Just posted

I have been fumbling and stumbling around to hopefully find a few great words to write about the old Nikon FM2 camera lately. I like old cameras as you probably know, but I'm still not into photography because of the cameras if you see what I mean? I'm into it because of a real wish to hopefully make a couple of great snaps some day, whenever that might be. 

But I like cameras, as you can find out by looking at other posts around this blog, and I sometimes feel like writing a word or two about a few of them just in case there's somebody out there looking for answers on questions and such. Not that they will find any clear answers inside my posts, of course, but maybe there's something in there anyway. Something useful to a soul or two. I mean, who knows after all?

So I wrote this thing, which you can also find by following the link somewhere on the left side on the frontpage of my blog. Should be up there somewhere, anyway... It's probably nothing like the best piece ever written about this camera, but at least it's my own words and how I'm seeing this useful snapper of great moments. 

I just think it's best to keep that camera bla bla away from the blog itself, at least in my case. For some it works to blend it all in, for me not.
All them electronically collected photons and what have we all inside those pages... they just don't seem to fit in, somehow. 
I try to stay way away from the technical and boring stuff, anyway. If that's what your after, specs and stuff, look elsewhere! 
You are hereby warned :)

This was definately not made by some electronically collected photons, mind you! I shone some of the visible reflections of light returning from the beautiful daughter through an old Color Skopar lens permanently attached to my fathers old Voigtländer Vito B at some point. Further as a result of the very moody shutter on that thing going totally bananas, this was the result I had coming from the film after it had been sloshed around in some kind of developer for a while. I like it, believe it or not...

At the quayside

Just had to go for a short walk. I guess you know the feeling when you feel like you've been imprisoned without any chance to get out, but all of a sudden find some kind of way to get out anyway? Not? Well, it was a good feeling, just saying.
Went for a short walk, as it happens, in rain, wind, snow, sun, crazy cold weather. Oh, and darkness, at least most of the time. As you see I mentioned the sun, but that thing was on for a very brief moment only. But it was there for sure. But the rest of the time was more or less darkness. 
I brought a camera, believe it or not! You see I loaded the Nikon F3 thing with a film a few days ago, and I did so with the most stupid film one could ever imagine putting inside a camera at this time of year over here in Norway. 
A roll of Kodak T-Max 100, as it happens. I mean what on earth was I thinking, if I ever did any thinking at all, that is. 
Anyway, I spotted a few glimpses of light scattered around in the more or less pinch black clouds up there, and decided to bring the old camera out to hopefully snap the whole film away to get rid of it once and for all. 
Observant readers of this blog would have found out some time ago that the D and T grain films are not among my favourites in the first place, so how did this roll find it's way into my camera at all... you might ask. The answer is quite easy, as it's a handover thing I got a while ago when buying a few rolls of some other stuff. It came for free, and today I snapped it up just the way you do when things come for free. Easy come, easy go type of thing... as you probably know. 

Couple of years ago, but I stil kind of like this one from a beach over in old northern England. Diana F+ on what I think might be some HP5 film, or maybe something else.

It's Christmas Eve, as you all know, and the big day over here in Norway and a few other scandinavian countries. This is the day the kids are looking forward to all year, and here we are sitting inside this big ship at the same place as we've been sitting for a few weeks now. Quite boring, as you might guess, but we can't get away. And it's our job, and what we signed up for... so can't start a big argue about those facts.
Anyway, I'm off for the Christmas dinner very soon, and just like to wish all my readers and everyone else a Merry Christmas. Take care, all of you, and stay safe through all the weather and what have we all coming our way for the next few days. 

The old St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall and a celtic cross. It's yuletide, folks, and I wish you all lots of piece and love together with family and friends in the days to come.

Darkest time of year

Winter Solstice at it's best over here today. More or less pinch black night in the middle of the day. It has a lot to do with weather conditions, you know. It's been like this quite a few days now to be honest, and it's no good when you got a camera stupidly loaded with some ISO 100 film. OK, I also have one containing some HP5 kicked up to 1600 which give me a bit more to play with. Only valid if one had the time to get out of this steel thing to grab a few frames, that is. That has not happened too often the last week to tell the truth. Work, work and work again is all I have managed to do from early morning to late in the evening. I hope tomorrow will be a bit different, but who knows. Something completely different will probably break into pieces, and somebody will have to take care of it in some kind of way.
And it's been windy. Quite windy. Yesterday was bad, but today has been a bit better. That's just very temporary though. In a few days it's going to be real bad if one listen to the forecast. Living on board a ship you will listen to the forecast. Believe me.
No snow though. Temperature has been around the same as on an averagely good summers day, around 10 deg. C

Midsummer, Oslo in Norway. Don't exactly know if this is something to post, but I take the chance anyway. It did not turn out the way I thought, that's for sure. I opened the shutter a second too late in my opinion. Anyway, it's Nikon FE2 and some Nikkor lens. 

