Self Portrait

The last time Craftyangie and I visited my parents, my father dug through his collection and found a treasure: my Grandmother’s old Minolta Hi-Matic 9. It’s a late ’60s 35mm rangefinder camera, with a 45mm f/1.7 lens. It features fully automatic exposure, but also allows full manual exposure control. Like so many hand-me-downs in my family, even though this camera was used extensively by my grandmother, it’s in absolutely perfect cosmetic condition.

Hi-Matic 9, straight on

Of course, there’s always a catch to these things. (There kind of has to be!) In this case, there were a couple of catches. It originally took one of those nasty old Mercury cell batteries, that are now illegal in the US. And, as we played around with it, we discovered that the shutter didn’t always fire. In fact, while playing around with it, the shutter stopped working entirely. You’d hear a “click”, but nothing would happen. Fortunately, I was able to fix both problems…

Market Apples

The mercury cell battery problem is an interesting one. Mercury batteries were 1.35v batteries. Unlike Alkaline batteries, mercury cells maintain a constant voltage over their lifetime, until they finally die. This voltage is so constant and reliable that circuit designers were able to use the voltage from the battery as a reference voltage, without creating any circuitry to normalize the voltage first. This means that if you put a battery in with a different voltage, say 1.5v, the light meter will give incorrect readings, because it is relying on it being 1.35v.

The good news is, I’m hardly the first person to run across this problem. Albert Yee has a good description about how to solve this problem using a Zinc Air 675 hearing aid battery (which is 1.4v, close enough). I bought a pack of these hearing aid batteries, selected a rubber washer from my father’s collection, and the light meter was back in business.

Then, there’s that shutter problem. I’ll write a blog post soon about how I fixed that when I returned to Philly. It took some more effort and disassembly to fix, and is worth a post of its own…

Anyway, I loaded the camera with a test roll of Kodak Gold 200 that came with another camera I bought a few months back. And I’m thrilled with the results! The 45mm lens is just as sharp as The Internet said it would be. The colors and contrast are good, and I can’t see any flare, chromatic aberration, or any other bugaboos in the photos. The only cheesy thing about it is the 5-bladed aperture: I bet a 7-bladed design would make for much better background blur. The photo to the above left is a good example of what the camera is capable of.

Hi-Matic 9, rear

Here’s the specs: The shutter goes from 1/500 to 1 second, plus Bulb, in one stop increments. ISO can be set from 25 through 800, in 1/3 stop increments. The light meter’s range is on the small side, from EV 5.5 through 17. (Though with manual exposure, it can go down to EV 1.5.) My first reaction is that it’s too bad that there’s no ISO 1600 on this camera, but then I doubt it would be terribly useful when the meter only goes down to EV 5.5. I’m thinking the fastest film I might ever put in it is ISO 400, which is still fast enough for most general photography.

Hi-Matic 9, showing EV

The light meter reads out in exposure values (EV) inside the viewfinder. In automatic exposure mode, it chooses an appropriate aperture and shutter speed itself. In manual exposure mode, you choose an aperture and shutter that corresponds to the number the dial points at in the viewfinder. If you want to over- or under-expose for whatever reason, you simply set the EV lower or higher than recommended. If you turn both the aperture and shutter speed control rings together, you can keep it set for the same EV setting, but go through aperture and shutter combinations that are all equivalent. (For example, EV 10 is 1/125 at f/2.8… twist both to 1/60 and you’ll get f/4, which is still EV 10.) Very clever!

That said, I’m a little bit concerned about the metering on this camera. I took the next two shots with the same EV reading, using the method described above. The first is at f/4 and the second, at f/2.8. When I scanned them myself at home, I scanned both frames with the exact same settings. Note that there’s a definite difference in how bright the scene is from one to the other. F/2.8 is already stopped down by 1 1/3 stops, so I doubt it’s flare from being shot wide-open or anything like that.

Faucet, f/4

Faucet, f/2.8

It’s not like the brighter exposure of the second shot is so awful or that it’s unsalvageable… but it’s probably not the ideal camera for shooting slide film with. (Though my grandmother definitely did shoot slide film with it!)

