O' yes. Still kicking!

A short timelapse and update, mostly from friday:

- Went to bed around 01.00 (am that is…)
- Woke up at 04.15 (that’s still am folks)
- Dipped my face in some cold water to make my eyes see things
- Grabbed hold of my pre-packed stuff and went to the car
- Drove off to the airport
- Got on the plane in due time
- Arrived Peterhead quite a few hours later after changing planes, taken a few taxis and drinking some bad coffee
- Found the boat and got on board
- Got some food, as I was very hungry by now
- Supposed to go to work, but ended up on the sofa… 
- Could not sleep
- Went down to do some work anyway
- Sleep

The view from the island called Godøya, towards my home town. The town is hidden behind the mountain. You see the one with the quite characteristic profile, I guess? It's the "Sukkertoppen", if since you so kindly asked.

Today, saturday, has been a bit better. I’m still sleepy though, so will make an early end of this day as well if possible.

Ona. The lighthouse and the extra lighthouse. You see one serves one function, the other serves another and different function. Has to do if you need to sail in, or if you're just passing by far out at sea. There's quite a difference between the two things. Obviously...!

I re-tuned my guitar

Not The Guitar, but the old g# electric one. You know the short thing constructed, and in a few cases made by, Øivind Fjell over here in Norway. A lot of great musicians own one, but you rarely see it played on stage by some hot shot guitar player. That's probably why I loved to see this then, Unni Wilhelmsen playing the old Joni Mitchell tune "Both Sides Now" a few weeks ago on norwegian TV2, using one of her g# guitars. Check the link folks. There's some lovely music in there to please your ears.
She's got quite a few of them small g# guitars, mind you, but then again she's a guitar player. A good one as well, she is. Just saying. 

I only got one of these guitars, but that's enough for me, being more or less only a sofa player.
I also got a real guitar. I got a few real guitars, to speak the truth, but the Real Real guitar would be the Martin D-35. It's The Thing, you see. Maybe not the most common Martin, as the D-28 would be the one usually considered by musicians to be The Thing. 
Anyway, they look and sounds quite similar, but they are not the exact same construction. There are some noticeable differences there on the backside, as you might expect. That's where the D-35 is quite different to all the other D's. Even though I think the D-35 got a wee bit more power in the low end of things you can still hear that they are related to each other. 

And oh yes, I got a short thing to show you on the D-35 as well, if you please would let me? Do you happen to know Paula? Me neither, but I have been known to like her playing a lot since I discovered her "Guitar Shop Tour" around Britain a few years ago. She mainly travelled around, visiting guitar shops to play different guitars taken straight from the shop walls. Played each song from her then new album "Fingers and Thumbs" she did. Well, go ahead and check them all out, but you will have to begin right here on "Back to the Start" . Recorded inside the walls of "Vintage'n Rare Guitars" down there in Bath and everything. On E.C's old Martin D-35 she played, on that true tone-machine from the 60's. I hope you got better sound on your computers than I got on mine...!

Well, I just wanted to show you why I re-tuned that small g# guitar into something more open and lifelike. Every now and then I fall into the open tuning pit, and then I usually stay there for a while. Makes your brain work on into music in a totally different way, it does. Or makes me think I can't play at all... 
These two girls I just showed you both play a lot in open tunings. As Joni Mitchell used to do, as well, back in the days. 

A snap from one of those totally messed up films I told you about a few days ago. The ones bathed in that old and exhausted fix, you know. Well, it adds a certain effect to the frames at least. I'm not convinced it's all to the best though. This example looks quite good I must say. It's the old cathedral of York, as it happens. Big thing, it is.

I'm leaving tomorrow, as you probably know if you follow this blog a bit. 
Packing my bag just now, just so I don't have to use the whole evening doing that. 
The cat has come back in after spending the night outside with the fur full of snow, now laying there on her blanket doing what she knows the best. Being deep asleep, that is. 
I woke up early, drove my wife off to work as I might need the car during the day. Then I went home to re-tune my guitar and get the coffee on. Now it's time to sit down by the window, have a good cup and look out there on the fjord while deciding what pictures to post along with the words today. 
Life is good on days like this. All quiet, all good. Except for the weather though, but I have given that bit up for a while. I think.

And another one. From the same film. I think this is one of the closures up there in the old part of Edinburgh. Snapped in the middle of the night it is. Probably after a visit to the pub, I guess. 

Just got my ticket in hand

It's about time again, I heard this morning. Time again, to get out of the house and away to get some work done out in that big blue. Looks like I'm flying to Peterhead, which is located in Scotland up there north of the English people and quite a bit south of me. Someone was whispering words about a job somewhere east of there, which would be the North Sea I would say.
I did, however, get an extra day at home though. My scheduled day to get out would normally be thursday, but as nothing seems to be normal anymore the ticket is not valid until early friday morning. Botheration...

