Falling into Fall

The weather has finally turned to normal Fall... chilly, dewy mornings, sometimes warm sunshine in the afternoons, and even some real rain here and there.  My brain is in full Fall mode, which means while I'm working on Fall items I'm looking ahead to Christmas projects - gathering ideas and supplies.  

My Super Secret Ornament project for D has been revealed to him, but now he wants me to make a bunch more for his friends, so I'm keeping the project offline until the whole thing is done and shipped out.  I'm happy to report, though, that his reaction was a literal jaw-drop (followed quickly by "how many more of these could you make?")

While at an outing to the State Fair, we came across a calligraphy demonstration.  I noticed the artist used a giant playing card to keep the oils from her hands off the surface of her paper, and also so that her hand would glide while writing.  I thought it was brilliant, so I took a picture to remember this trick for future drawing projects.

Halloween Decorations.  It may feel early, but I host a Halloween themed function in the first week of October, so Halloween is now a season in our house.  These are a few of the decorations, as I haven't taken photos of all of them yet.

Shelob - this year she is in full view of the front door so that trick-or-treaters can get a good look at her.

Aragog - the crate that my mystery gift arrive in is perfect for this one.

Guest Bathroom Infestation - Uhu wall tack and a couple bags of bugs makes for a fun effect!

Halloween Costume Complete!

I managed to make use of a good portion of my fabric stash.  I'd originally thought the wings would be more hodge-podge, but I had so much of the light and feathered fabrics that I had enough to make nice even rows.  I used my peaking sheers to cut the feathers and left them rough edged for a feathery effect.  The construction was much like a quilt... lay out the feathers on the base cape, determine the order, pick up the feathers and make small piles of each row... start with the bottom row and pin, stitch down the top of the feathers.... repeat until all the rows are down.  I did a loose hand stitch to attach the wings to the shirt (so that I can remove it later without damage to the shirt) and I tacked a few feathers around the neck of my shirt (which did not show in these photos, but perhaps I'll get a better shot on Halloween)  The beak is just felt, cut to the shape of my nose, and I used a glue dot to stick it to the bridge of my glasses.  I pinned my hair up in tufts - my goal was Great Horned Owl.  

Next up on my sewing table... a homecoming dress for G (which I'm not allowed to show until the night of Homecoming), then her Halloween costume, then I'm full on into Christmas gifts.  

On photography... I took an afternoon last week to shoot a couple rolls of color pinhole film at a wildlife refuge.  We hit it at high tide, which made for some fun reflections of gnarled tree trunks surrounded by water.  This weekend I have an outing to capture fall foliage with my pinhole group - I hope to roll some 620 spools so I can shoot with my Six-20, but my primary goal is the Graflex Pinhole to get enough shots for an entirely Pinhole calendar.  I'll get all that film back October 20th, which is also a day off, so with any luck I'll be happily scanning away that afternoon and evening.

With that... it's off to the sewing table!

Waskely Wabbit Holes

When I find myself distracted by a single thought that turns into an lengthy adventure (be it virtual, or in real life) I call it running down a rabbit hole.  In spite of our return to a regulated school schedule (or perhaps because of?) I found myself meandering down more than one rabbit hole in the past few weeks.

Project updates:

I have not taken as many notes as I thought I would on my garden this year, but I have drawn the general conclusion that I should stick with small variety tomatoes, and summer squash, and call it good.  I would rather have enough vegetables ripe at once to make a meal than one tomato, a tiny squash, and the beginning nubs of an eggplant.

Plus, if I stick to the basics of two plants, I have more space to try varieties and still have enough standards.  This is an indigo apple tomato, the vine only produced a few, but they were quite colorful to grow.