The Hi-Matic 9 handles well, but it’s definitely a solid brick of a camera. It’s not a tiny like the Canonet GIII QL17 or Olympus RC35, but comparable to a Pentax K1000 in size and weight. In fact, I weighed the Hi-Matic 9 and compared it with my K1000 (an older all-metal model) with a 50mm f/2 lens attached. The Hi-Matic was 1lb 11oz, and the K1000 with lens was 1lb 12oz. Neither is exactly compact or pocketable, unless you have particularly big pockets. The Canonet or Olympus seem like better choices for a go-anywhere camera, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Some more beauty shots of the Hi-Matic 9 itself:

Hi-Matic 9, top

Two focus scales, one in Metric and the other in English measure. No DOF scale, though.

Hi-Matic 9, bottom

Hi-Matic 9, loading film

The Hi-Matic 9 is especially easy to load film in. The film take-up reel on the right sort of grabs the film leader, making mis-loading difficult. Nice.

Hi-Matic 9, showing battery test

It’s easy to unambiguously check the battery status. Note on the lens barrel that there are three green dots lined up with the “check” arrow. You line up the green dots on the aperture, shutter and focus rings with that arrow, and look through the viewfinder. If the light meter points at the lightning bolt icon, your battery’s good to go.

After having an underwhelming experience with a Yashica YL a few months back (admittedly, an older camera not quite in the same class as this one), the Hi-Matic 9 has redeemed rangefinder cameras for me. I plan on keeping it loaded with film and shooting with it!

Graflex RB Super D SLR 3x4 camera

Amazingly, a couple of people have actually asked me what ever happened with the Graflex RB Super D 3×4 large format SLR Marisa gave me some time ago. Good grief, you people are actually paying attention to me?? Ahh, but seriously, it’s a good question.

To tell the truth, I’ve run two rolls of film through the RB Super D already, in fact, the first one was developed maybe a month after I got the camera (and 120 6×6 roll film back). So where is it? Wellll… it’s finally been long enough that I don’t feel totally stupid saying what happened with it… When I picked it up from getting developed at Photolounge, the entire roll was blank. I mean, all that was left was the substrate, no evidence of a picture. I left, totally confused, trying to figure out what happened. Maybe the giant reflex mirror wasn’t swinging out of the way of the exposure fast enough? Did I really forget to remove the Dark Slide from the 120 film back every time?

No, it was much more stupid than that. I finally figured out I’d loaded the film backwards, with the paper backing facing the lens. I’d been very meticulously exposing plain ol’ paper the whole time. A pretty stupid mistake. One big reason I didn’t catch it while shooting is that the 120 film back doesn’t have a little red frame counter window on it; it advances the film one frame at a time, mechanically counting off the right number of turns to advance the film the right amount. (Remember that detail for later.) With no little red window, I couldn’t see the film was installed backwards.

Anyway. After I finally got to the point where I could even look at the camera without feeling shame, I ran another roll through it, this time loading the film properly.

The results are very nice, actually, but there’s just one problem. Here is a scan of the 120 film:

Roll of 120 film from the Graflex

Notice any problem? Right. The frames are overlapping. Remember how the 120 film back automatically advances the film? Well, this one isn’t advancing it enough, by less than 1/4″. It makes clicking noises as you turn the advance knobs, so I started to think about all kinds of work-arounds I could do involving counting the clicks to do it correctly. I told Alvin about all of this, and he said “why don’t you just wrap some tape around the spool, so it winds more on every turn?”. Why don’t I, indeed?

That Alvin, he’s a smart guy… Anyway, I calculated how much thicker the spool needs to be to move the film about 1/4″ further each frame, and wrapped enough packing tape around the spool to do that:

Spool wrapped in tape

We’ll see how that goes, next roll of film.

Anyway, here are the results. Not quite 6×6 due to the overlapping frames, but here you go:

Chain

Lady on 13th

DOF Test

Creative Disguise

Good stuff!

Vest Pocket Kodak ready to go

No, I didn’t take any more pictures with the Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak camera. I think one experiment with it was enough… But, my father (who you might have seen commenting as “D’Dude” on this blog) scanned in some of the prints of some photos he took with it years ago; and I re-scanned the negatives with some different scanning software that allows me more flexibility when scanning.

I think it’s worth doing this quick follow-up to give a better sense of the results the Vest Pocket camera was capable of.

First off, the pictures my father took with the Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak, which date from the late 50s, when he found it, to the early 60s.