A true pixel collector with his tripod and all sorts. He might even got a snap or two, for all I know. He's a good lad though, and had his first snap appearing as the "Picture of the Week" inside the local newspaper a couple of weeks ago and all. And a great shot it was as well, just saying. I might show it to you another day, or at least in a different post. This one is getting full of all other sorts.

In the meantime I show you these. It's something that sticked on a film from that other day, quite a few weeks ago now, when the waves were good and the weather cold. The Day We Went Out West to have a good look at it all, when one of my german cameras filled up with sleet and snow which in turn made a flood of water to make the film stick inside... and such. That was the day I'm talking about. 
The other german rangefinder was not too troubled with issues like that, and the film came out in one piece and all. 

See? Here comes not the sun, but rather a quite heavy bank of snow rolling in from the sea. Together with the waves, that is. And the wind. And one of my cameras flooded, and we had to return to the car. As you know from before.

The weather have it's ups and downs today as well. Snow banks rolling in from the sea, but no wind as for yet. It could suddenly turn and get worse, though. I say worse, because it always seems to get worse. I see the sun is shining down outside here and down into the fjord right now, but it's just that same old trick again. Believe me, it's only going to get worse. Until it's getting better, that is... in a few months from now. Hopefully.

And again. A bit closer to the island it had come, and this was the last we ever saw this day to be honest. The rest was just all white. Kid you not!

The Fishermens Villages of Eastern Yorkshire

We were driving a bit around, as you know, when we were visiting old Britain not too long ago. We have seen some pieces of it by now, but never have had the time to have a good look at the north eastern parts of England. As you know we were visiting the tidal island of Lindisfarne in that area, and from there we drove south a wee bit, into one of them towns not too far from the coast. Middlesbrough in this case. Nothing much to see there, but I found a nice pub to be honest.
The only reason we visited this town was that my step daughter is studying right there, at Teeside University for the moment, and that we wanted to take her for a drive a wee bit down the coast to see things. Take in some fresh air and such. You know, things the youth don't really see the point in doing.
As she was in the middle of a project these days, she brought her camera along as well. It's just that the youth are not always caring about bringing everything needed. Not to many snaps were taken until she proclaimed that the battery inside the pixel collector she brought along, were dead. You know... black screen, nothing working anymore. So much for her school project then... Well, as she got a step father carrying cameras in plenty, she got out of the situation in a kind of good way. I also had a pixelating unit inside my camera bag on this trip, but I did not tell her at first. Instead I loaded a brand new film into the Diana F+, plastic fantastic, and made her struggle with that thing for a little while. Would be cool to see if she could get something to stick on film, I thought. 

Not a stupid idea to print this around actually, hence one of my recent posts on norwegian brains touring the british isles. This snap was snapped by Astrid, using the Diana F+

She might be well enough pleased with a couple of them, me thinks. I have just sent them over to her, so don't know yet. I take the chance and post one anyway. 
When the film was done I handed over my electronic light capturer to her. I have no idea what good use she made of it, though. 

Small part of Staithes. Kind of the back side some way. Looks like the tide water reach all the way up here. 

I ended up using some range finding things around these streets. Staithes on the coast of Yorkshire was a beautiful place for sure. Proper narrow streets, or street to be more exact, and a good sheltered beach and harbor. 

Staithes, as seen from the other end of town. Low tide as we were stepping on the beach down there. I think they got one of the biggest and strongest barriers towards the North Sea I have ever seen. It's a monster!

We were not lingering around Staithes the whole day. Had to take a look further down the coast as well when we had the chance. I will come back with more.

The Wintery Light

It's a bit strange how you can wake up one wintery morning, open one eye and get totally blown away by a fantastic scene outside. 
Not that the scene itself is any much different from what it is every day, but the light falling onto the old mountains can often be very different from one morning to the next. 

I know... this has been posted before, several times, but there might be new readers never seen a portrait of them mountains over at the other side of the fjord from the cottage. This was done seen through a 21mm lens on a german rangefinder, mind you, so those mountains will appear a bit more majestic when you see them through your own eyes. Furthermore this was on a fine spring day, not the wintery morning I'm talking about in this post.

We live at the cottage these days, and among other things that means having the bed positioned in such a way that you wake up overlooking the big fjord, and the high mountains over there at the other side of the water. That's when the weather is good. When the weather is winterly you usually wake up seeing nothing but a bit of water, and a thick, gray, murky and muddy wall out there in the middle of the fjord.
This morning, however, I woke up to one of the most fantastic scenes ever. There were snow banks coming in around the mountains as usual, but there was an opening in the clouds somewhere, in such a way that the mountains were overthrown in sunlight which was carefully and nicely filtrated through some of them clouds. A very warm, yellowish color in contrast to all that cold white snow. It looked good, I can assure you.
I'm glad there are no neighbors watching me around here, at this time of year anyway, because in no time at all I found myself outside with a couple of cameras in hand to try capture some of that beautiful light,

only dressed in what I just slept in as I know time is an issue at this time of year. 
I didn't quite make it, of course, because as this is winter and the wind is trowing things around in the sky quite quickly, the light had changed quite a lot just in the single short minute I used to get out of bed and outside between the cottage and the sea. 
What a sight it must have been... an almost naked man more or less only dressed in big boots standing there while the snow is falling down around him, and he's snapping away like a maniac. 