Rabbit Hole 1:  Missing Scissors

Having realized that there are situations where I could really use a project in my hands to make use of the time I'm spending when I'm somewhere I would rather not be, or someplace with a lot of waiting time on my hands... I decided to pull out a few ornament embroidery projects.  What should have been a quick 5 minute grab-and-pack turned into an hours long (not all at once, but stretched over a few days) search, because although I had two pair of embroidery scissors in my large tote, I wanted my blue handled embroidery scissors to carry in my purse with my portable projects.  I *just* reorganized my craft room last year, and it was really frustrating me to have "misplaced" my favorite and oldest embroidery scissors.  It was when I realized that my entire mini-sewing kit was missing that I had my breakthrough... clearly I left the mini sewing kit - with the scissors - with a recent project.

Another half an hour of searching finally revealed the sewing kit in my Zentangle drawer, which didn't make sense until I remembered that I had been embroidering Zentangle patterns on towels two years ago, and I packed the project in the tangle drawer instead of the sewing area.

Rabbit Hole #2:

G very innocently said to me one night "Hey mom, do you have that video of my first dance recital?"

It only took me about 10 minutes to find the low-quality versions of the videos backed up on my old external hard drive, then another 10 minutes to find the DVD's of all the dance recitals, but that lead me to thinking about the original tapes.  I still have our old camcorder in the closet so that I can "someday" do a digital backup of our tapes.  I decided to look at the tapes in the camcorder case, that's when I realized they were not *in* the camcorder case.  (the memory I had of tapes in the case were of the blank tapes I used to keep with the camera when we used it for recording)    After searching all our movie storage areas I made myself a cup of tea and sat down, and thought... where did I used to keep the Hi8 tapes?  On the shelf with the CD's... we don't have the CD's out anymore because we use digital streaming for music... so the CD's are in those clear boxes in the attic... which is where the tapes were as well!  That portion of the rabbit hole was a relatively short journey...

...but then I spent some time researching how to transfer the tapes to my computer.  I took this photo of the camcorder plugs for a discussion with a friend, who was able to point me in the directly of an inexpensive video capture device, which I now own, and have tested, and it works.

Not that I have time to transfer my movies to digital at the moment, but at least I have the technology.  Hopefully I'll get around to getting this done before the technology changes again.

Rabbit Hole #3

Halloween Costume.  

I needed some brown fabric from my fabric stash, which lead to me realizing that my fat quarters and felt were split among too many boxes of fabric, and I had also held onto some baby flannel for more than 16 years without using it, and if I ever make another baby quilt I'm likely to buy fresh fabric anyway...

...so I spent some time over last weekend sorting and purging my fabric stash, and getting it down to the point where it fits in my existing boxes, with a little room to spare.

In between the rabbit holes, I pulled my big tote out and set back to work on my bird quilt.  My 4 bluebird squares are done, I'm now working on the intricate Bobwhites.

A teeny tiny preview of my Halloween costume.  I have made great progress on the design and most of the cutting was completed last night.  

I will do a full write up of the process with photos of the end result once it is complete.

Rabbit Hole #4

Film photography.

We are considering a vacation out of the country, which means I'll probably not want to pack my Graflex due to it's size and weight, which lead me to poke around online for a light weight medium format pinhole camera.  Holga used to make one, but as they are discontinued the cost of a new "collecters" item is outrageous.  I did notice online that some people made mods to convert regular Holgas to pinhole, and I have an extra Holga with a broken shutter, so I briefly considered that option... only to set it aside because that old Holga doesn't have a tripod thread.  So then I looked at my newer Holga to see if it had a tripod thread...

...which is when I discovered I loaded film in it about 5 years ago and haven't finished the roll.  So... another camera to toss in my bag for the next outing.

As to the lightweight pinhole option... I will likely bring the 35mm panoramic pinhole, and I'll see if the new 120 panoramic camera (which is currently in production) might be light enough to carry.  If it feels too heavy for international travel then I might look into the Diana pinhole, or something from the Schlaboratory.  

On film photography...

My E-6 came back slightly underexposed, but still totally usable.  I'm hoping to get another outing in this week that should give me more varied subjects to shoot at a leisurely pace.

