I got these square and bulky Mamiyas, you know

You know the kind of instrument which takes great snaps, if the person behind it kind of point it towards great stuff and are able to adjust it roughly into an area where something might fasten on the film inside the back, that is.
I give you a few right here and now, of things I have looked at through the finder of one or more of these cameras. They are all negative scans, mind you!

Monstermachines at Hatston Pier, Kirkwall, Orkney. Weird lens this one. 37mm short, but big as a truck anyway. Fits and was made for that chunky Mamiya RZ67 some years ago. I think I was like half a meter away from that hook or something. You really need to be careful when using this thing.

Just to update you all: We are back at sea, free as the whales or something like that. Out here trying to earn a few coins before we go ashore to use it all on spareparts and manpower towards christmas. Got a couple of main engines to get done. Overhaul and stuff like that, as we do every now and then.

My wife is not the snapper kind of person, but she insisted to go for it one day, with one of the big Mamiyas. She managed to do this one, of yours truly catched in a very rare moment of sort of smiling. I honestly don't know where that came from :)

Oh, and I for sure got this extreme lens, which you might have allready noticed, which I can put on those Mamiyas if I like. 
Well, I don't like it that much, even though it's a great lens as such. It's a bit on the "fishy" end to my taste actually, but I got it and sometimes I get tempted to use it. 
I even used it down in the engineroom a couple of years ago. That's the two last snaps in todays post. Not the best of luck with the exposures, but heck... it's not too easy to guess exposure at places like that anyway! Just find yourself a big, deep engineroom and try for yourselves, then report back you findings in this direction :))

Port side engineroom of Subsea Viking. You'll see parts of two main engines here, with a bit of luck, and a bunch of pipes, coolers, pumps and other engineroom stuff. The starboard engineroom is exactly the same. It's a DP3 class vessel, so we got double of everything, just in case one side suddenly gets useless because of flooding, fire or whatever Murphy throws in our direction...

Hope you all have a great time the last days before the festive days ahead of us. I will stay on board the ship until past new year, so you all know where you got me. No family to see this year, as more or less usual. 
I will survive though! I have tried this quite a few times already, so nothing new about it.
I got a couple of cameras you know, and a few rolls of film. Will try to get something snapped, so just make sure you follow this small and tiny blog in the future to be able to catch up at some point.

Looking down the line of crankshaft hatches of one of our 4 main engines. One engine are able to produce 2400 kW of energy out on the generator attached to it, and we got four of them. Make us able to power up something big, if needed. Oh... and there are more pipes, pumps, coolers and things there on the left hand side. 

Have a nice week folks, and I hope to be able to post something more every now and then :)

We actually did not drown, or blew off the road!

Was out yesterday. Out and about with a bus driver who thought we were completely nuts and crazy wanting a sightseeing on such a day. What the heck...? I thought these locals still had some of that old guts and no fear stuff inside. Well, obviously not all of them.
Anyway, he was a great driver as he still managed to keep that big bus on the road instead of all over the moorland beside of it.

This is also on Orkney mainland, but we were not around this place yesterday. This is a snap from about one year ago. Made through a german lens of 3,5 cm length. It's a good one.

I had seen it all before, but luckily we (or me, myself as it happens) managed to convince him that Yesnaby would be a good spot on such a breezy day. I can inform you that it most certainly was! Maybe not for the bus driver who had to turn his big wheely thing around down there in the gale while we were outside playing with cameras and stuff. It was great!

No worries! It's just a picture of the captain having his morning coffee one day this summer. He managed to drink it all without spilling anything on the floor or anywhere else. It was one of his better days ever, probably!

I mostly snapped electronic pixelized images yesterday, just because something strange happened as I was going to change the film inside my real camera. There was just no new film there!! I had totally forgot that I had put it into a different bag a couple of days ago, and so left behind at the ship. Well... that's life as it is. I had to manage with the pixelator from then, and I'm not to sure if that's apropriate to post here in any way. I think I need to sleep a wee bit on that one, so please bear with me for a few moments or so.