More like in this snap, the mountains will appear to your eyes when you wake up in that bed. And a bit more like this it looked this morning as the sun broke through to light up the old stones standing tall over there on the other side of the water. I got nothing of that to show you yet, of course, since the snaps will still be hidden inside my camera for quite a while. And yes, this has also been posted before. It's just there in an attempt to add a bit of substance to the words, you see.

Back inside again, a few minutes later when the view had become murk, gray and muddy again, I opened the computer to start write these few words around the experience. I realized then that my friend Michael, over there in the North East Liberties of the oldish North Ireland also had seen some nice light lately, and even written a few words about it just minutes earlier. Go read it, because there's a nice snap in there in addition to a good tutorial on how to get it duly transferred from the negative over to some photographic paper. 

An old camera. The story.

My first memories from life as I know it, goes back to the very beginning of the 70's. A lot of things happened back then, as I was busy learning stuff for later use. 
I learned how to be a bother and a plague to my two sisters, and I learned a thing or two about photography. I may have learned a couple of other things as well, but I think that's the two main things worth mentioning right now. 
My father was a bit more than average interested in photography back in the days. Had been so all his life since his youth, and had owned a few cheaper and more ordinary cameras up through the years. 
In 1971 the Pentax Spotmatic II was launched by Asahi, and this became my fathers first real SLR. With that fine Takumar 50mm f/1.4 lens you know. 
He must have done this purchase with some of the first money he earned in his life as a civilian, after finishing his military life as a fighter pilot and later helicopter pilot in 1970. 
I grew up with this camera in the house, and needless to say it was the first real camera I ever used. 

Here we are, the two of us. Me and my father, the proud owner of a brand new Pentax Spotmatic some time late in the summer of 1971. I seem to be quite impressed, don't you think? The picture was snapped by my mother with that old Voigtländer Vito B I have told you about before. I think it's on dias film, and could be Kodachrome, but I'm not sure about it here and now. 

The father, having just left military life when this was snapped, still had his shoes shined to a different level than the son. Just for the record...!

As the years go by new technology would come to the market, and the old Spotmatic became obsolete. My father bought himself the Pentax ME around the time it was launched, a bit later into the decade, and just a couple of years later he purchased the ME Super. 
He sold the Spotmatic to help finance the ME, and I never saw it again. I know the person he sold it to very well, but the same person also bought the ME my father owned just a couple of years, and as a result the old Spotmatic was handed over on loan to one of my cousins. Still, I never saw the camera again.
My father have tried to buy it back lots of times, but the owner has been very vague in his answers, and extremely reluctant to the whole idea. It's my uncle we're talking about, and he's quite a stubborn figure. A fantastic man in very many ways, and a great photographer, but stubborn when it comes to selling off his old camera gear placed somewhere on the attic.

Not too many moons ago, in october 2015 I think, my parents invited a load of people to a big party. They had been married for 50 years, and wanted to gather family and friends, and so they did. My uncle was there as well, and we had a good chat that evening the two of us. Mainly around photography, as you do in a gold wedding party. 
Nowadays he's a pixel collector, my uncle, but when I showed up with a couple of old german rangefinder cameras he became totally lost and used the one of them through the rest of the evening. Snapped up one of my films he did, as well. The old Spotmatic was also brought up for discussion at some point, and for the first time I had a feeling that I could get hold of it some time in the future, if I only played my cards the right way.
At least he was willing to talk about the old thing using more than just a few phews and strange movements of hands and such... and that's good news, I thought. At least I learned that the camera still existed, and that my uncle had taken it back from my cousin and just recently had it into a shop for a good clean and look-over.

He's living alone, my uncle the Spotmatic owner, and has done so all his life. As a result he's always invited to join my parents for the yule celebrations, and so he was for the last one as well.
This year my father got a quite big present from my uncle, and you can probably guess the contains of it. The Spotmatic thing, all CLA'ed and shining bright as ever before. Needless to say my father was a happy man that night. The first real camera he ever owned, and the best one as well, was finally home again after around 40 years away. He have told me so many times that he should never have sold the old thing, but that's still just something you have to do sometimes.
I know, he could have bought one from ebay for next to nothing, but he never considered that. Sentimental reasons, I guess. 