Ebey's Landing, Velvia 50, Graflex Pinhole

Projecting Projects

Although I knew about the expected eclipse on August 21 (it was partial here, about 94% coverage) I had not made plans for it due to the inundation of prepping for our travels.  I figured I might pick up viewing glasses at a local store at some point, but didn't write it down, so I didn't get out before the glasses were gone.  As a result, I spent a little time on the 20th creating different eclipse projectors based on the instructions for NASA.

I actually had a fun time playing with boxes, tape, and foil... I made several sizes so that we could test each one and decide which combination of box/hole size worked the best.  I discovered that the smaller the box, the smaller the hole needed to be in order to get a sharp image.  Also, while the largest box made the largest projection, it was also further away from our eyes.  

In the end, the cereal box was everyone's favorite.

We had meandered down to the lake to watch the eclipse and came across some natural eclipse projections along the way.  Also, our neighbors shared their viewing glasses with us, so we were all able to view the eclipse in various ways.  It made for a fun science filled morning.

I've been listening to the Film Photography Project podcast while working, which sometimes will prompt/inspire/instigate me to dig around in my gear and look at my old gear.  My most recent digging brought out my Polaroid Land camera, which uses pack peel-apart film.  I hadn't realized that I still had several boxes of no-longer-manufactured Polaroid film, which can be used for emulsion lifts.  Fuji makes* replacement pack film, but their emulsion lifts like a plastic transparency, rather than a gooey emulsion that adheres the way Polaroid does.

*thinking about emulsion lifts led me down a rabbit hole on the internet where I discovered that Fuji has also stopped making pack film, and the Impossible Project has no plans to re-make pack film, but I found an online darkroom supply store that apparently plans on remaking the pack film.  I wrote to them to ask about it, they say they are "still on it".  So, fingers are crossed that my camera will not become entirely obsolete after I finish my current film packs.

Scrapbooking!  I made progress!  Significant progress!  I'm all the way up to mid-November 2004 in the ephemera album and cruising!

More film photography! 

As I see that we are on the brink of a weather turn, I thought it would be nice to take advantage of the still-warm summer days and have a family outing.  We all needed the fresh air and change of pace, I think.  I did some reading and researching and found a location that was a ferry ride away (which feels like a mini-vacation) had minimal parking and facilities (which means less crowds) and lovely views on Puget Sound.  As I wandered the length of the beach working pinhole scenes, D meandered around taking some photos of his own (and discovering hidden pieces of art along the trail) while G kept herself occupied playing with her own camera and her guitar.  

Shot with my Graflex Pinhole, 3 second exposure, Ilford Delta 100

I came away from the outing with 2 rolls of 120 B&W, 2 rolls of 120 E-6, and one roll of 35mm panoramic B&W.  While I want to concentrate on larger format, I have a drawer full of 35mm film that needs to be used or tossed, and considering the variety of cameras I have to play with... it seems a waste to toss it.  So I've resolved to take a 35mm camera with me just about everywhere I go.
As for my shooting, the B&W looks to be properly exposed and developed, although I'm still getting some strange grains on my film every so often (not every frame, just once in a while)  My E-6 is off to the lab and I will pick that up next week.  My fingers are crossed on that, because although I did calculate the reciprocity correctly this time, my lightmeter was set to 100 instead of 50 for the initial exposures.  However, ISO 50 reading was only about a half second off ISO100, and every exposure was a guesstimate 2-3 seconds, so it's not precisely scientific anyway.  

My super-secret project is coming along, I've made it past a couple of roadblocks and set aside a couple of ideas that are just not panning out.  My plan is to get those completed soon so that I can then concentrate on my Halloween costume.  

Post-travel balance

Last week was our much anticipated and planned-for family trip to attend DCI and watch D's performance in his almuni corps..  It was not what I would call a "family vacation", in that D had rehearsals or performances scheduled for the entire week, and as a family we only spent about 24 hours together without a performance schedule.  However, while D was busy with his schedule, G and I filled our time with museums, concerts, Broadway shows, and other tourist attractions.

