(In 2002, the D1 was $5400. In 2006, the D200 was still $1600.)
Today's D3 is $5000. The D300 is $2000.
It's now 2008, and - shooting as fast as I can since 2004 - I'm still ahead on film costs, and thus I'm still saving money on total imaging costs.

(There's also the slight detail that the incremental costs of digital imaging are not QUITE "Zero": the files need to be stored, the files need to be viewed, even if never output to hard copy. Batteries, computer upgrades, storage costs, printing costs.)

On the one hand: My used F3 - now with another 100 rolls on the odometer - is still not-broken-in-yet.
On the other hand: What fraction of owners who bought a high-end DSLR at the end of 2004 are still using it as their front-line camera? 75%? 50%? It's not 100%. I view a camera as a once-per-generation investment; DSLR seem to be modeled more on the computer, a 'upgrade-every-couple-of-years' paradigm.

(A related question: Let's look ahead to the year 2010 or the year 2015, a blink of an eye from now: Which will be more obsolete then? a digital SLR from the year 2004, or an F3?)

But now that my F3 is - by any standard - fully amortized, this solution still obtains: I can continue to shoot film at $5/week while I continue to wait for the inarguable DSLR to come to market.

Even here in 2008, it still appears as though I can continue to do this more-or-less indefinitely.

Coda: I just bought another batch of $2 mailers on eBay, enough for the next two years or so. So say $10/week in imaging costs for the next two years, that brings me into the year 2010. And presumably the $1500 F400 of 2010 will be more camera than the $4500 D2 of 2004 ever was.

Theoretically, I would love to make the jump to digital, but I just can't seem to make the numbers work. $400/year in film costs continues to be less than $1600 for a DSLR.

OK - I admit I need help

They say that's the first step.


I swore that I would buy No More Cameras until I buy myself a digital SLR.

But I'm still waiting for a Nikon DSLR that's both

a) affordable
and

b) compatible with my pallet of AI-S lenses.

So I've stopped going to the local Camera show, I no longer surf eBay for cameras (...well, except for the Zeiss Contessa of my dreams...).

But Friday, I stopped at the local GoodWill.

They had a Vivitar Series One lens, the famous 90mm/f2.5 Macro.
Interesting lens, but - mercifully - it was in Pentax K-mount.

So i walked away, and I was already a mile a way when it dawned on me that I could pick up a K1000 body to go with it, for about nothing. And have a low-cost knocking-around macro/portrait lens. A camera I could leave in the car, or loan to one of my kids without fear.

So I went back for the lens - and by the time I went back, the GoodWill had put out a K1000 with a working meter. (With its default 50mm/2.)

I guess it was meant to be - but, seriously now: what do I do with yet another film camera?


(PS - the camera came with an exposed roll of K64-36 in it. Have I also purchased the obligation to see that this Found Film gets developed?)

(PPS - the K1000 lacks a self-timer. So one immediate benefit is that I got to rummage around in my gadget drawer and put to use an external self-timer that my father left me. That was oddly satisfying, to have that relatively obscure bit of kit on hand.)

Stirrings from Rochester

("It's alive!")

Oct. 10, 2007: Kodak has tweaked TMAX 400:

We’ve improved both the grain and sharpness of KODAK PROFESSIONAL T-MAX 400 Film / 400TMY. Now, in addition to being the world’s finest-grained 400-speed B&W film, T-MAX 400 is also the world’s sharpest.


(Is this an admission on Kodak's part that Fuji's Neopan 400 was actually sharper?)

Supposedly in stores in December.


.

Today's "Not Dead Yet!" Film Post

Perhaps for the first time this century, there's good news on the "Kodak Processing Mailer" front.

For several years now, Kodak has contracted out their mailer processing. (It seems to have finally come to rest at Dwayne's in Parsons, Kansas.) For a while, it was sent to an address in Maryland and then forwarded to Kansas, and then returned to the customer via some slow mail service. Last year, Kodachromes were taking two weeks or more for the round trip. For a couple of years there, each time you sent off a mailer, you would never know where it would come back from, or how long it would take - except you knew that it would several weeks.

This season, Dwayne's has resumed returning Kodachromes via first class mail.

With the return of spring, I'm shooting Kodachrome 64 again - and the last three batches I've sent to Kansas have come back to me in 6 days, 5 days (!) and 7 days, and have come via First Class Mail (just like the promise made on the mailer, the promise that had been ignored in recent years).

This is the first encouraging news about the survival of slide film that I've experienced lately.

.

Today's "Death of Film" News, #33

this guy

http://www.unicircuits.com/shop/index.php?currency=USD&cPath=27&sort=2a

has a boutique business in Japan exporting hard-to-find photo supplies.

If I ever shoot through my stock of film-on-hand, I'd been idly planning to buy a 100' of Neopan 1600 from him. (To keep my Tech Pan company, I guess.) Now it's "stock up before the hoarders".

>July 20, 2006
>Fujifilm to discontinue black & white bulk rolls, Rembrant V papers

>This is bad news for everyone enjoying the great Fuji Neopan films by "rolling your own", i.e. buying in 30.5m/100ft rolls. We are disappointed to inform you that Fujifilm has announced that they will drop Neopan 100 Acros, Neopan 400 Presto, Neopan 1600 Super Presto and Neopan SS from their product line in March 2007. We expect a lot of stock-up purchasing before that, leading to fears that the pipeline will run dry long before that and will do our best to counter it. We recommend that you stock up well in advance.

>Note that this does not affect the Neopan film supplied ready in cartridges.
> Neopan will not disappear - for now (?).
>
>Rembrant V fibre based papers are also affected.

