Packing My Bags For The Misty Mountains

 

I’m thinking it is time to take a serious look at the ol’ camera bag’s contents. I’ve been carrying around the same bag for, give or take, 13 years now. It’s has gone through many changes in content over the years as I’ve gotten more, how shall we say, gear.

The bag has a slot for a computer. Originally I kept an HP Mini 1000 in there as my camera PC, I swapped that out for a crappy Chromebook five or six years ago. Once that died, I decided I wanted the ability to do some light work in Lightroom on the go, so I threw in this little HP Stream netbook someone gave me. That thing sucked. It only has 32GB of non-expandable internal storage. It was fine for a while, but when it got so that Windows couldn’t even update due to lack of storage, I just took it out of the bag and threw in my Surface Go 2 when I needed a computer in the bag.

But I wanted something dedicated.

I got my hands on a Lenovo Yoga 11e, and it runs Lightroom. It should fit in the bag, I kind of forgot to check that before I started messing with it.

Anyway, as for the rest of the stuff inside the bag, here we go:

Cameras: Nikon D40X, Nikon FE, Kodak Ektar H35.

Lenses: 28mm Vivitar Wide Angle, Vivitar TX mount 135mm, Vivitar TX mount 400mm, Nikon Nikkor 50mm (came with the FE), Spiratone 135mm, Nikon Nikkor AF-S 18-70mm, Vivitar Macro Focusing 75-300 and a Holga Pinhole.

I’m thinking about dumping the Spiratone in favor of a lens I dug out of storage the other day: 50mm Underground MC, because that lens is awesome and works with most of the filters I’m also going to add to the bag.

The Sony A6000 will be removed from the camera bag and probably just become an everyday walking around with camera. I just picked up this cheap, but neat little 35mm f/6.3 lens for that, and I’m guessing the Yashica “Red Special” FX-3 will become the general walking around film camera, because it’s awesome.

The biggest challenge for this whole bag thing is figuring out a way to store the filters I want to include. I want to spend a day walking around with a camera and doing some stuff, but I’m unsure if I will take the bag or a couple of walking around cameras. Or both, because I really want to use the lens on the Sony a little more.

And therein lies the problem. I want to get my bag set up to handle whatever I might need, and I use a great deal of this stuff pretty frequently, but I don’t want to carry it all around.

Why don’t I ditch the manual lenses film cameras and go with two or three AI zoom lenses, you may be asking. Because I hate them. I did that once. I cleared all of the manual stuff out of my camera bag and took several digital cameras and all of their automatic lenses with the intention of letting the camera do all of the work. It was horrible. I didn’t have a single picture turn out the way I saw it. Everything just felt so sterile and blah. Someone once told me that whatever it is that I do with the light is fantastic. What I worked out that day is automatic doesn’t do justice to my vision.

Anyway, I have more to come. Or rather, more to add from the past, but not tonight. Maybe next week.

Aurora Borealis Shinin’ Down On Dallas

I purchased my first DSLR at the very end of December in 2012. It is a Nikon D40x. I used that thing until I wore the shutter out in August of 2018. I spent an obscene amount of money getting it repaired rather than just replacing the camera.

Ironically, in October of 2018 I got my hands on a Nikon D3100. My roommate from years prior had one and I thought that I liked it when we were in Texas in 2012.

You know what I did with that camera? Not a whole lot. I whip it out and use it occasionally for some darn thing or other, most recently the eclipse in 2024. I like the pictures that it takes, but for some reason, that particular camera never resonated with me.

In May of 2021 I purchased a Nikon D3500. I like that camera, and used it pretty exclusively (for my digital stuff) for a couple of years. I never fully put the D40x aside. It still saw the occasional bit of use, but for a while it was relegated to backup (above the D3100, I might add) use.

After doing some serious soul searching and trying to decide if it was worth keeping all of my camera stuff or offloading it, I decided to do something. That something was to go use every camera that I own. That was an expensive endeavor, since the majority of them are 35mm and film isn’t exactly cheap anymore, but I did it. I also developed almost all of the rolls myself at home, which was fun.

In doing that, however, I realized that for me, the fun is being able to get a good photo with whatever is at hand, and I think that I kind of lost that for a while when I was using the D3500 with it’s fancy lenses and settings and blah blah blah.

There is also the random side effect of accidentally acquiring at least 4 more functional Nikon 35mm cameras, but that’s a story for another day.