We're getting closer to the festive days over here. Nothing much reminding us of such on board the vessel, but there's a christmas tree and a few bits here and there placed to remind us about what's happening. I guess most of us just looking forward to get home a few days before new year kicks in. 
I'm preparing for my 365@50 project starting on the 1'st of January, hoping to finish it off in a good way. I will probably produce a few more rules as I go along... 

Where did all those days disappear?

Still stuck on board the ship, and the ship is still stuck at the same place inside that narrow fjord as it was the last time I wrote a few words for this little blog of mine. 
I thought I might get the time to write a bit after the yardstay, to be honest, but that just did not happen. Busy all days and totally worn out in the evenings is not the best recipie to get that sort of things done. 
Today I had to get some parts from a couple of our engines delivered to a workshop a few hours drive from where we are at the moment. That was a nice break, to be honest. Don't expect any snaps, though, because it was all business and none of the other stuff. Didn't even bring a decent camera as there's no daylight bright enough in the afternoon at this time of year. Didn't have a second to loose either, as I had to be down south before 4 pm. I made it, with a 4 minutes margin, so that was a close enough race actually. Nice trip, though!

This? Oh, it's from York, believe it or not. It's The Ghost, or the ghost walk storyteller, or whatever. It comes from the Diana F+ and has been with me for a while. I might have posted it some time before, but I have totally lost track of everything. It was a great night over there, but my wife's nerves really got the most of her in the end... because of the annoying clicking sound of the film winding wheel on this camera :))

Had one of those bad days at work again today. You know the sorts, I guess. This time it was the mess... or A mess in The Mess, to put it the right way. Full of water after washing, preparing food and whatever they do up there. And I mean full of water! Nothing went down the drain, which is my departments responsibility... of course. 
And with all the other engineers busy with their own tasks I just could not find any excuse to give that job to someone else at the time... so just had to go find the tools and give it a go.
After a lot of climbing in extremely steep ladders, fumbling with wrenches and what have we, I finally got showered in about 1000 litres of lovely waste water of the smelly type. Weird feeling even though you know it's going to happen at some point. On the 9'th row on the ladder it's nothing else to do than just hold on to the thing, keep your head away from the worst and hold on to the small piece of the world you got a grip on. 
Then you have to clean the clogged valve when all the water has drained from the pipe, and put it all back together.
Then you have to shower, for a long time in some clean water. A very long time, believe me!

Apart from that it's been a nice day.

Finally some quiet days

We have been doing maintenance on the ship, as you might know by now. 
We went over here to get it done, at the yard in Rubbestadneset, Bømlo, Norway. That's the island where my company keep their office and center of business as well, but still there was no time at all to pay them a visit. A tiny wee hours drive I think, from Rubbestadneset to the small town of Langevåg where the office is located. 
I have stayed with this company for over 15 years now, but have never had the chance to drop by the office any time. And with this location you can't possibly blame me either, as it's very far away from anywhere I usually will travel in my time off. 
Anyway, the ship is now laid up for a few weeks not too far from the yard in Rubbestadneset. The place is called Fitjar, and we are at a small quay about 2 miles away from the small village. It's nothing here at all, and this is where we will celebrate christmas this year. In the middle of a quarry, as it happens. I have seen better locations, to be honest, but I guess it's still going to be fine. I am at work, and there's nothing I can do to change that. 
Still I might get the chance to get away from the ship and get myself down south to visit the folks at the office. I don't know if that's something they would expect me to do or anything, but I could of course make up some reason for myself to drop by. 

Continuing the series of scanned slide positives from the mid 90's we come to this little nice one of the brother and sister, partners in crime, looking for nice stones to throw around and into the sea. Hopefully into the sea at least, as I seem to remember some lack in the skills of aiming well back in the days. Color stuff is not my cup of tea, as you probably know by now. Still there might be a few posts with stuff like this. Things from back in the days then, probably, as I have stopped doing color, more or less. This might be Ektachrome or something similar. I'm absolutely sure about the camera used though. The same Nikon FM2 I got right here on the table inside my cabin on board right now.