I dubbed it the "Magical Mid-western Music and Cultural Tour".  G's friends made us t-shirts.  It was awesome.

As with any trip, the time leading up to departure was filled with prep work, which diminished any hope of fun project time.  Throughout the prep and during travel, however, my mind's wheels were ever-turning with new ideas on projects, and perhaps more importantly... organizing my thoughts for the projects I already want to do.

Some are travel related, and I would consider to be extremely long-term projects that I have longed to have come to fruition.  

After contemplating my extensive smashed penny collection (which dates back to my early childhood) I've now come up with a display plan: create a silhouette of a state as a background, mount the pennies from that state on the background, and frame.  (alternately I could paint the state on a canvas and adhere the pennies, but I'm not sure how well they would stick)  

For my pin collection... stamp various travel stamps onto canvas, decoupage/paint over the stamps with sepia-toned paper/paint (to diffuse the sharp stamps and give the canvas an aged look) and pin the pins to the canvas, perhaps grouped by geographical location.

The idea of geographic groupings is beneficial in two ways.  A: it gives the display a sense of how much time or how many visits I've had to a particular location.  B: it makes it easier for me to check the collection over before I go to visit that place again, to avoid duplicates (this is more of an issue with the pennies than the pins, but helps in both cases)

I also have a patch collection, which will likely end up being on some kind of quilted wall hanging, but I don't have a particularly clear vision of how I want to do that, so the wheels are still turning (though I'm making notes)

I've also worked up an idea that is a grand surprise for D and a few of his friends... not that I have a wide audience but I will keep it under wraps until it is complete and presented. But I am incredibly excited about this project and it will probably jump ahead in my project queue.

While the beginning of our trip was packed with activities and events, the latter days had a lot of "hurry up and wait" moments.  I took advantage of these long pauses in activity to begin to organize my thoughts for all these project ideas - including projects I've already started - and I've listed them out in a document that is accessible through my computer and my phone.  I've had too many days where I've had some blocks of time to work on something only to draw a blank as to where to place my energies... and then by the time I go to bed an idea comes to me and I think "Oh shoot, I could have gotten that one thing done!"  I'm hoping an updated list will help avoid those lost opportunities.

I've also implemented lists for household projects... I dub these "need to do's" (as opposed to my projects "want to do's")  I've often found myself so easily consumed by the need to do's that, by the end of the day, I have no time for want to do's, because I feel like if I don't do the need to do's now, I'll forget to do them later.  By writing them out, though, I can read them all over, decide which ones *really* need to be done now, and assign the others to a waiting list... giving me a little more balance with my time to fit in some want to do's.  As I complete my typical post-trip need to do's (laundry, unpacking, etc...) I'm lining myself up to jump right into my want to do's.  Fingers are crossed that this blog will showcase great leaps of activities in the coming weeks.

Scrapbooking and Pinhole

When it comes to hard copy scrapbooking, I work in stages.  I spread out my images or ephemera, figure out the background color for the pages, then start to poke at the layout, add in decorative elements, make a note for the journaling, then stack the finished pages in a 12x12 holder.  At some future point I will sit down and have one long gluing session for all the finished pages, and that part of the project is relatively portable in case I want to emerge from the art room and glue pages while watching a movie in the other room.  

One of the challenges I face when walking away from my hard copy scrapbooking for too long is that it is sometimes difficult to remember where I left off, or what my intentions had been with the pages I was making.  This is made especially difficult if I've scooted the unfinished pages to the side to use my table space for some other quick project (birthday cards, plant markers, mouse ears... )  It is because of this that I tend to let the scrapbooking sit for long periods of time... because even if I could steal 10 minutes for the art room, my work space is usually so disheveled that it would take me 30 minutes just to figure out what I could spend my 10 minutes doing.

Over the past couple weeks, though, I managed to take enough time out to re-organize my work space and remind myself where I was (by laying out all my "finished - not glued" pages) and where I was headed with this album.  