Today's Story from the A-V Department

Ok, I've been shooting slides for 30 years or so;
by now, I must have close to 10^4 mounted,
with another couple thousand transparencies
that I might yet mount.
(boop)

Kodak stopped production of slide projectors about two years ago.
I've heard that this year they very abruptly stopped support, too.
(boop)

Which makes me a little anxious about being so
deeply committed to what's now essentially a dead medium.
(boop)

So - in addition to stockpiling bulbs and trays for my Carousel projector -
(boop)

I just bought a Bell & Howell "Ringmaster" from OGS surplus, as a backup.
Ten bucks. (It works, too.)
(boop)

Getting it home, I discovered that it's not just one of the models
with sound - - it's actually one of the _recording_ models
(a "779B", from about 1977).
(boop)

Here's a recognition silhouette :
http://www.uaf.edu/library/media/equipment/video/ringmaster.htm
Note the slot for a cassette.
(boop)

Which means that I now have the capability
to record my own synchronized narration onto cassette.
(boop)

I'll have to poke around and figure out how the sync tone works.
(boop)

Roll Film

As the world goes digital, I seem to be moving more and more Old School. Last fall, when I mail-ordered Rodinal, I had to order some film as a make-weight to meet the dollar minimum. So I bought a few rolls of the most obscure film that I could think of that I've actually been meaning to try: Ilford's Delta 3200, in 120.

When that arrived, I dusted off the MF cameras. Rediscovering the Rollei was so satisfying that rather than wait for my B&W results, I stopped in at Photo-Lab and bought the slowest color print film they had on hand:

Feb 11, 2006: 1 roll Portra 100 UC $5.27 + 8% = $5.69
(Nice that I could buy a single roll on a whim, but it's only $3.99 at B&H. It's fully 30% more expensive locally.)

Kodak has stopped selling "DP-12 for 120", but they still *honor* them. So I sent it off to District Photo, 16 day turnaround.
(ALSO just like the old days...)

And seeing THOSE results was so much fun that this weekend I stopped in NYC to stock up on 120.

March 25, 2006 K&M Camera, 1st & 23rd AND Broadway (8.375% tax)
16 asst'd rolls of 120:

2 Reala @ $2.59
4 Pan-F+ @ 2.95
2 Plus-X @ 3.07
2 Tri-X 320 @ 3.24
4 Tri-x 400 @ 3.19
2 HP5+ @ 2.59
2 Delta 400 @ 2.74

(and 4 rolls of the last Agfa APX 400 135-36 @ 2.99)
$67.24 + $5.46 tax = $72.70 total
that's $59.74 for eighteen 120 films ($3.32 each)
and $12.96/ four 35mm ($3.24)

Notice a couple of things:
- I can buy 100-speed Fuji in NY for HALF the price of 100 EK here locally.
- Reala (color!) is CHEAPER than most B&W films.

And note the discovery of "K&M Camera": B&H prices, and open on SATURDAY! (Where has THAT been all my life?)

Addendum:
In other "120" news:
researching the camera ads, we learn that K64 was available in 120 from 1986 to 1996. The final processing run was a few years later (1999?).

A certain 'Old-World' charm

Photo-Lab in Schenectady has been around since 1914, they've been at the corner of State and Erie since the 1930s - since George Eastman was alive. My father used to be their customer. Last year, when Kodak dropped B&W paper, the media called up Photo-Lab in Schenectady for comment.

Most of my photographic life, I've been oriented more toward Albany, or, more typically, NYC. So I don't recall EVER buying anything there: I've always been price-conscious enough that I buy my photographic supplies by the pallet, usually in NY, or wherever I find a bargain. (But come to think of it, I might have brought them a roll for processing, once. On my bicycle.)

I find myself currently woefully low on my inventory of roll film, waiting for my springtime expedition to B&H. But, the other Saturday I happened to find myself in Schenectady (when they were actually open!) and dropped in at Photo-Lab to purchase A Film. A Film for My Rollei.

"One roll of your slowest 120, please".
I paid cash.

I felt like Bertie Wooster:
It was like the 20th Century had never happened.
(Or most of it, anyway.)

(PS: I'm going to send it in for processing on a Kodak mailer.)

What I Believe

William Least Heat Moon’s book Blue Highways notes the Two Commandments of the Hopi Indians: “Try to understand things” and “Don’t go around hurting people.” That's a good start. I wouldn't object much if somebody wanted that in their courthouse.

It's occurred to me that the programmer's question: "Does it scale?" is simply a special case of the Golden Rule. We should conduct ourselves ethically because otherwise, things will be worse for everyone.

"Does it scale?" To take a trivial case: I signal when I change lanes because I want to live in a society in which people signal their lane changes. But that's also exactly why I don't rob banks. And so forth.

Believing falsehoods is wrong. Propagating them is worse. "Democracy," said GB Shaw, "will never be a workable form of government until the common man resents a fallacy as much as an insult."

"Mencken's Creed" comes pretty close to What I Believe:

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty...
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech...
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I - But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

"Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." --Thomas Jefferson

Physicist Steven Weinberg:
http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.

"...I learned that the aim of this conference is to have a constructive dialogue between science and religion. I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. "


Moving from the general to the more specific: My father's Four-Fold Path of the Things That Make Life Worth Living: girls, cars, cameras, and audio.

And continuing the move downscale to the details, some principles that guide my photography:

"The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking." - Brooks Anderson

"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." - Dorothea Lange

"No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film." - Robert Adams

"Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic." - Edward Weston