Needless to say, the D40x seems to be back to being my go-to camera, which is fun and challenging, since I don’t tend to use automatic lenses with it. I went to the Robert’s Camera store annual garage sale last weekend, and snagged a Vivitar 400mm lens for $5, which I’ve been having some fun with as well. Maybe I’ll put a couple of photos with that lens up here soon.

Trade A Smile With Someone Who’s Blue Now

 I just don’t get people. I really don’t.

I had something big written up here regarding the situation with my life for this. But I could not bring myself to press the “Publish” button…That way drama lies.

This particular range of thoughts will, end up being thrown into my little black book. You know the one…The one that will never be seen by anyone.

To My Amazement, There Stood A Raven

It’s been so long since I’ve sat down and read a damn book. So in the last four months, I have read forty-three books. So I’ve read the fifty listed below:

My “Currently reading” list is going to be where I start 2025:

I’m actively reading The Horns of Ruin (Not pictured. I forgot to mark it as in progress), Storm Front, Midnight in Chernobyl, Reed of God and Wrath of Poseidon. I need to finish The Shadow, Mike Nelson’s Mind Over Matters, Church of Cowards and The Citadel of Forgotten Myths. I’m going to treat those as stand alone books. After that, I’ll finish Prelude to Foundation.

Once I get through Wizard and Glass, I may switch over to audio for the last five Dark Tower books. The Fargo series by Clive Cussler is something I will be done with, after Wrath of Poseidon, so that clears those up.

The Horns of Ruin is a book I snagged once because the cover looked cool. I did the same thing with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Which I actually enjoyed. This one, however, I’ve started a couple of times but still haven’t been able to get it. I just moved it to my Kobo, so now that Storm Front is done, I guess I’ll get through it.

Upcoming for 2025, I would like to get through the following 30-ish books:

• Finish the Dark Tower – Stephen King
• Garrrett, PI – Glenn Cook
• The Martian – Andy Weir
• The Warrior of Mars trilogy – Michael Moorcock
• Relic – Alan Dean Foster
• The rest of the Derrick Storm/Nikki Heat books by Richard Castle
• Make Room Make Room – Harry Harrison

Those are what I want to read, There will be plenty more random, spur of the moment books. As much as I didn’t like the Havana Mysteries books, I might go ahead and read the last few of them. Wheel of time? Eh. I lost interest about halfway through the sixth book a few years ago. That series might be relegated to Audio for the next year.

I don’t know about Foundation. I have eyed the series off and on over the last thirty years, but…Man. I don’t know. I understand that it is supposed to be some sort of sci-fi masterpiece, but do I have that kind of dedication? Meh. Seems unlikely.

I’m tempted to write an elementary school level book report for each book I read in 2025, but I don’t know. That seems like more work than I want to put into this project. I think I’ll give it a go for Midnight in Chernobyl. That sounds like an interesting challenge.

But Gollum, The Evil One Crept Up And Slipped Away With Her

I’ve managed to sit down and start reading the books again. Hopefully this can be a daily thing going forward.

This turned into an insane thing. I finally went through and cleared up my Kindle device list. That involved removing something like a dozen various PCs and old phones from my account. I also saw fit to actually move my Kindle books onto my old, junk-tastic Kindle, because why not.

Which reminds me, I need to see if Calibre will let me sideload my Nook books onto my old, junk-tastic Kindle.

So far, I’ve gotten through The Great Gatsby (weird), and Magic Kingdom For Sale – SOLD! by Terry Brooks. I’m working on Whitley Streiber’s Majestic for the first time since the late ’90s when I was in middle school, and a Ben Shapiro book titled The Porn Generation. Because, well, I’m interested to see what he has to say about that.

My goal is to track this stuff on GoodReads as well. I might link it here, I might not.

We’ll see.

Past The City Limit Sign

[location | home, home on the range]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | tired]

[the sounds of | The gentle whirring of machine fans]

Back in November I said I would take some pictures with both my Nikon F and Minolta SRT-102. Today’s weather was very nice, so I did just that. I’ll develop and scan them (hopefully) later this week.

In the meantime, I have something like a 4 year backlog of entries written up in various documents. I’m working through said backlog now.

Ten Years Have Got Behind You

Recently, I’ve been trying to reconnect with the person I was twenty years ago. The me I liked, as it were.

