Morning in Lithia Park

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Taking my new 70-year old Leica for a photo shoot.

Sundays I’ve been going out mornings to take photos. My first excursions were to Lithia Park, which was designed by John McClaren, the man who designed San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

This fountain is the Butler-Perozzi Fountain, hauled all the way to the Pacific Northwest in 1915 from the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. It’s striking to think that an fountain carved in Italy would end up in what was then a an unknown logging town.

Page 56 Redone and My Lens Arrived from Ukraine

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children's picture book, Clip Studio Paint EX

That’s supposed to be a wet kitten.

I bought a lens for my Leica on EBay. The seller is in Ukraine. I’m amazed that the lens could be delivered even though Ukraine is being horrifically attacked.


Sunday, June 26, 2022: A Hot Day in Southern Oregon

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We’re having one of our rare 100+ degrees days. Nacho the Pug is having a hard time dealing with it. My solution is to wet him down thoroughly. I’ll take him for a very short walk this evening.

The picture is a section from a TRI-X negative. What I love about it is the grain. This is a straight scan, with no processing.

Final Version of the Birthday Cake Page and Portra is $27 a 36-frame Roll

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As always, when I write “final version”, I mean “at this moment I’m finished with it.” I may decide to rework the page at any time.

In other news, a 36-frame roll of Kodak Portra 400 costs $27 dollars. How times have changed. When the email arrived that Portra was back in stock, my partner waited a few hours to order and got the message “Sold Out”. The early bird gets the Portra.

Sunday Chores -- Cooking and Testing Leica and Rollei Shutter Speeds

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Today I cooked up a big pot of vegan stew. With all of the right spices and veggies, it resembles beef stew.

With two new-to-me cameras in my possession, I’m going through the process of testing the very old (70-years old) shutters to see if they’re working correctly. I know that they’re opening and closing properly — that’s not always the case with old cameras — but I need to know exactly how fast the shutter speeds are if I want to get consistent exposures. To do that, I photograph a gray card at every shutter speed, changing the aperture so that each shot has the same exposure value. In theory, each exposure will create a negative of the same density. The only way to know if all is well is to check the negatives when they return from the lab. If the shutter speeds are way off, the gray card won’t be gray — it will be either too bright or too dark, depending on whether the shutter speeds are too slow or fast. With vintage cameras, the shutter speeds usually get slower with age.