Anyway. I was up there just before this weekend and had a good look at it. It even smells just the way I remember. 
I loaded it with Tri-X, put an old yellow filter on the lens, and took it for both a walk and a short drive. Snapped a few frames and it worked smooth as it should. It's a nice camera, and I now see why my father wanted it back for all those years. It's just the kind of workhorse and everyday camera you would need. All manual and mechanic, no batteries except for the light meter which you don't need too much anyway. 

A long story, I know, but had to tell it and keep it somewhere.

The Last Snap

You know the thing about the last snap, of course! At least if you're a film waster! That last frame of the film, that you just have to throw away on something quite random? 
If you don't see what I'm talking about then please be my guest and show me one single INTERESTING last frame of any film snapped, any time or any year. There's not too many of those. Believe me!

This is the story of this one:
You are out there on this island, and you're getting short on time before the tide comes in to separate you from the main land for the next 12 hours. And you got those plane tickets to Norway that is not refundable, the plane is full and no more tickets to be sold for the next day. And you are out there on that island, up there in Northumbria, far away from Lundene, and you just have to go to the toilet which you can't find. 
I mean, you see the road signs and all that should lead you straight to it, but you still can't find it. And time flies...
Then you find it, in the end, and you got those two bags of camera equipment that you don't want to leave outside. So you wait, because the wife also need to go in there... so she goes in first, just so she can have her good eyes to guard the things when you are in there, just so none run away with those german cameras and such. 

Well... and of course as she's inside there for a while, a small bus is lining up in front of the toilet building. And yes, there's a school class inside... All boys, of course, and every single one of them carries full bladders. They suddenly throw themselves off the bus and into the gentlemens end of the small building, just as the wife finally turns up from the female side of the thing. I just wish I had the same luck when playing Lotto or whatever. I mean, what's the odds for this kind of happening?
So, what would you do then, in the meantime... while standing out there waiting for this horde of wee individuals getting finished and head off into their bus to leave the island?
You pick up one of those german cameras, of course! The oldest one with one single frame left on that fine Ilford FP4+ hidden inside, and snap a tree... and a house or three, obviously.

It's a tree, on Lindisfarne. And you can easily spot it from outside the toilet building there beside that parking lot where you  are not allowed to park unless you're driving a big van, a couch or whatever. And if a busload of young boys should appear as you want to go into the toilet building, then scream out and make your way into the place before they understand what's happening, because if you let them go first you may end up thinking they use too much time... Just saying...!

So that's what I did... snapped that tree on the other side of the parking place located just beside the toilet building, while I was waiting for that noisy bunch of lads to run onto their bus and make space and room for me, myself. 
We got off the sandy piece of land in time, and the airplane left Gatwick with all them ticket holders on board, ourselves included. And no, there were no vacant seats. And yes, there were a lot of annoying norwegians on board.

Film then, and now

I have seen it before, and again both today and yesterday... and a lot, lately.
New film sucks, as it curves and curls a lot. Old film seems to stay flat and quite nicely, like film should. It's a hassle, you know, to get the thing straight enough to do a proper scan or a print in there in the darkroom.
I just scanned some film that has been laying curved up on a spool inside a tiny box since the late 70's. It came out flat as a pancake, and was doing all good inside the scanner.
My brand new and fresh Tri-X looks like those old telephone cables you might remember from a few years back?

We went to a place where the streets were narrow and quite steep at times. And where some of the houses were tall, but with a small footprint. I guess they had to build them that way because of the terrain and things like that. I used one of the german cameras, with a wide lens as you might see. 21mm it is, in fact, and that's not very long!

It just hit me, that's all... and I had to write about it to get it out of the system.
But then, it also hit me, that my FP4+ film from yesterday looked all good. Nice that somebody still know how to do things, even in 2016!

Norwegian brains in British terrain

Going over there to England and Scotland and places like that, being a foreign norwegian lad and all, will often lead to a few minor misunderstandings as you move along. Obviously first of all, which I also mentioned yesterday, there's the driving on the left side of the road and the weird way (you need to twist that brain of yours, you know) you're approaching the roundabouts. 
When that's sorted out, you have the old walking on the streets and not to mention stairs and the like. I am a bit used to the whole thing as I'm working on a ship full of haggis munchers and what have we all, but for my wife it's all a bit different. She constantly finds herself walking against a river of people when she's out walking. I thought she might have figured out the reasons for this already, taken it on board and made herself a fix to the issue. 
Well, it was nothing like that at all. I found this out one day over there when I mentioned, just as a part of any other sentence, that there's even left hand driving in the stairs and on the pavements. Then a bright light struck her, and she started laughing... 
Well, everything went a bit more smooth out there on the streets after that. 

There's a lot of silence in places like this one, and there's a lot of them around the places we went. This is from The Holy Island... Lindisfarne in Northumbria, as you might know. A silent space with lots of breathable air. It's good as long as you're able to get off the place before the tide suddenly closes the gap between the island and the mainland. 