The first one here is from before he fixed the light leaks with tape. It’s a photo of his friend’s family’s farmhouse in Vermont:

Farm in Vermont

Says Dad of this one, “The color one, yes, we had color in those days, is of my dorm. You like the car in the picture?”:

Dorm and Car

“And the four guys are from my floor freshman year at college.” Real cool, Dad!   :

Freshmen

A house my father’s family lived in at one time:

House

Dad commented, “I think you will see that the pictures are much better than the one you took. I think that perhaps the backing on the 127 film did a a better job keeping the film flat and in the focal plane for the shots.” I would have to agree with that idea. Maybe it would have looked better if I’d crammed some used up roll film backing in there, too… No doubt, the biggest problem is all the light leaks that have found their way back into the camera…

And now, my re-scans of two of the negatives, this time using VueScan software, rather than the scanning software that came with my scanner. VueScan allows me to scan non-standard film sizes, which these raw film strips definitely are. I scanned the film in a 120 film holder so we can see the 35mm film sprockets, and how the image goes out all the way to the edges (since 127 film is wider than 35mm film).

First off is one you’ve seen part of before:

North Street View

And another view nearby. VueScan was able to do a much better job getting a usable scan of this particular image:

Brick Building

Pretty cool!

Pentax K to EOS EF adapter

Christmas arrived a little late this year, but today, I finally got the Pentax K manual lens adapter for Canon EOS cameras I’ve wanted for some time. A less paranoid friend of mine, Kent, ordered one from some random guy in Hong Kong via eBay and PayPal for me. Fortunately, he had no problems with the transaction, as it arrived about 8 days after clicking on “buy it now” and paying. The only sketchy thing about the whole process is that the seller marked on the customs form “gift”. However, that’s up to him, as it’s up to the person shipping an item to sign off on it.

K to EOS EF adapter on Pentax lens

Over on the above left is how it looks. The metal looks well-machined; not flimsy at all. The K-mount lens mounts securely to the adapter, and the adapter snaps into place on the camera just as securely as a Canon-branded lens would. Impressive. If anything, the fit of the adapter to the lens is a little too tight, as it’s a little difficult to remove from the lens when you’re done with it. This seems preferable to a loosey-goosey design that feels untrustworthy, though, so I’m not complaining. The autofocus confirmation chip is just expoxied on there, but it feels very secure.

Pentax SMC 50mm f/1.4 on a Canon Rebel XTi

That’s all nice; how’s it work? I’ll cut to the chase: very well! Beyond being a nice, precision chunk of machined metal, infinity focus is perfect and Canon’s camera firmware makes it surprisingly un-painful to use the lens with it. It’s easier to use than I thought it would be, which is a pleasant surprise. Basically, you set the camera on “Av” aperture priority mode, focus and shoot.

That’s an oversimiplification of the process, as there’s a few gotchas. First of all, the Canon EOS system does all lens functions electronically: focusing; identifying the lens; setting the aperture for a picture, etc. Manual focus lenses can’t do any of this, so not only do you have to focus yourself, but you have to play with the aperture control to take pictures. SLR cameras allow you to compose with the lens “wide open” (at the maximum aperture) so what you see in the viewfinder is bright, and easier to focus. With this adapter, you have to open the aperture yourself to compose; then close it down to whatever you like, before you take your picture.

Infinity Focus works fine

This is where Canon makes it easy: the camera is always figuring out the correct exposure for a scene, regardless of what aperture you’ve manually set. This is called “stop-down metering”. Once you’ve got your composition, focus and aperture chosen, you just press the shutter button.

The other gotcha is that even though it has a focus confirmation chip on it, Canon cameras won’t focus with an f-stop slower than f/5.6. (I don’t think any brand of camera does, for that matter.) So, it really is best to focus and compose with the lens aperture set wide open, and then set the aperture down at the last moment when you’re ready to take your picture. This is all stuff that happens automatically with SLR cameras made since the 1960s (well, except for autofocus).

A few final notes about all of this.

If I owned Nikon cameras, I wouldn’t need an adapter to use old manual Nikon lenses; and the whole process would be easier. In theory, all Nikon lenses made since 1977 should work on newer Nikon cameras; and lenses made between 1959 and 1977 can be converted to “AI” (auto-indexing) to have that same compatibility. In reality, the list of caveats and exceptions is about a mile long, and varies from camera body to camera body. The cheapest Nikon DSLRs, the D40, D40x and D60, are also the worst offenders when it comes to incompatibility, so your mileage with that will vary greatly.

