More C-mount Fun

Last week, I got an email asking me if I was interested in cleaning out the remaining photographic items from the basement of a photographer who passed away a couple of years ago.  He was a co-worker, and one of those people that leaves a lasting impression.  He died way too soon, but I would say that he lived a good life and enjoyed his hobbies, his friends, and his work.  His widow had sold the house, and needed to get rid of the last vestiges of things that nobody else wanted.  I accepted the invitation, and said that I would take it all off her hands.  I thought perhaps it would be just a couple of boxes, but instead I filled up my Jeep Cherokee to the brim, and did take it all, as promised. As I carried the boxes up, and consolidated some of the contents, I realized that there were a lot of small items that looked interesting.  The largest item, an 8x10 Seneca View Camera, thrilled me, as I had wanted one for some time, but could not justify buying one.  I hope to shoot with it soon.

My Olympus EPL-1 with the Kern-Palliard 75mm lens.

After I got everything home, I started poring over the boxes, and found some interesting c-mount lenses.  In this case, these are not video lenses, but ones made for 16mm movie cameras. All are quality glass, and this one, the Kern-Palliard Switar 75mm, f:1.9 is a real gem.  It's a precise, well-made Swiss lens, not some cheap Chinese CCTV lens.  There are small holes in the lens barrel so that when one reduces the aperture, little orange dots appear to show you the depth of field!  I have never seen such a thing before. Anyhow, I put it on my Olympus EPL-1 with the C-mount adapter, and am really pleased with the results.  Wide-open, the lens has a very pleasing bokeh, and because it's a short telephoto, it allows me to more easily isolate a subject from its background.




On the Olympus M4/3 camera, the effective focal length of the 75mm becomes 150mm.  It ought to be quite interesting for portraits, which will be my next challenge to try out with this lens.  There were some other interesting c-mount lenses that came with a Bell and Howell 16mm Filmo movie camera.  I'll report on them after I have tested them out.

Shooting manually, naturally.

Last week I received my latest item of affection from KEH.  A really nice Nikon F2S in BGN condition.  Now, in my opinion (and that of others, too), the Nikon F2 is perhaps the nicest manual full-featured SLR out there.  It is also the last hand-assembled SLR sold by Nikon.  My second manual Nikon was an F2 photomic that I purchased used in 2001.  I think I paid between $300 and $400 for it at the time, and it was in much worse shape than the BGN grade F2S that I got from KEH for only $120.    I sold my old F2 about 5 years ago, after it developed some problems that would have cost more to fix than it was worth.  This F2S sports red LED in the viewfinder that are easy to see in dim conditions, and it all works very well.  To give it a first test, I shot a roll of Kodak Tri-X around town.

The infamous graffiti alley.

This old restored F-1 really caught my eye on the way home.
So, the F2 shot an F-1.

Armadillo at the museum.  Natural light.

Bikes stopping for a red light!!!

So, all of my shots on roll one were just fine, and I am really happy with my purchase from KEH.  The F2S will be getting more love soon as I take it out for some fall color this weekend.

Switching Gears...

Most of my recent posts have featured small towns, Ohio, urban landscapes, and so forth.  While I enjoy those road trips and urban scenery, it's a change to go N and visit my daughter and her partner near Marquette.   I grew up in the NW edge of the Adirondacks in New York, and visiting the northern part of the Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula remind me of living there many years ago.  There is a freshness to the air, and a rejuvenation of spirit when I am up here.  Things seem to have more clarity.  

Marquette is "just the right size" for me, and it sits on the shore of Lake Superior.  Not the mining town of a century ago, but it's a far better place than back then.  In fact, it is a far better place than when I first passed through it in 1985.  The downtown is thriving, and lots of new construction is taking place at the lower harbor.   The area is scenic, and although there are many grand views of the wonders of nature, sometimes its is the tiny view that makes a big impression...

It is a big change of gears to go from shooting in N Ohio, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  It takes me a little while to get my brain in sync with my eyes. While I am inhaling that wonderful September air here, feeling "at home" and really seeing what's in front of me in the photographic sense is a more nuanced process.  I am often not pleased with most of my shots because while the area has a special grip on me, the shots that capture what I feel don't come easy right away.  This forces me to slow down.  The moment finally does come when I see something magical and I get it on film or silicon.  Then, it is that moment I know that I am truly in tune with the UP.    This is hard for me to really explain, but I know if you have had a similar experience, you'll know what I mean.  

We will be returning home to Ann Arbor in a couple of days.  Will we come back to live here when we retire?  That is a good question.  There are friends that would be left behind, and all those connections that one makes when living in the same city for 30+ years.  However, I think that this place will give us more peace of mind, beautiful nature, and a way of life that is more beneficial in many varied ways.