Then you have the problem of driving around in big cities, in your own car or, as in this case, one you have hired. And this is not directly connected to either England or Scotland in particular, but goes for wherever you go without being familiar to the place at all. You don't know where you are, and if you know where you are you are not to sure where you want to go. Or maybe you know both of the above, but not how to get there. 
So, that's why we got maps... you might say?! Sure, true enough. And a map we got, of course! It's just that a map is not always showing you all the information needed at all times. 
We may take Princess Street in Edinburgh as an example. We were down there in something called Queens Street, and wanted to get a bit closer to the castle before parking the car. Just to have a shorter walk to find it when we had to leave the town. We had a long way to drive and all, and had to save some time... as you do when you want to see it all without really having the time on your side.
Well, I had a quick look at the map and found the perfect route to a parking place inside the old part of town, up around where the castle is and all. Easy!
So, after a few minutes drive without any trouble at all, I found myself waiting for a green light to get out there on that Princess Street on my way over to the other side of the small hill, and suddenly realized I had made a mistake. Princess Street is only for buses and taxis, you see. And of course the tram, or whatever it's called up there. And nothing else are allowed to move there on that street!
Well... then what would you do when you suddenly find yourself waiting for that green light, and all the taxis and buses in town are queueing up around you locking you up in such a way that there's only one way out, and that's the breaking the law way. 
So there you go then, along Princess Street looking very stupid with a million taxis around you, and you have by now of course totally lost focus and can suddenly not decide where you were supposed to take that next right turn, and of course there's some honking going on around you. Maybe not only because of the situation that a private car was driving along Princess Street, but maybe more because of the fact that the driver acted more or less like a drunk driver as well, because he was not quite sure which line to drive... so he chose to be safe and use them both. AND I would have liked to see the taxi and bus drivers themselves being dropped into an unknown town, where everyone else was driving on the wrong side of the road just to add to the excitement... 
Anyway. It all went well in the end. Maybe that says a lot more about the understanding taxi- and bus drivers of Edinburgh than my own skills of driving through that town, but at least I'm happy it all went good. We even found the parking place, and went off to see the big castle, a huge canon, a crown and a sword and everything. And a bag pipe player, in his kilt and strange hat, of course. 
We like it a lot over there, despite the strange traffic and minor issues like that. Just to make that part of it clear!

Oh yes, it's a double exposure. Maybe even a triple one by the looks of it. The Diana camera is a bit prone to this sort of thing, so please bear with me for a few more moments. You see here the unmistakeable silhouette of the castle out there, on Lindisfarne, and you see something else on top, which I now recognize as Edinburgh castle. I thought for a moment when I looked at the negative without my glasses on that it might be the outlines of Bamburgh Castle, from the other side of the bay, but it's definitely Edinburgh Castle.

I'm writing all this nonsense because I'm scanning more film. You know the stuff I developed yesterday, which I messed up a bit with that exhausted fix as you know. I have not come all that far towards that part of it yet, so I don't know if any of them can be used in some way. They might, if I don't care too much. 
We'll see.

I used this day on film wasting!

Oh yes, on wasting some otherwise good old silver!

You may think I'm talking about the fact that I have been using the Diana F+ camera lately, and that could well be a different word for wasting film as good as any other film wasting for sure, but nope! 
I'm thinking about the fact that I have been developing a few rolls snapped during my trip over at the other side of the sea, and that they came out totally like a mess.
Not all the rolls, mind you, but the three last ones. The first two went on well, or at least as they usually do. Ilford FP4+ they were, and they seemed to be as good as I can get them considered my limited developing skills.
Then I threw in the last batch, all inside the same tank. 
Three rolls of american B&W film. Tri-X, as it happens. All fresh and fine, and no reason to even suspect that anything bad could happen. 
Well... fogged-up, they were. All three of them! Exhausted fixer, I suppose. I dropped them in there again, inside the smelly tank, and fixed for another five minutes. They did not get very much better I'm afraid. Just a tad.
If I had been the lucky owner of some fresh fix, I would have made up a new bath of the stuff straight away, but I used the last few drops of it some time ago. 
Well... that's life for the cheapo home developer, and film waster, I guess. 
At least it's just a few rolls of ruined pictures. No reason to go totally bananas and through the roof! 
I will, however, see to that I got a new bottle of fixer stocked before any further attempts of developing stuff. Too bad, actually, as I had plans for some fine darkroom printing some day very soon. I might be able to get something shipped quite fast anyway, to be good to go before the weekend.

Here you see! From inside the huge cathedral over in York, as seen from inside the old Diana F+ camera. It kind of works, if you just are able to remember what kind of ASA film you got inside, and are able to count to ten, or thereabout, as you trigger the thing. Some support are always welcome, but not always available. 

