I'm Back In The U.S.S.R

 So I finally developed the pictures that I took with the Exakta.

More accurately, it is an Exakta VX IIa with a Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar 2/58 lens:

 The camera and lens were both pretty filthy, but after a decent cleaning, they didn't come out too bad.  Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took:

 

Given what the USSR had to say on the subject of religion, I found it both ironic and satisfying to use my first roll of film on one of these cameras at a Catholic Church.

There Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Blues

 Pictures.  I can actually place pictures in this space now, without paying for the ability to so.  Pity this wasn't a thing twenty years ago, since it caused me to migrate to a different platform.

I spent so much time not posting images to either of my LJ blogs, that I cannot bring myself to ruin the text-based world that I created here.

These posts will be (mostly) cross-posted on the blog that I migrated to, but I will not be bringing those over to this space.

And Bring Him To The Ground

This afternoon I went to an orchard for...Reasons.

Things got interesting when I realized that my D3500 only had something like 15% battery life left and my Nikon FE only had a single roll of film. By interesting, I mean fantastic.  I find limits to be amazing for getting careful pictures.

Here are some of the highlights from the D3500:

 As for the film, I had my Nikon FE with the Nikkor 50mm lens.  Here are some of the highlights from the roll of film:

By "highlights" I mean every picture that doesn't have people in them, because there isn't a single dud on this roll. I really like this camera.  As for the developing, I took care of that myself. No more sending them out!

• Current Location: Home, Home again.
• Current Mood: exhausted
• Current Music: Another One Bites The Dust ~ Queen + Paul Rodgers

 

 

Searching For My Lost Shaker Of Salt

The year is 2025.

I am laying on my couch typing this post on a Lenovo something or other PC. I have the screen flipped almost all the way over and am using the touch screen keyboard to type this.

As I do this thing, I am thinking of an article written by the late Douglas Adams, and published in The Salmon of Doubt wherein he is expressing his feelings about using a palmtop (or something similar) pc while in the bath and can't help but wonder what he would think of writing on something like an iPad (quite the Apple fanboy, he was), something like nine years later.

I vaguely recall writing a blog post on my phone on the side of the road in something like 2009/2010, but I cannot recall when. 

Nope, here it is: https://galeharpring.blogspot.com/2009/11/there-nothing-to-it.html 

That was a dumb smart phone. After that, things got real with the phones and many things were taken for granted.

But that isn't what I came to write about today. I was going to write about how I am currently reading Hunter S. Thompson's book Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail '72 and about how much more sense his writing style makes to me now.

Which is odd, because as I've perused the entries on this old thing, there are quite a few pieces I would almost call Gonzo Blogging.

Much of which predates me reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 2010.

Sweet Home Alabama

 Back in something like 2019, I decided to move this to WordPress for reasons that I'm currently unaware of.  I've become somewhat annoyed and disillusioned with WP over the last year or so. Again, for reasons that I'm currently unaware of.  It probably has something to do with the fact that they want me to give them an annoyingly large amount of cashey-money to be able to post whatever I want to on a blog that I've maintained for twenty-five years, across four (I'm pretty sure) platforms.

 All but one of those blogs I have access to and have considered writing in again in the last year or so, but since I would like to post pictures, I suspect this is the one to start leaning into again.

I would like to migrate everything from WP back over to here by the first of the year, but who knows how difficult it will be.  Easy if I can do an import/export, but more difficult if I have to copy paste.

I'm going to choose to be optimistic.  

Back In The USSR

A couple of weeks ago I came into possession of three Exakta cameras that came from Soviet occupied Germany, and were manufactured sometime in the late '50s to early '60s.  The cameras are hilariously counter-intuitive to use, but the lenses are apparently very desirable and seem to be worth a decently large amount of money if I should decide to flip them.

 I have a roll of film in one of the cameras now. When I finish this, I'm going to walk down the road to a catholic church and finish the roll of film there.

Why?

Because it seems to be very ironic to take photos of any kind of religious establishment, since that really wouldn't have been an option when the cameras were new.

I will post the photos when I develop them.  

There's Got To Be A Twist

 

I was "given" a Nintendo Switch 2 as a gift this past weekend. I'm enjoying it so far, and it is not lost on me that I got my first Switch (Lite) just short of six years ago.

I don't have any pictures to post right now like I did before, but I plan to get some screenshots and write a bit more about it in a few weeks.

When I got the Switch, I was about 2 1/2 years into the life of the thing, so there was a pretty good selection of games to choose from, and I'd say I snagged some good ones to go with it right out of the gate. The Switch 2 was the Mario Kart World bundle and I snagged a copy of Bravely Default, which I enjoyed on the 3DS, and really want the opportunity to go through again. I haven't gotten the chance to actually start that one yet, but I've been playing some Mario Kart and Animal Crossing.

Yes, I started another island.

I re-read my post from my first day with the original Switch Lite, and I must say. I'm disappointed that I haven't managed to play through FFXII yet. I don't use the Lite much anymore, that has been taken over by other people in my house, and the digital versions of games start to get a little weird when you have more than two consoles. I should probably start looking for a cartridge for that one. And maybe, you know, actually play the game.

But I digress.

And forgot what I was going to write.

Oh Your Five (Five) Five Dollar (Five dollar) Five Dollar Footlong

Back in April I went to my local camera store's annual garage sale.  At that sale, I saw a rando lens that had no mount upon it.  Upon closer examination, I saw that it was a Vivitar universal lens.  Not sure what it is called at the moment, but I was given an adapter for a Nikon and purchased a lens to use with it like 10 years later.  

 I want to say that was a 135mm, but I would have to go back and look.

Anyway, I saw this lens...This 400mm lens in a box for $5. I knew I had an adapter for it and would be a fool to pass it up.

Anyway, today I actually got to use it for the first time in a "for serious" kind of way.  I went down to Yellowwood State Forest in Brown county, slapped that thing on my D3500 and decided what there was to see. I came across a VERY cooperative butterfly:

 As this is the first time I really got the opportunity to use this lens, I did a lot of messing around with F Stops to see what worked and what didn't.  Much like my filter adventure from a while back, it's not very forgiving if you get things just wrong.  An incorrect F Stop on a day like this seemed to be an over or under exposure, and it didn't look like there would be much I could do to salvage those images.  Which is fine, that is the purpose of this experiment.

The detail on something as simple as a wooden post (directly above) is outstanding, but the focus is VERY touchy.  I'm not sure if the lens was designed that way, it is a byproduct of it's size, or if it is just because it is old, but if I'm not extremely careful, things get out of focus.  Which is okay.

 Anyway, The lens is great.  Five dollars well spent. 

Why Not Aim Up Into The Sky

While I was at a 4th of July party earlier this evening, I happened to see a dragonfly sitting on a wire.  I grabbed my camera and 55-300mm automatic lens that came with the camera.

I was surprised it was still around when I had that done so I started taking pictures.  That little dragonfly hung around for a while and was hamming it up for the camera.

So that was fun.

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.