I can’t imagine being a pro and putting up with any of this. Certainly, a pro will just buy the latest Canon glass and forget all about this adapter stuff. The glass is all an investment and a write-off, so there is absolutely no point to any of this playing around. Good thing I’m not a pro; this is just fun!

And now, for the whole point of the exercise: Using nice, (relatively) inexpensive old Pentax glass with my DSLR. So far, I’m very pleased with the results. See for yourself:

Horse Head, at f/4; Pentax SMC-M 50mm f/1.4 lens

Nice and sharp, isn’t it? I like the quality of the background blur, too.

Scary Thornbush, at f/2; Pentax SMC-M 50mm f/1.4 lens

Oh yeah. This is verrry nice!

And now, for a few shots showing the same scene with different apertures. (The lighting was kinda weird, a combination of cloudy light through the window and incandescent overhead, so don’t read too much into how the colors turned out… that isn’t the point to this group of pictures.)

Kalanchoe Trellis at f/1.4; Pentax SMC-M 50mm f/1.4 lens

Kalanchoe Trellis at f/2.8; Pentax SMC-M 50mm f/1.4 lens

Kalanchoe Trellis at f/4; Pentax SMC-M 50mm f/1.4 lens

Kalanchoe Trellis at f/5.6; Pentax SMC-M 50mm f/1.4 lens

]]> http://www.squirrelsgolikethis.com/2009/03/01/manual-lenses-eos-bodies/feed/ 13 http://www.squirrelsgolikethis.com/2009/02/22/vest-pocket/ http://www.squirrelsgolikethis.com/2009/02/22/vest-pocket/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:17:58 +0000 boombadeus http://www.squirrelsgolikethis.com/?p=402

2009 or 1919?

What happens when you take a camera made some 90 years ago, designed to use an obsolete format of film, and make it work again? Here’s your answer!

Since I started in with this photography hobby in earnest, my father gave this Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak camera to me about six months ago. Yesterday, I decided to take pictures with it. Today, I did! Here’s how I did it…

Vest Pocket Kodak ready to go

According to the Camerapedia article, the Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak was introduced in 1917. The history of this particular one is unusual. My father found it decades ago in the attic of a house his parents had just bought. He kept it and used it, including all through college. It had light leaks, which he fixed with black tape. The tape is still on the bellows! I’m scared to try to take it off. (I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by trying, so there it will stay.)

Vest Pocket Kodak autographic feature

It takes the now obsolete and difficult to find 127 roll film. It’s a roll film like 120 medium format film, where there’s a paper backing that allows you to count the pictures frames. Size-wise, it takes images 4cm across, so it’s only a little wider than 35mm film, but not as wide as 120 format. A lot of Kodak Brownie cameras took this kind of film, too. Efke makes 127 film, as does a Canadian manufacturer whose name I can’t remember, but it’s not something you can pick up from any of the usual places. (Even more unusual was the “autographic” film this camera took, 127A, which allowed the photographer to write notes on the film with a stylus. It’s not required to have the “autographic” film; plain ol’ 127 will do.) This presents a problem for taking pictures with the Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak!

Vest Pocket Kodak extended

Since I develop B&W film at home now-a-days (hmm, haven’t written a Squirrley Post about that yet, have I??), I could develop just about anything. Ultimately, I decided to take plain 35mm Black & White Kodak Tri-X 400 and figure out how to get it into the camera. Long story short, I took a used 35mm cartridge’s film reel and trimmed down the sides of the spool to fit in the space where the supply reel goes. In a completely darkened room, I re-spooled the 35mm film onto the trimmed spool; attached the free end to the 127 spool that came with the camera; and loaded it into the camera.

Vest Pocket Kodak front

Since there’s no paper backing on 35mm film, I also covered up the back red film frame counter window with black tape, and also the “autographic” hole. (The “autographic” feature is covered by a small door, seen open in the picture above on the left, but it doesn’t look light tight [it never needed to be] so I just covered it.) The Vest Pocket camera takes 4cmx6cm exposures, so I made an educated guess about how much to turn the film advance lever after each exposure.

I took the camera and took some pictures: two indoors, and the rest outside. The first picture, of Craftyangie, might have come out, except that the shutter stuck open. Of course, I had never seen it do this before; it waited until I actually had some film in the camera to pull that trick. I can’t even claim that it resulted in an interesting “arty” image… it’s just a wiped out blur on the negative.