The Diana F+ works great, though. Or, at least the films I developed yesterday gone through that thing during last week was not fogged or anything. They might be called wasted, though, but that's more an individual thing. Taste, and such, you know. 
And of course it works, as there's nothing much inside the thing that can go wrong anyway.

OK then. One more, also from York I think. Not the New one, over the big Atlantic, but the old one up there for a few hours drive north of Lundene, in England. The streets are about as old as the town itself. The vikings used to be in the area, but we spotted none this day. Even the viking center was closed. There have been some hassle with flooding water lately, as we all know. And sure, snapped with the Diana this one as well, only this time I used the timed exposure thing. Not the B setting, that is. Don't know the timing of it though, but it's a bit short for 100ASA film in dim light, as you see. 

Home again...

As we were away, as you might remember from the last few posts. 
Back home to snow and wintery weather, as we had quite very little of that over there in the UK over the last week. Of course it was cold, quite windy and wet weather over there as well, but not to bad to tell you the truth. At least there was little snow. Just a few hail storms and slush coming down. This week will get a bit worse, at least according to the forecast.
We rented a car to be able to get around as we wanted. Cheapest option, as usual, and as per normal we ended up inside a smallish Vauxhall Corsa with an even tinier 1.2 ltr. engine installed. They called it a city car, as you do, and was getting a fair bit carried away when they discovered the miles gained over the week. As usual... you know. 
So, everything was as it should regarding the transport and all, and it seems I managed driving on the "wrong side" quite well this trip also. Not to easy, mind you, until you have successfully passed the first couple of few roundabouts without any big mistakes done. Then everything is only getting better, actually. 

Look at this! Remember the old ancient Ba-game? Well, here's the Ba itself just before it was thrown into the masses and never again to be seen in daylight. It was the chap holding it also throwing the thing away. I thought he might never let it go by the way he clung to it for quite a while that very morning. Then again, that's how they do it... and have always done. 

I got nothing to show you yet, from the trip anyway, as only a few 120 rolls has been developed this far. They were all snapped on that plastic Diana F+ camera, so probably will not give much of a result anyway, as it happens. But who knows? We'll have to wait until the films has passed through the scanner to get some kind of answer, I'm afraid. They are still to wet to go through that process yet, so please bear with me for a moment or five.

Hey! I got snaps from that modern camera with batteries inside and everything! Canon thing, as you might remember I got from the Skipper as he will never again load an old film into any camera anyway. Looks good, not? Teleish lens and all it got that nice thing. I'm not a big user of such, but I might learn...

I also brought a couple of range finding cameras, but those films will have to wait for their wet baths until tomorrow it seems. I got things to do, you know... other stuff than wetting films, inside the home and such. Laundry to be taken care of while the wife is away to earn a shilling or two, and something to be eaten in the making, as she will be home in an hour or so. 

And another one from the same camera, just to show it takes fairly 

nice exposures all the way through the film. 

I also brought a digital snapper, just because it's handy to have around when friends and family want to have a glimpse of what you have been up to during your days away over there across the sea. I got nothing much to show them either. Just saying!

Tomorrow is another day. I might post a couple from that Diana plastic camera thing then. There's a few rolls strung up drying now, so I might get a snap or three out of them on a good day, if that will be the case as tomorrow comes. 

A couple of snaps then, before I go

It's been a slow day. Nothing important done, just packed the bag and some cameras to bring over to England tomorrow. On request from the wife I also brought a pixel snapper. Not to sure if I'm going to give that one to much exercise though.

This is what happens when you try to snap all frames on the film, as in being a real cheepo. The first frame is never full size, and in addition it will always be a sloppy taken one as well. Every now and then something turns up anyway.

My son just came through the door. Brought his fantastic Gibson Hummingbird guitar and all. Playing a few great tunes for his old father. I like the sound of that instrument!

Here she is, my youngest offspring, again. This time on a walkway made for wheelchair users to be able to get around in the terrain around the Atlantic Road I was talking about yesterday or whenever. It was a good walk even though the weather was a bit cold.

I have this pixel shooter, as I told you about. Fancy thing called Fujifilm X-pro1. I started to worry a bit about the sim card, or whatever it is inside the thing... if it was starting to fill up and things like that. Could not find anything inside the menu thing telling me about what I wanted to know. Luckily my son is still here. He found out in a nick of time. Around 2500 snaps left on the little thing should be plenty enough for the next ten years I suppose. 

Another Diana F+ snap from Wednesday. Obviously snapped on "B" this one as well as it was quite dark at the time. The weather was not very good, as you might see.

Nah... it's midnight folks, and I need to be up around 5.30 to get on that plane in time. See you in a week or so. I will not bring my computer over, only the phone. I might send you a few updates if I feel like :)

It's that bridge again, seen from the other side. Light leak on this one as well, but not the worst one. 