Post-it notes are helpful, as my mind gets scattered in between project times.

So, headway has been made in layouts, and I now have a larger stack of pages-to-be-glued in the 2004 ephemera album.

My other challenge is that I'm still trying to *only* use the paper and supplies that I already have, which is at once limiting and liberating.  Limiting because I know that manufacturers are constantly putting out amazing and adorable page accompaniments; liberating because I'm not spending hours meandering craft stores looking for adorable and amazing page chachkies.  At any rate, I really want my ephemera collection to speak for itself and to be the decorations surrounding the photos to complete the story.

I had a pinhole outing which, at the time was quite satisfying... I felt very self-congratulatory that I'd simplified my process and enjoyed the experience of slowing down my compositions, calculating the exposures, and being "in the moment".  Then I went to drop my film off at the lab and it was finally brought to my attention that I'd exposed two rolls of color negative film, not the two rolls of color slide film that I had calculated for.  With all the effort I'd been trying to put into my process, this was a seriously ridiculous bit of oversight.  The wrappers for the film are not even the slightest bit similar (Kodak is bright yellow all over, Velvia is silver and blue)  I chalk it up to having not regularly used slide film in well over a decade, also that other than the two rolls I shot in May, I had not ever used 120 sized slide film at all.  So the wrapper alone didn't trigger any realization of the film type other than "this is not Ilford, so this is color".  I just didn't bother to read the film label and ran on the assumption that the only color film I had was slide film, forgetting that I'd tossed the last of my Kodak color negative film in my camera bag along with the B&W.

Thankfully the exposures were not horribly off... I basically exposed for the film speed, but without the proper correction for reciprocity failure, so everything is a little underexposed (outside of my 5 second exposure, which was close enough to correct).  And some of the images were experimental anyway... I'm rather happy with how this abstract came out:

I set up the tripod on the deck of the ferry on our ride from Kingston to Edmonds.  There are actually small boats on the water in this shot, but the action blurs them.  The San Juan Islands are the blur on the horizon.

After still contemplating my 2018 calendar, I ran a quick unscientific poll online to see how people might feel about a calendar with a mix of B&W and color images, and the unanimous answer was "Do it!  That would not be weird at all!" I also have more pinhole images than I had realized, because I'd forgotten that I filed my scans from my vacation with my vacation photos on my hard drive, not with the rest of my film scans.  I need to make a final decision on how I want to organize my files... either keep all the scans in the film folder and make a note in the vacation folder that there are also photos on film, or vice-versa.  I haven't decided which way makes more sense, but consistency might help me to feel less scattered.

My goal is to get a few more good pinhole outings in before the end of the summer.  The challenge is finding someone who has enough patience to hang around while I make long exposures.  While I have no problem with the idea of going out by myself, it is probably not the safest choice for me to wander down distant hiking trails lugging camera gear all alone.  

Rapidfire 6 Week Update

I've had this needling feeling in the back of my mind reminding me that I was behind on blogging, but I didn't realize it has been over a month.  I wondered how I could have possibly fallen that far behind, then I scanned back through my photos for my recap and realize I truly have been quite busy, and I've accomplished quite a lot over the last 6 or so weeks.  So here is a rapid fire update:

Cherry Creek Falls - pinhole shot

In early June, D and I participated in a couple of weekly step challenges, so we opted for hikes instead of trips to the gym.  One hike brought us to Cherry Creek Falls, where we paused for about an hour so that I could grab some pinhole shots of the falls.  My original goal for this year had been to collect enough color images to do my 2018 calendar in pinhole shots, however as the summer is now halfway through, I have my doubts that I'll have 12 good images to use for this year, so I'm contemplating another theme for 2018, and perhaps 2019 will be pinhole.  It all depends on what kind of outings I can get in before October.

LOTR and embroidery

I've been taking advantage of the longer days to be outside in the yard for as long as I can, which leaves me less time for evening crafting before I'm too wiped and need to go to sleep.  When I do sneak in an evening or two, I have fun with it.