I need to get back into the habit of regular blogging (I say for the nth time). With that, I may go back to the beginning of my blogging days. Yes. I mean DiaryLand. Obviously, I’ll cross-post, but there will be much lost in translation

I’ve got both of my LiveJournal accounts back under my control, and then there’s blogger. I know I started trying to move my Twitter musings over here too, but I don’t recall how that went.

I know I have a Tumblr and Instagram, and am considering using Tumblr again for my photos.  Although I hear Tumbr sucks because of AI something something.

Biggest drawback to Tumblr is that I cannot backdate posts and fill in the holes like I can on a typical blog platform.

Anyway, I decided to reach out to an old friend, and have been, much to their presumed annoyance, been keeping up via email. I’ve been reading actual books rather than ebooks or doomscrolling on the phone.

Idunno. I guess I should go clean some crap out of my car and get it reorganized.

I Can’t Decide

[location | home, home on the range]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | blah, bordering on depressed]

[the sounds of | The washing machine]

The title says it all, really.

I did a thing at work this week, and if it ends up where my boss thinks it is going to end up, he said I would have some serious freedom to advance quickly in ways that I wouldn’t normally think possible.

Is it bad that I just want my previous position with my previous people back?

Ambition? Screw that.

Although, I did finally figure out a decent way to get my old Location/Mood/Music lines from LJ to look here.

Trying To Remember Where I Left My Shoes

[the sounds of |Train True ~ Blue Oyster Cult]

Here we go again.

Does this begin the cycle where I claim to begin writing again, hold up my end of the bargain for a day or two or a week or two and then watch it die, or do I just do my thing and let it be what will be?

That, really is the question.

I look at life and find myself deeply unsatisfied.

Something I thought I’d never say…Work is fine. Home is miserable. I’ve thought about doing the things to change it, but at the same time, I now have other obligations, and doing what I think needs to be done does bad things to said obligations, which is not okay. I guess go back to the old die young plan is probably going to be the way it goes over because why not. Feelings, feelings are somewhat symptomatic of societal abrasions that conform electric static or something. And General Y. Carville. That one complicates things even more. Some days I think I’d rather go down that path, but at the same time, I don’t know that the gamble there would pay off.

Imperial March

[location | home]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | accomplished]

[the sounds of | Walk This Way ~ Aerosmith]

Today I went to the Children’s Museum to, among other things, take some photos.

Of the several cameras I took, my chrome (?) and black Nikon Nikkormat FTn was the most fun to use.

Given that the lighting inside the museum is hot garbage, I stuck with the Nikkor-H 28mm lens. The max aperture of f 3.5 doesn’t make it anywhere close to the fastest lens that I have for a Nikon, but for what I needed it for, it worked.

I also slapped a cheap Targus flash unit on the thing, but since the camera does not have a hot shoe, I snagged a cheap adapter from Amazon that mounts to the cold shoe and has a plug-in for the built-in sync ports.

Anyway, the camera:

I absolutely love the way the camera looks. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad looking Nikon SLR from the late ’60s, but given this one or the near-identical black one that I have, I’ll take this one any day.

Anyway, here are three photos from the Children’s Museum that I took with this camera:

It has a built in light meter. It doesn’t work well with an external flash unit, so I had to sort of wing it with the Indiana Jones picture, but I feel like the lighting managed to capture the mood of the exhibit perfectly.

This setup has been my go-to for manual 35mm for a few months now, and I expect this trend to continue.

It’s A Wonder I Can Think At All

[location | home]

[have you had a violent moodswing today | accomplished]

[the sounds of | Hollywood Nights ~ Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band]

 

A while back I snagged a lot of “As-is” Nikon SLR cameras on eBay. There were six in all and based on the pictures three of them were actually intact, so I figured at least one would work.

Two of those SLRs were a Nikon N70 and A Nikon N80.

I put batteries in both and they both powered on. The N70, however had a flashing error message on the screen and, allegedly, a steep learning curve.

With that in mind, I went with the Nikon N80 It is compatible with the automatic lenses that I own for the D40X and D3100, so I decided to start with that one.

I went out with my slightly broken 18-55mm lens and over two days shot a very nice roll of film.

Here are some samples from yesterday:

Here are some from today:

The weather was a little better today, but you can only do so well on a dreary mid-west December day.

Also, I’m happy with the developing, which I started doing myself in the kitchen last month.

I plan to give the N70 a spin fairly soon, if I can get the error message to go away. I’ve read that it is a fairly odd ball camera. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to that one.