Packing the bag, again

Tomorrow I'm flying over to the UK again. Pleasure this time, which is always nice. I like it a lot over there for some reason. Flying in to Gatwick on the south side of the big city, hire a car and drive north to York. Will spend a day or two there, before driving further up north. The plan is to reach Edinburgh at some point, then down south to visit my step daughter who's a student in Middlesbrough for the time being. Need to take her on a short weekend trip as well, since we are over there anyway and since she's probably short of cash, and since she most likely has a load of other things on her priority list than traveling around seeing stuff. A students life, I know.

A print of this fine negative was just mailed away over to a certain recipient in North Ireland. Duly printed on a tiny small sheet of  beautiful Ilford FB Classic paper and all. The print looks a lot better than this film scan. Just sayin'... 

I don't have much more to say right now, I think. Need to go pack the rest of the stuff. Not that it's a lot, mind you. Just a couple of cameras, some film and whatever I need in addition to that. Don't know yet which cameras I will bring, but probably some smallish ones. Germans, I guess.
Then I'm off tomorrow morning, not to return until next Monday.

I like this for a number of reasons. Need to print it some day! It's old as the hills. Something I snapped some time during the 90's. And yes, I have posted this before.

ℬ!0$µ #3!!

Not the best of things, as you might understand! 
Not too happy with my latest photos and such. It's not like the end is near, or anything, but annoying for sure. Read on, if you're interested...

As I mentioned in the end of my last post I was out and about in a meeting a couple of days ago. Wednesday it was, and I took a trip over the quite wide fjord, up a short bit north to the place where my grandfather and his old father grew up. It was absolutely great, despite the weather and everything, and I even managed to snap a few in between it all.
With a couple of the bulky Mamiyas, that was. Medium format, as it happens, and so far all should be good.
I developed the few films yesterday, and it became apparent that there's an issue with one of my film backs for the Mamiya RZ system I got laying around the house, one bit here and another one there. As you might know, the RZ system is more or less "Duplo" based, meaning you can build it up as you like. All main parts can be taken apart and swapped around more or less as you wish.

One of the snaps on one of the couple of films I went through this day. Nothing strange to see in here, as far as I can see. It's getting worse though!!

I got something like five or six film backs for the things, and on this particular wednesday I used the one marked with a No.1 label.
And it leaks. It probably leaks all kind of stuff, but in this case it leaks light, which is absolutely no good, as you might can tell by the look of the scans.

See what I mean? It's on a level that makes the thing dedicated for special use only if I can't get the thing repaired. The strange looks might be as a result of the fact that a pola filter was attached to the lens at the moment.

I know you need to shine some light onto the film to get pictures, but it has to be let inside in fairly the right amount, and in the right kind of way to make a good snap.
Even my Diana F+ plastic camera thing leaks less light than this film back, so I need to buy some stuff to make a good repair. New seals, that is.

And again! All snaps but two or three on two different films got the same thing at the exact same spot. This is a cool bridge by the way. The entire road is actually a cool road to drive. The Atlantic Road it is. And yes, that's what they decided to call it the day they had it finished some time back in the late 80's. It's actually ranked as No.1 on The Guardians list over the worlds best road trips. Bet that was new to you!? Maybe some folks from The Guardian should travel a bit more around in their own country? What happened to The Golden Road out there west in the UK... just to give one small example. Well... The Atlantic Road is nice, but probably a bit different.

Trouble is that you need to shoot through an entire film to know if it's all good after the repair, but being the lucky owner of a pile of B&W photographic paper I may also cut a few pieces of that to do more simple tests on the things before loading proper film inside. Sounds a bit more economical to do it that way, actually.

Here you go! A car in the night. Diana F+ "Plastic Fantastic" switched to "B" mode and held open for about a couple of seconds and a half, handheld trying to follow the car on the road the best I could. Now that's a proper snap, me thinks.  No light leaks either!

I mentioned that old Rolleiflex

Probably at some point in my latest post, I mentioned it. 
And I mentioned that I use it too little, and too much time is spent between the times I actually use it. I have not analyzed this deeply, but if I did I could end up with a conclusion saying "you got too many cameras" or something similar down that line. So I leave it be.

OK, so the old box is more a portrait machine than anything else. It draws nice portraits though, as long as you manage to let the right amount of good light through that old lens. I was probably a bit lucky here. There is no functioning light meter on the thing, of course. For some reason there's no such thing as a functioning light meter on the majority of my cameras, but that's a different story, 

for another day.

I still got the old thing, and I even know exactly where I have it stored. Not hard to find at all, and I check it every now and then... that it's still there you know, and that the film counter still says "5" and things like that. 
It's loaded with Tri-X, I think. Or maybe even HP5 with a bit of luck. 

I don't know what you may call this, though?! It's probably not called a portrait for sure, but I kind of like the shapes of things in here anyway. The stonework, sculptured by the sea through a few million years, just adds to it. 