ALL THE POTS.

Around the end of June we finally finished planting all the plants.  For now.

Lake Union Panoramic Pinhole

I made it to the June meetup with my pinhole photography group, which took place around Lake Union in Seattle.  It turned out to be the hottest day we've had this year (and is still the record thus far for the summer) and I found that my whole "I don't feel like shooting much in 95 degree heat" feeling is as strong in the states as it is in Jamaica, so I didn't shoot the volume that I thought I might, but I'm pleased with the images I did grab.  I finished up the roll from my panoramic pinhole camera, and my fisheye plastic camera (which had 9 year old film in it!) and ran my first roll of E6 through my Graflex pinhole.  With the help of a new app I found that calculates reciprocity failure I managed to get my first roll of E6 exposed correctly!

THE FOUNTAINS ARE DONE!

4 YEARS, so many changes, so many new ideas, so many "oh, look what the fountain store has in stock now!" moments.... I have a difficult time finding the words to describe how elated I am that they are DONE.

Embroidery on the deck

In honor of my mom's birthday, I parked myself out on the deck to work on my bird quilt (from the pattern I inherited from her mom, using the thread I inherited from my mom)  It was a lovely evening.

Photo Editing - this is from Kauai in January 2017

Due to having to drive G around to various things this summer, I've had some "sit in the coffee shop with your laptop" time, which I've been using to catch up on photo editing.  I'm nearly through with our winter trip to Kauai, which will almost bring me up to speed with all my DSLR because I've hardly shot anything this year outside of birds in my yard.

The garden is coming along nicely

Most of the vegetable starts that I bought from the local super-fancy-expensive nursery either wilted away or have simply been stunted.  The big plants you see are all from other plant stores... so next year I won't bother with the super-fancy place at all.  

A view from the back side of the garden

It might be difficult to see, but I have three laser-cut hummingbird sculptures on the wall of my garden... I bought these in the summer of 2012 and have been waiting to find the right home for them ever since.  The pots in this shot are home to three of my tomato plants that I started from seeds and thought would not survive, but these guys just didn't give up... so here they are, caught up to my other starts in height and starting to show signs of bearing fruit.  

Plant markers

I had the idea for these plant markers back in May, and didn't finish them until last week.  Unfortunately the hot glue didn't hold on the markers that were hit directly by the sprinklers, so perhaps next year I'll figure out something that lasts longer.

In scrapbooking, I just have one or two photos to add to my 2011 digital album, and my 2012 photos are nearly all edited.  I just got back to the 2004 ephemera album last night, where I'm working my way through a set of vacation photos from late October of that year.

These are the highlights of how I've spent my crafting time over the last month and a half, in between end-of-school-year events, hosting out-of-town family over holidays, and helping to teach G to drive. I've also enjoyed some much needed meditative down-time in my yard, fitting in yoga in the mornings and lots of sipping coffee while bird watching.  Sometimes I get more than birds in the yard... like this morning's visitor...

Most mornings I sit on my porch with my coffee in one hand, and my camera with the big zoom lens in the other.  As a result, most of my photo shooting this summer has just been of wildlife in my own back yard.  With the combination of busy week-day schedules and a great desire to just... *be*... in the yard, we've had relatively few excursions outside of this immediate view this summer.  On the one hand that means I probably will not fulfill my goal of having a large enough variety of pinhole photos to create a calendar this year, but on the other hand I'm hoping this means I might catch up on editing and posting to flickr, and if I don't collect enough images by the fall then I'll be well armed to come up with a different theme using my digital shots this time around.

Project Updates in Gardening, Stitching, Scrapbooking

My blogging has waned as the weather turned for the better this spring.  The sunshine and promise of warmer temperatures has been inspiring me to keep my desk time to a minimum so that I can maximize time outside to wrap up the largest parts of our now 4 year long yard renovation.  I'm happy to report that I met my goal of getting my properly built vegetable garden area in place as of Mother's Day Weekend.  