Waitin’ For The Train That Goes Home

 

I also decided to take my Minolta SRT-102 to the skate park this afternoon. Hilariously enough, some kid recognized that it was, at least, a Minolta.

Anyway, the SRT-102 went into production in ’73 and ended in’75. They come in chrome and black body styles. Mine is black. I used the Rokkor 58mm f=1.8 lens tha came with my SRT-101. Yes, the lens is somewhat banged up. I tripped over a child and the lens hit concrete.

The lens ended up with exactly no functional damage.

Anyway, here are some pictures. They are heavy on the green, but that is what happens when I just kind of wing it with the chemical temperatures during the developing of the film.

Again, this is a dreary November day in the mid-west. I’ll run another roll sometime in Spring or Summer and see what I end up with.

Hoping That The Train Is On Time

Eleven or twelve years ago, I was given a Nikon F 35mm camera.

This was Nikon’s first (I think) SLR in the sense that we have come to know them.

I’ve had it for years but never actually used it until this evening. The lighting was not ideal for using an old camera with no light meter, but my images really didn’t come out too badly.

Time-wise, this was right before sunset on a dreary mid-western November evening.

I’ll take it back out later in the spring or summer and see how things look on much more pleasant day.

Try To Run, Try To Hide

Warning! This is a mostly AI-generated thing.  I am not exactly thrilled with how it was written. 

Have you ever been gifted something, tucked it away, and then forgotten about it? Several years ago, I was given the equipment and chemicals to develop my own film, and it ended up collecting dust for a long time. There were a few reasons for that: I wasn’t actively using film in those days, film can be expensive, and, honestly, the idea of developing it myself was quite intimidating. However, last weekend, a situation forced me to revisit this long-forgotten gift, and it turned into an unexpected adventure.

The Dilemma: Last weekend, I found myself in a bit of a photography predicament. I had taken the wrong lenses for the DSLR I had brought with me, and to make matters worse, I had brought the wrong DSLR for the lenses I had on hand. In my other bag, I discovered a few 35mm cameras with film. One of them was a Canon EOS Rebel 2000 with an automatic lens, so I decided to load it with 35mm film and hope for the best.

DIY Film Development: Initially, I considered sending the film out for professional development, but then I thought, “Why not give it a try myself?” I took my last roll, loaded it into the Canon EOS Rebel 2000, and headed outside to shoot a sacrificial practice roll. That was on November 6th. The next morning, I decided to dive into the world of DIY film development. Little did I know, it would be quite an adventure.

The Trials and Tribulations: If anything could go wrong, it did. The black bag I used for loading the film into the development tank broke, which was a major setback. The film was also slightly exposed to light when I cracked open the canister, leaving me lamenting the potential loss.

Once I managed to get the film onto the reel, I thought I was on the right track. However, it seems the film got off the rails (literally) somewhere along the way, leaving me with another moment of lament.

My containers for mixing the powdered chemicals turned out to be too small, but I was already committed and on a tight schedule, so I decided to approximate the quantities, relying on my best judgment. Since I’m neither a post office worker nor a drug dealer, I didn’t have a scale that could measure quantities as small as I needed. This meant I had to wing it with the powdered chemicals.

Temperature control also proved to be a challenge as I had only one microwave. My chemicals were a little warmer than I would have preferred, but I hoped it would still work.

The Surprise: Once everything was mixed up, I forged ahead with the development process. A fun little side note – the leaky lid of the tank tried to explode off toward the end. Fortunately, I had the foresight to work over the sink, so it wasn’t as catastrophic as it could have been.

Needless to say, when I finally finished the process, I was surprised to see images on the developed film. I scanned them that night, and unsurprisingly, the quality was all over the place.

Here is most of the roll:

In conclusion, my adventurous dive into DIY film development might have resulted in images that ended up with that “badly exposed Polaroid” look—entertaining, but not quite what I was aiming for. Nonetheless, this experience has only ignited a stronger resolve within me to perfect the art of film development.

In the next few days, I’m planning to invest in larger containers and mix the chemicals correctly. I’m eager to give it another shot. I’ve already purchased a couple more rolls of film, allowing me ample room for practice and improvement.

As I reflect on the trials and errors of my first attempt, I’m reminded that mastery often stems from repeated practice and learning from mistakes. The haphazard yet intriguing results only fuel my determination to achieve the stunning, high-quality images I envision. This journey has rejuvenated my passion for analog photography and has become a stepping stone toward honing my craft.