January 2007, from Sugarloaf Mountain.

NW Ohio trip, Part II

On the last day of August three of us went down to NW Ohio, primarily to visit Leslie Hunsberger at her store in Findlay. That part of the trip was covered here. Abby, Mike, and I also did some photo exploration of some other small towns and county seats on the way to Findlay and the return trip to Ann Arbor.
Bowling Green - A college town with a main street dominated by Victorian-era storefronts, Bowling Green is a lively place. There are some really interesting shops, and it seems to be an enjoyable place situated on the flat lake plain.



North Baltimore. - We erroneously got off at an exit on the highway due to construction, and ended up in this small town that held our attention for quite some time. N. Baltimore has a small theater, a busy rail line, and some interesting shops and eateries. It also has just enough rust to make it look a little rough around the edges, which means interesting, at least to me.

Taking Route 15 NW from Findlay, we encounted this hulking steer outside a large milling operation. It was definitely worth the stop!

A little further on, we encountered Ottawa.Ottawa - A tidy town with a beautiful statue erected in memory of their firefighters, dating back nearly a century. There is also a nice mural on one of the buildings. I sort of felt like we had gone back in time a bit - that's not a bad thing. Like most of the places  we visited, it is situated along a rail line.

Defiance. I was looking forward to seeing the town of Defiance, and I admit that maybe with that name, I was thinking it would be grand. The downtown main street was extremely busy with many lanes of traffic, probably pulling people out to the strips outside of town. However, the closed upper floors on many buildings  lacked "charm" and it was underwhelming in many ways. That might be an unfair assessment coming from an outsider, so if you read this and live in Defiance, tell me otherwise. The city hall was symptomatic of what I mean. A really ugly upper modern story added to a late 1800s building...

An old window sign in Defiance.

Napoleon -- Napoleon is a charming county seat with a beautiful county courthouse that dominates one end of the town. The Henry County Courthouse just glowed in the late afternoon sun.
Our last stop of the day was in Wauseon. This small town has a LOT of train traffic -- three freight trains went by while we were there. The town has seen better days, like many small towns along the railroads, but the people there are friendly, and we ate at a small cafe that had amazing prices, good friendly service, and great pie...
 
There is a train museum there, too, which has a nicely restored New York Central RR station.

I'll admit that it is sometimes hard to keep motivated to shoot as the day wears on, moving from one town to the next. In a perfect world, I would have some sort of grant (or lottery winnings) that would allow me to spend 24 hours at each place, shooting a lot, have a writer talk to people, and finding the scenes that tell something more about the character of a town and its people. It definitely helps to have others along to keep the enthusiasm from flagging and share the observations that we came away with.
In this climate of polarizing politics, it's important to keep in mind that we are ALL Americans, with more shared values than we believe, and most folks treat you the way they'd like to be treated. Going through the small towns of Ohio and Michigan, and elsewhere in the Midwest is one way to experience the resilience of Americans, and the ways in which we are connected.

Sally Mann visits Ann Arbor

Sally Mann lectured in Ann Arbor this afternoon, as part of the Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series, sponsored by the UM School of Art & Design. This was a much anticipated event for me and a bunch of my fellow photographers. Sally Mann, an accomplished photographer that is probably most famous for her long series of portraits of her kids growing up on their Virginia farm -- spoke to a huge, packed house at the Michigan Theater this afternoon. If you are not familiar with her body of work, visit her web site for more information. I really didn't know what to expect. Photographers that present lectures are often content to let the images speak, and usually have some sort of backstory to tell about the images, the process, or the thought that went into making them. Sally's lecture was journey into her past, growing up in Virginia, and her relationship with the black woman that worked for her family as a maid and caregiver. It was a thoughtful essay on how she basically grow up in a culture that was totally incurious about the blacks in day to day affairs, how slavery and segregation has formed the South (and of course, the North as well)and how she has worked in her own way, to repay the debt to her nanny/family maid. There was a lot to think about from her lecture, and the images she did show us were primarily of her family's maid, and then the wet-plate images she has been making of black men at her studio. She was quite eloquent about her feelings of doing portraits, and how hard it is to come away with images that she is really proud of.

I know that good artists work on their craft every day -- that's how they become great. We don't get to see the poor results from artists -- just the finished works that they are happy to finally show. Since Sally is working with collodion, it's a much more pain-staking process, with many variables to consider. Sally's description of her feelings about working on her portrait work made me mull that around in my head long after her lecture.

This was a very memorable lecture - thought provoking, introspective, and educational. I think that if some us came out feeling a little humbled, then that is a good thing.