I had a tomato garden last year, which sort of tapered off from the boardwalk/patio path down to the yard below.  D finished building up a retaining wall for me on the far side of the garden earlier in the spring, so that by May 13th I was able to amend the soil and put my vegetable plants in the ground.

Tomato, cucumber, snap peas, eggplant, jalapeno, strawberries, and several squash is how we started.

Over the last couple weeks, while the plants stretched their roots in their new home, I worked on tidying up the final details of the surrounding area while also completing some larger projects involving the water feature and planting several pots around the yard.

My original intention had been to put at least some of my herbs into the garden space, however we overbought veggie starts, and I'm also not sure of which end of the garden I want to put perennials, so for now the perennials will stay in pots around the yard.

Herbs and strawberries on the left form an arch around the sprinkler control boxes, which covers the boxes but leaves easy access.  This weekend I'll be adding the drip lines to the pots.  The garden box against the brick wall houses our lettuce and fennel... I've been calling this the salad bar.  I might consider moving the strawberries into this box if we decide to put the lettuce in the big garden next year.

About 3 weeks of growth in the garden, the strawberry pot is protected from birds with a pop-up bird net, the tomato, cucumber, and snap peas have supports to grow, and my decorative rock and lavender is in place along the wall.

All this extra time in the garden has left my hands tired by the end of the day, so my embroidery has slowed.  I have completed two of my 4 Eastern Bluebird blocks, and am close to finishing block#3.  

As the yard work turns from projects to maintenance, I should have more time in the evenings to get in some stitching.

In the world of scrapbooking... my project room has been overlayed with short projects and supplies which need to be straightened and put away before I can get back to progressing on my ephemera albums. My digital scrapbook for 2011 is nearly complete (I need only to pull one still photo from a video clip and then spell-check the whole album and it will be done)  I've begun collecting and organizing the digital photos for the 2012 album.  The process is a little slower for this year because I  began shooting more film in 2012, and including photos from those cameras involves a bit of digging through and organizing old scans.  My current plan is to proceed with the standard annual albums until I am "caught up", then go back and do the vacation albums.  I should have more consistent blocks of time this summer to work on them, as I plan to find a cozy coffee shop where I can plug away at it while G is in her driving school.

An Unexpected Mystery Envelope #5

I received another mystery envelope on Saturday, which was again at the 2 week mark from the last envelope.  Photos and summary are after the jump to help avoid spoilers.

Clunky Pinhole focus and tilt/shift test - and additional photos

When I went out to do my first field test of the Kodak Six-20, I also brought along Clunky, the Graflex pinhole, to do a little testing and shooting.  All of my pinhole images thus far have been on the soft side, and while I enjoy the dreamy look I'm getting, I was curious to see if adjusting the focus might make a difference on sharpness.  Up until now I had been shooting with the lens set to the infinity stops, and the infinity symbols lined up on the rails:

The next image was shot with the above infinity setting, and the image below that was shot with the arrow at the top pointing to the number 10.

Shot at infinity

Shot at "10"

While the second image is zoomed in slightly compared to the first, I didn't see any significant difference in the overall focus.  Here is a side-by-side comparison of a section of each image.

As I don't see a hugely significant difference, I will likely stick with the infinity setting in future shooting.

In addition to the focus, I was curious to see what result I might get from using the tilt-shift features on the camera.  I set the camera in a static position with my tripod and made three exposures of the same scene using each of the possible settings on the camera;

Straight shot

Shifted shot

Tilted shot

Shifting the lensboard to the highest position brought the view much higher, but it also cut the corners of the bottom of the film frame slightly.  The shot also came out lighter, which could either be because I lifted the pinhole out of the shade into more direct light, or the light reflects differently inside the camera body at this angle.

The tilted shot did not change the framing significantly, but it does seem like the foreground is in slightly sharper focus in the tilted shot as compared to the straight shot.