This is definately an Orcadian! He showed us his church, or actually it's a cathedral if you ask him, and he was also pointing in absolutely every thinkable direction while talking. All the time. I snapped this, and just found it lurking around in between my scannings on a red hard drive. It was quite nice actually, even though the light up there around the ceiling of that big cathedral was pretty much on the low side of things. 

Otherwise... it's all good! I was just dropping by to tell you a few words about the trip, and that we actually made it through the whole thing without anything serious happening to us.
How good is that, taken into concideration that the bus driver - the local one, you know - was particulary convinced that we probably would not make it. None of us, that is.
Well, I guess we thought him a good lesson there, don't you?

This? Just the extremely furry thing we got lurking around the house doing absolutely nothing. Right here shown in her favourite position as she does what she knows best.

Continued from yesterday, more or less...

A maybe less surprise, at least seen from my inside my head, would be that I also brought a Nikon FM2 to work this time. It's like I can never go anywhere without having one somewhere near me. It's right here on that table over there, loaded with a good roll of that old, great, legendary Tri-X you probably have either tried or been reading about, at some point. Not the new stuff, mind you, but the proper thing. From the mid 70's some time. I simply can't wait to wash that roll in some Rodinal or some other great soup. Well... I need to expose it to the right ammount of light first, of course, but I should manage to get that done during the next month or so.

It's scenery like this we got over here, on this island I'm staying on at the moment. Snapped on film with some Nikon FM2 about one year ago these days. We were here right after the big feast, even before the new year started. 

Ever tried an FM2? I tell you it's got to be the best battered thing I got lurking around in my bag. Lightweight, all manual, no batteries needed unless you are totally addicted to light meters, simplicity, no fuss at all, and it takes some beating very well. I got a few of them, and have never managed to do anything to harm any of them as for yet. They can stay for years somewhere inside a cabinet or something, and when you finally finds them and pick'em up and fires the shutter they just works. On all shutter times and all. It's just bloody great! Other cameras seem to need CLA, which usually mean TLC, both now and again through a lifetime. The FM2 not so. Or it looks like that, anyway, again as seen from inside my own head.

More scenery. West side of Mainland Orkney. This is what it looks like, actually. It's simply just like I like it to be.

On a good day I would even claim it's at least as good as any german snapper I know. It's not any bigger either, than the germans. The only disadvantage would be the clikketyclack, mirror you know. It's shouting where the germans are whispering. 
Anyway, it just works. And that's the big point I would say. That's also why you will allways find one of them in my bag.
There is a welfare tour, kind of sightseeing thing, being arranged today as we are sitting more or less idle here in Kirkwall and never get the chance to get anywhere else than on the ship. Sometimes I end up wondering which camera to bring on tours like that, but always seem to end up with a FM2 or one or both of the german ones. It's just a habbit folks, but I like these japanese left overs from the eightees. 
I might bring the pixel collector as well, just to make sure I got evidence to show off either here on the blog, or somewhere else. We'll see, I think.

Maybe it's a bit early, but we might even find one of these scattered around one of the beaches when we go for the tour a bit later. Who knows? This one was seen and duly documented in Windwick last year, or in the very beginning of this year. The mother was lurking in the area... just sayin'.

Have a great sunday, friends :)

Some clocked in at 34 years, others lived longer

Sure, that's right. On this very date, 48 years ago, I saw the light of day for the first time. At least that's what I like to think, that there was some kind of daylight present. It happened quite early in the morning, so it was definitely dark at the time, but probably got a little bit better throughout the day.

But that was not the reason for this very short post! I just got the news, that the Holga camera never got any older than 34. They have laid up the business, selling too few cameras these days, even though there's a lot of them still around.
I don't own a Holga, but I got an example of it's cousin, the Diana F+ It's the same thing, more or less. Totally flimsy plastic, loads of leaks, and a bit of fun and unpredictability. Which is good, at times.

Anyway, here's a bit more history to read around the old Holga.