It's a chunky, quite heavy, brickyish feeling over the old thing. It holds a good Planar lens, or two, and the shutter sounds like most other german cameras. Like lubricated in a river of butter. Melted butter, probably. 
It's that smooth. 

Here's what the Rolleiflex totally NOT is: a snapper of moments you noticed would come, but didn't think of capturing until you did it anyway. In a hurry, of course. Focusing this thing is a bit tedious, and with my old eyes it's getting a bit frustrating at times. There's some good focus in here though, if you look a bit way into the picture somewhere. It was a very nice dog, by the way. Didn't bite at all, very unlike our cat...

I had to go to a meeting today. A good couple of hours drive away from home, over a wide fjord in a ferry, over to the area where my grandfather and great grandfather grew up a century or more ago. 
I went away early, to have 6-7 hours to see stuff before the meeting. 
I brought a car full of cameras. And film. And myself.
The weather went crazy again, as it usually does, but I snapped a few with one of those big Mamiya RZ's I got laying around as a couple of them happened to be in the car without me even knowing about them until I was on the ferry. See? Having too many cameras can turn into something very good before you know any of it! 
There might be something to post in a few days time. 
Maybe. 

We drove westwards

Sunday, it was. Just a couple of days ago, and we felt like getting out of the house to go see something. You know, waves, clean air, a lighthouse and some good old sea water. Stuff like that.
We went out to one of the very small islands west of the town, where the North Sea meets the old country, right at the spot where it was a wee bit windy just before the weekend. You know the kind of place, I guess.
It's just a matter of getting ones back end into a car and drive for half an hour or so. Nothing like it used to be back in the days when you had to struggle with ferries and things to get there. Nowadays we got holes to drive through. Under the sea and everything. They built the things some time in the mid 80's when I lived away from home to go learn maths, physics and such. I learned a few other things as well, but I'll spare you from any details.
Anyway, the point is that we got away from the house out and about, way out west to where the sea have waves that crash into the old rugged shoreline and where you can think thoughts about stuff that matters... or nothing at all.
We went there, and it was all good. As it usually is. 
The light was kind of interesting, as we arrived, which was all due to some really bad weather coming in, which we should notice just half an hour later. Or so...

A small family, and a dog-thing on top of that stone there. They went away before the weather changed to worse.

It started off with a crazy hailstorm, gradually changing into some very wet, sleety snow-stuff. There was a lot of it, and I kid you not. Everything was covered in snow in just about no time at all, and we agreed that the good walk was kind of over, almost before it even had really started. Had a tough walk back to the car though, but every soul was counted as we approached the thing and none got lost in the blizzard. Couldn't see a thing, as you might have figured out. We are quite used to getting ourselves into situations like this, though, living around these areas you know. 

A few shades of grey. If you're keen counting them, that is.

Luckily I brought a couple of german cameras, as they have been sitting idle for too long already by now, and managed to snap a few before all this broke loose. As an afterthought I don't know exactly why I brought exactly those cameras, silent ones as you should know, as you probably would not even hear a bomb exploding in the area anyway because of the weather and crashing waves and all that stuff. 
Anyway, I found them, my two german cameras, to become in the state of filling up with melted snow soon enough. The film even jammed in the newish one of the two. Inside the black one that was, a thing made in the eighties some time. Everything seemed to be good inside the elder one though. That's the thing built in 1960 as it happens, and probably to a tad higher standard than the later model. I don't know, but I like to think so. It could also be some hassle with the film causing it to jam, but we will probably never know (I hope...).
At least that led to the next step, me being able to show a couple of snaps from just before the weather came in, as I got myself around some developing yesterday. Did a couple of 135 sized ones, and a few 120 rolls as well. Nothing there that we have not seen before, mind you, but at least I got something fresh to post. There should be more to show when the day comes that I get that other film developed as well. The one that's still lurking inside the old german. I think that should be some good Ilford FP4+. The ones posted here are Ilford HP5+. I kind of like both films for some reason. I need to see if I can find a shop selling the stuff over in England when I go there next week. Over here the price is going through the roof at the moment, so I better try source something locally somewhere as I move around. 
I might even be able to get another post out before I go. It's still a few days until sunday, so it should be possible, me thinks. 
Right now I'm scanning 120 film... so stay tuned. Lots of weird stuff, as it happens. Things snapped with that old english camera with a bellow and all. Looks like most of them are double or triple exposures though, so you might not like them at all. We'll find out soon enough, I guess. 

Things like this, since you ask. 6x9 on 120 film. 

And there are also things snapped quite a while ago inside that old Rolleiflex mechanical wonder machine I got lurking around. Makes me wonder why I'm not using that one more often, as I always do when I look at pictures made inside that old box. There's something sweet about that Carl Zeiss 80mm f/2.8 Planar lens for sure!
I will come back to them. I promise :)