Beyond the focus testing, this outing was also an opportunity for me to run a roll of B&W through the new film back for the Graflex to see if the spacing on the winder is accurate.  I did get 8 evenly spaced shots on my roll, with a good lead on the film that would allow for color rolls to be loaded into a C-41 without fogging the first shot.  So this camera back is now designated as my color film back.

With the testing done, I used the rest of the film, along with a color roll, to capture some scenes around the gardens.  

Kodak Six-20 First Field Test

We had a lovely break in the weather last week, so I took advantage of a long lunch time and headed out to a local botanical garden to field test my recently acquired Kodak Six-20.

The Kodak Six-20 takes 620 film (hence the name), which is 120 film on a 620 spool.  After having made a spectacular mess whittling down a roll of 120 for my initial focus test of this camera, I decided this method of film-spool-adjustment was not the best use of my time.  Also, that spool stuck towards the end of the roll, and I wasn't sure if it was my own uneven sanding of the roll, or a defect of the camera.  I turned to Film Photography Project's website for a better solution, and not only found their 620 spools, but my searching also brought me to a video demonstrating how to re-spool 120 film onto a 620 spool.  I'm good at loading film for development in the dark, so I thought this looked like the solution for me.

Re-spooling a roll of black and white took a fraction of the time that adjusting a 120 roll did, with no mess.  Thank you FPP!

The camera has a fixed focus, with F/stops ranging from f/8 to f/64, so in order to maintain maximum depth of field I decided to shoot at f/64 for the whole roll.  In my focus test I'd determined that I would meter scenes with my DSLR at f/22 (the smallest f/stop I have to work with) and then adjust the time by a few stops to reach the proper f/64 exposure.  I've since rediscovered my grandfather's light meter, and since it has f/64, all I need to do is meter the scene with it and I'm done.

No batteries required.

The viewfinder took some getting used to.  Rather than putting your eye up to it like a DSLR, you have to look through it from a distance and almost relax the focus of your eyes (similar to looking at one of those "magic" posters with the hidden pirate ship in the pattern)  The viewfinder is also rather square, so the end image is larger than how the scene lines up with the viewfinder.  In future outings I'll try to get a shot with my cell phone to compare to the end negative.

Another quirk to this camera is that the tripod mount is not flush with the camera body, so when trying to attach it to a standard tripod head the camera wobbles a bit in the horizontal position, and does not stay steady in a vertical position.  I'd showed this to my dad while I was visiting him, and he suggested I cut a thin piece of craft foam into a square, with a hole in the center for the tripod screw - the foam helps fill in the space between the camera body and the tripod plate. I happened to still have half a sheet of 1/4" craft foam leftover from making all those custom mouse ears, so I cut a large chunk to keep in my bag for stabilizing cameras. 

Craft foam and gaffer tape, I'm ready for anything! 

I loaded the camera with Ilford 400 speed B&W and brought it along with me to the local botanical gardens for a test run along with my Graflex pinhole (which will be written up later). My exposures ranged from 1/2 a second to 10 seconds, which I was able to do without camera shake thanks to my cable release. The film counter lines up well, and I have 8 neatly spaced shots on my roll of film.    The edges are a little burned from light leaks, so I might want to consider taping the edges of the camera prior to my next outing.  But overall, I'm very happy with the clarity of this glass.  I also noticed that the film became more difficult to wind right at the end of the roll, but didn't stick as badly as it did on the first test, so I believe the FPP spools should work just fine for me.

The closest fern was roughly 3 feet from the camera.  Given the sharpness of the ferns in the back, I think 3 feet is just on the closest edge of the focus for this lens at f/64.

Three heron statues, I cropped this shot in a bit to cut out a light leak in the lower left corner.

One of the many waterfalls in the botanical garden.

Using the hand held light meter made for a far more streamlined, and more relaxing, shooting experience.  It allowed me to concentrate more on composition and the other tests I wanted to run without adding calculations of exposure adjustments to the mental mix.  In my next outing I will be sure to tape the sides of the camera to avoid light leaks, and will probably play with varying the f/stops to play with the depth of field a bit.