Even more cameras...

You may believe it or just leave it be, but I also brought that bulky and plasticky Nikon F-401 I told you all about just a couple of days ago. The sibling to my first Nikon, as you should know by now. The story why I ended up with one of these again, quite recently or a couple of years ago, was because I had been looking for a free lens for some time. A 24mm Nikkor, one of those great ones with a largeish aperture, you know. That usually means you got to bleed for it, but I kept on looking for one of those rare good second hand deals anyway. And I found it, in the end. Some old man put this camera up for sale, with two lenses, and wanted just a few good old norwegian kroner for the thing. The attached lens was the usual 35-70mm thing, of which I got a few from earlier camera purchases. But there in the background, the lens I was looking for, and not even stated in the ad as anything more than "an extra lens" or something like that.

This old one from the late eighties may, or may not, have been made inside the same kind of Nikon F-401 as I'm talking about today. Only difference is that it's from a different camera. The one I got rid of some time in the mid 90's or thereabout, when I bought my first FM2 instead. 

Well, I ended up with the lens more or less given to me in the end. And the day was good. I threw the camera in the garbage camerabin and forgot all about it, as it didn't seem to work. A few weeks ago I decided to have a closer look at it. Luckily I have opened a few cameras before, and this was a simple case as the problem was found to be nothing more serious than a bad contact point. 

This very bad scan is also from an old film, definitely drawn through that old Nikon. It's of my middle child, Malin, who has grown a bit since this was snapped, and who is now pushing a lille bit bigger but still very similar thing in front of her as she strolls the streets.

The camera is working now, and I have just brought it over to Orkney to give it a good go in some rough conditions. It might not work when I get home, but we'll see. Anyway, this is a love and hate kind of thing I got towards this snapper, but I promise to try give it a fair chance and look at it with a pair of half freshish eyes. 
I must admit though, that it's kind of cool to have a working example of this camera in my bag once more. It's been a long time since the mid 80's after all.

Last one today. My oldest child, Glenn, working on agricultural machinery here. Today he is an electrician, working on the GSM mobile antenna systems in the area. Nikon F-401 around 1994 or something like that.

I even got this pixelcollector, right here!

I brought a few cameras this trip, just in case I may manage to get some good use of them in some way. You know, it's this time of year and all. There could be things to snap, for all we know. 
I even brought a tiny pixelshooter, just in case. It's a Fujifilm something-pro, just because I can use my japaneese AND german lenses on the thing. How cool is that, tell me?! 
Nope, not that I'm going to really go wild and through the roof and snap a horsedung of pixels, believe me, but more because I have owned the thing for a couple of years now without having felt eager to give it a good test. Not until now, anyway. And who knows... tomorrow I might not feel like doing it, after all. We'll find out soon enough, I bet.

An oldish filmsnap from the ship docked in Orkney, just where we are located as I write this. And oh, yes... there are dust to be found, as there usually is. Don't remember which film, nor the camera. Probably german stuff... oldish.

There it is... a lot of my headache compressed into one small image. The crane, it is!

Some day last summer, or some time. Leaving Orkney, heading homewards. Snapped from the taxi, as I'm prone to do at times.

It's the same, but a little bit different

Well, here I am back at work again. The thing is we're totally stuck alongside, as the weather out at sea is just to bad for us to do any work in. Which means we got to stay here, alongside the pier in Kirkwall for a wee while. A few days, maybe. Or at least until the weather decides to calm down a bit, which can take weeks at this time of year. As you all know a lot about, of course.
They managed to beat the heli-deck to pieces a few weeks ago, you might remember. Or, actually the sea did that work, very fast indeed. It looks nothing good out there, I tell you. 

This is nothing new, but a scan of a rather oldish negative snapped with the help of a german camera some time ago. It's from a hotel lobby in Bergen as we were stuck here for a few days during a real snow storm when trying to get to work. It was the only one I had on some stick here... as I could not find my hard drive in the bag. I need to go take a closer look!!