I went out yesterday. Had a little stroll around the area to see if it might be worth to waste some film around here. I think I might do that again some other day. I snapped a few snaps, but the light was a bit on the dodgy side. 
The apprentice on board is also a photographer, or at least he seems to be very interested in the matters and also brought his own camera for this trip. We might even join forces to see if anything great might come out of it for the benefit of the both of us. You never quite know until you've tried.

She's clearly getting the hang of it, the sister. Stones flying in the right direction and everything, which is a nice thing. The brother seems to keep a little bit of distance to it all, but he would be better off standing a bit further away I think. 

So, that's about it then. 
I brought a couple of old Nikon's this time. The old FM2 (out of where the snaps posted today originated quite a few years ago) and one of the somewhat battered F3's. Looks like I have them loaded with Ilford HP5+ and some Ilford PAN 400 at the moment. The old ISO is cranked up to 1600 on both films just for the heck of it. The light is a bit on the less side these days up north, so that might pass as an excuse to do some pushing. I think I mostly brought HP5+ and PAN 400 this time. Maybe there's a roll or two of FP4+ as well somewhere inside my bag. I have not done any deep dives into it yet, so I'm a bit in doubt around what's in there to find. 
Oh, and I brought an electronically controlled battery digisnapping thing as well. A Fujifilm X-pro 1 by the look of the wording on top of the machine. I brought that one out yesterday as well, but around midways of my tour around the area the battery suddenly went all dead. Of course... 
It has not been charged in ages, so that might be the reason. 
I think the apprentice wanted to have a look at the thing, as he's planning to buy himself a new camera soon. His newish Sony DSLR seems to getting very close to it's end of lifetime. All sorts of bits and pieces is falling off, and the screen on the back side of the thing is no longer working. Looks more like my own cameras actually, but with the minor difference that these electronic versions will never work at all if something breaks inside them. Mechanical film cameras will normally carry on, although with some more or less serious kind of twist. 

A study of style. Seemed to be a nice day for some throwing of stones that day. 

I guess I will keep you updated and informed about what's happening over here in this small part of the world in the days to come.
Until then; stay safe and sound, all of you!

It's that day, again (written days ago, never posted...)

I found this post lingering inside my blog just now. It seems I wrote the words the day before I went to work, a week and a half ago.
Well, I went to work and have been very busy working since I went there. I will tell you more about that in my next post. Seems like I will get some time to get things like that done during the next days and weeks. 
So, just let's see what I wrote Wednesday, one and a half week ago...
--------------------

Last day at home for now. I'm just walking around inside my own self to try figure out what to bring and not to bring for this trip. It seems like this one is going to be a bit different, as it will start off with a yard stay a bit south of Bergen, Norway. If everything goes as planned we will probably go for sea trials and tests of engines and a lot of other stuff, yearly DP trials and a bunch of other things. Then we probably will be laid up for the rest of the trip just waiting for new year to come and more work to be done at sea some time in January. At least that's what we all hope for right now.

Something I found inside a scanning folder on my computer just now. It's a positive slides snap from back in the mid 90's of the lighthouse at Veiholmen in Norway. The lighthouse is called "Haugjegla" and can be seen if you move yourself over to this area...

That will mean I'm getting Christmas away from home, again. I was actually due for Christmas at home this year, but with this new 4 weeks on and 8 off happening from time to time it was all mixed up and thrown around a couple of months ago. That will mean that in the last ten years I've only been at home for two Christmas celebrations, and that's a few too little if you ask me. You might hear something similar if you ask my wife and my kids and those sorts. OK, the kids are not exactly small kids anymore, but anyway.
Well, I suppose we will get over this one as well, but it's a strange thing that some has to go away during this time of year a lot more often than other people within the same company. I guess it just means that some have had more holidays at home than being out at work for the last ten years, and it just don't sound quite fair.

From the same film as the one above. Could be Ektachrome or something, but I'm not absolutely sure about it. Same place as above, but in the opposite direction. It's the brother and sister, my two elder kids, now 23 and 25 years old. Hand in hand... which did not happen too often back then!

Enough about that for now.
It's the dark part of the year. I was thinking about taking a walk out some time today just to see if something should have been glued to some film, but when the light was supposed to be at it's "brightest" the rain and snow (in a great mix) was really at it's very peak so I called the plans off. Now it's 15.30 in the afternoon, and very close to complete darkness. Pinch black in about half an hour I would guess. That means no great light for snapping anything at all, I would say.
I still got a few frames left on the last film I threw inside the F3 some days ago. I think I loaded it while still at Ona, so might be a week old or something. I may just as well bring the whole thing to work, camera and everything. 
See you all whenever I get the chance to post something again :)