Donald Traxler's Poetry

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Sayings - IV

ᎢᏳᏃ ᎤᏚᎳᏗ ᎨᏒᎤᏎ ᏐᏈᎵᏗ, ᎾᎯᏳᎢ ᎠᏚᎳᏗᏍᎩᏗ ᎠᎩᎸᏚᏎ.

ᎾᏍᏊ:

ᎠᏚᎳᏗᏍᎩᏗ Ꮭ ᏰᎵᏆᏎ ᎨᏒᎢ ᎠᏑᏰᏍᎩᏗ.

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

Also:

Beggars can't be choosers.

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

My Return to Film Photography - II

Last time I laid out my plans and wrote about one of my thrift-store gangas, the Canon AE-1 Program, an absolute jewel of a camera. A lot has happened since then. I'll start with a few lines about the second of my op-shop bargains, the Canon EOS Rebel 2000.

I do not own any rights to the illustrations above. While the EOS does have some advantages over the earlier AES-1 (it has autofocus capability, and it came with a zoom lens), I do not like it nearly as well as the earlier camera. First of all, it's too complicated for an old guy like me, I prefer the AE-1, which reminds me of the cameras I used in the 1970s. The body of the EOS appears to be high-impact plastic, which makes it lighter than the other camera, but also makes it more susceptible to film-fogging due to radiation. I intend to use it in less-controlled situations where a lighter, more flexible (autofocus and zoom lens) camera may be advantageous. But I'll never love it.

OK. Since the last instalment of this series, I've set up an area in our garage for film developing, put clips on the wall for hanging film to dry, and mixed a set of black-and-white chemicals. I then used the very cramped 35mm changing bag that I have (in the old days I had a 4x5 changing bag, which was a true luxury) to load the decades-old Kodak Gold 200 from the AE-1 into one of my bulky Paterson System 4 developing tanks. This process showed me that I needed a proper church key to open 35mm film cassettes, but since I had left a leader protruding when I rewound the film, I was able to just pull it out. This option does not exist with the EOS, which rewinds automatically. Anyway, I got the film into the can.

My plan was to develop the ancient C-41 color print film in my freshly-mixed b&w chemicals, and that is what I did. I developed "hot," somewhere in the neighborhood of 105°F. The results were, as expected, less than great:

This is recognizably my home workstation, but the 20-plus-year-old film left much to be desired. The camera, at least, functioned as it should have.

Next, I developed the Fujicolor Super HQ 200 from the EOS. Although the film was probably at least ten years newer, the results were much worse. This was because the film had been fogged, either by exposure to light or by some kind of radiation. I could see that there were faint images under the fogging, but there was no way to get a usable one.

Having done all that, I focused on the film-scanning process itself. My Wolverine F2D scanner only handles 35mm. I had some excellent 2-1/4x2-1/4" (6x6 cm) negatives, taken as test shots with my Mamiya C33, so I decided to revisit the process of scanning them on my Canon TS6220 printer, hoping to improve upon previous results.

This, scanned at 600dpi, is a slight improvement over my previous results. Here is a detail, at greater magnification:

But there is still way more to be seen in the negative than in the scan. I clearly need a real film scanner, which will give me much higher resolution.

And here is a somewhat-improved scan of one of the nudes:

I'm a black-and-white photographer. For me, everything is about light and shadow. The light-response curve of film, as opposed to digital photocells, is the reason why I'm doing all this.

(to be continued)

Thursday, January 6, 2022

I Didn't Have / ᎠᏯ Ꮭ ᎤᎯᏎ

ᎠᏯ Ꮭ ᎤᎯᏎ ᏧᎳᏍᎩᏁ ᎠᏗᎧᏗ ᎭᏫᎾ, ᎠᎴ ᏦᎳᏅᏁ ᏩᏗᏅᏗ ᎾᏍᎩᏁ ᏙᏯᏗᏢ.

I didn't have a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of.

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Talk / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ

ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᏍᏗ-ᏧᎬᏩᎶᏗᎯ, ᎠᏎᏃ ᏫᏍᎩ ᏓᎬᏩᎶᏓᏎ ᎠᏕᎳ.

Ars Longa / ᏗᏟᎶᏍᏙᏗ ᎦᏅᎯᏛ

ᏗᏟᎶᏍᏙᏗ ᎦᏅᎯᏛ, ᎥᎴᏂᏙᎲ ᏍᏆᎳᎯ.

Ars longa, vita brevis.

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Best Wishes

Best Wishes for 2022 from the Naked Poet/Photographer.

Saturday, January 1, 2022

My Return to Film Photography - I

I haven't done any film photography for ten or twelve years, and at that time I was just experimenting with lomography. The other thing you need to know about me is that I'm addicted to bargain-hunting in thrift stores. In the photo above, you see two Canon film SLRs: an AE-1 Program and an EOS Rebel 2000. They are both in excellent condition, and only needed new batteries. I would have to call the AE-1 "pristine," because other than a few marks on the bottom plate from a tripod socket, it is like new. It was obviously kept most of the time in its ever-ready case, which is not even scuffed. The AE-1 has a 28mm f2.8 Canon FD breech-lock mount lens, and the EOS has a Canon Zoom Lens EF 28-80mm, F3.5-5.6 II. At today's prices (I checked online at KEH Camera), this is about $500 worth of equipment. I paid $50.

The red object on the table is a Wolverine F2D 35mm film scanner. It was made when Windows 7 was the newest Windows, but it works fine with my Windows 10. I paid about $10 for it some years ago, in another thrift store. On that same table are two small, yellow boxes: fresh Kodak 400 TX. I think you see where this is heading,

Of the two SLRs, the one on the left in the photo, the AE-1, is the one I really love. It's the older of the two models, offering auto-exposure but not autofocus, as well as manual operation. It is built like a tank, dating from the days before everything turned to plastic. When you handle it, you know that it represents Japanese camera-making at its finest.

The camera on the right in the photo is the EOS Rebel 2000. It features both auto-exposure and autofocus, although manual focus is also an option. I plan to use this camera in less-controlled situations. We'll come back to it later.

I do not own any rights to the above illustration, which is from the 81-page AE-1 manual, all of which I've studied pretty thoroughly. I took copious notes, boiling it down to two pages. Quite a few of those pages tell you how to take pictures, rather than about the specifics of this camera. The dimensions of this camera are: 141mm x 88mm x 47.5mm (body only). The weight is 575g (body only), or 810g with 50mm f1.4 lens attached.

To summarize my plan for this project: The AE-1 has an unfinished roll of Kodak Gold 200-24, of which the previous owner used 18 exp., leaving six frames remaining for my testing purposes. Of course, the film expired long ago. The EOS contains Fujifilm HQ 200-24, also long expired, of which 18 frames remain for my testing. I have never done C41 processing. I plan to shoot test shots with both cameras, then hot-develop the film in D-76. After washing and drying, I'll scan samples and post the results here. I intend to document every step of this process of re-entry to film photography in this series of blog posts. Hope you enjoyed this first installment.

(to be continued)