Onto the great outdoors. The only image that came out at all is the one at the top of this post. Unfortunately, most of the rest weren’t even worth scanning. It’s not even a matter of overexposure or underexposure: they’re just really awful quality images.

(As for the scanning… The negative is longer and more narrow [in aspect ratio] than what you see at the top. The software that came with my scanner doesn’t know what to do with 35mm negatives that aren’t exactly 24×36. I could find and use other scanning software, but I wanted to actually scan this tonight, so here you are!)

Oh, well. It was an interesting experiment. And now, when I put it up on a shelf as just a decoration, I have a good reason for doing that! 

Spreckels Organ Pavilion

Yesterday, CraftyAngie finally took me to hear a concert at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It’s a reasonably unique thing; I can think of only two other permanent outdoor pipe organs in the world (one in Germany and the other, a small one in Salzburg, Austria). Concerts are held weekly at 2pm on Sundays, free of charge, sponsored by the Spreckels Organ Society.

Facade Pipes

I had a few observations on it. First off, boy is it loud! It really surprised me. Being outdoors, with no building walls to enclose the sound and provide reverberation, it kind of has to be. Even so, this instrument creates what I can only call a “wall of sound”. The bass from the 32′ stops is almost punishing. (Which is all to say I liked it!) Still, it can be subtle. The “string” divisions had a wonderful shimmering sound to them, quiet, yet loud enough to be heard outside. Wonderful for Romantic repertoire.

Ornamentation

My second observation is how strange a pipe organ sounds without a big building to provide lots of echoes and reverberation. I have to say, it’s not flattering to the sound, overall. I’d say it requires extra Legato playing technique, since even the slightest of pauses felt really quiet, an effect exacerbated by the great volume of the instrument. I’m sure it presents an extra challenge to guest organists who have never played on the instrument, or one like it, before.

Our organist, Jackson Borges, played an interesting and varied concert program. He rounded it out with the first two movements from the Symphony No. 6 for Organ by the great French organist and composer Charles-Marie Widor. Hearing it played on such a great, brassy, powerful instrument re-affirmed my love for French Romantic organ music. He impressed the heck out of me by playing the first movement Allegro without sheet music. Wow!

I’m looking forward to attending concerts there in future visits to San Diego. And now, some photos of the organ’s interior, shown to the public after each performance:

Yashica YL Rangefinder

You’d think my father would know better than to encourage my camera habit with cameras he finds here and there. But you’d be wrong! My father found this Yashica YL at the town recycling center, grabbed it, and gave it to me.

According to this website, the Yashica YL started production in 1959, which means that this is a nearly fifty year old camera. The lens is 45mm f/2.8; there was also a 45mm f/1.9 version available. The lens appears to be a simple 3 element design; the middle element on this one might have a small fungus problem. The lens elements are not coated, as proven by lens flare. (More on that later.)

This is the first rangefinder camera I’ve ever used; it was interesting to see how it’s different to use from an SLR.

Rittenhouse Couple

The biggest difference is in how a rangefinder focuses. Since you don’t look through the lens that’s actually going to take the picture like on an SLR, you can’t see exactly how it’s focusing. Instead, you look through the viewfinder, which contains a ghostly double image of the subject. You adjust the focus until the double image converges into one image. The double image is very small and faint on this camera, and you really need something high in contrast to focus on, or it’s very difficult to see. To be honest, I wasn’t too impressed by this. I assume that newer rangefinders had improved viewfinders which are easier to focus with.

Also because you don’t compose viewing through the lens, you get problems with parallax. The YL has parallax compensation in the viewfinder that shows the outline of the supposed shooting area. It adjusts based on the focus setting, but I’m here to tell you it shoots way more than what’s shown in the outline, and not necessarily centered on that outline, either. At least it errs on the side of taking too much photo, rather than cutting stuff out.

Yashica Flare

The operation is really quiet compared to any SLR I’ve ever heard. It has a copal shutter rather than a focal-plane shutter; and of course no mirror to move out of the way like an SLR. That’s really nice, and perfect for being stealthy with candid shots.

Like pretty much any over forty year old camera, there is no light meter. I took about half a roll of 36 exposures without any light meter, using the Sunny Sixteen rule and experience. The rest, I used the meter from my Pentax K1000, which had the same speed film in it. When I got the test roll back, I was very pleasantly surprised at how well I did getting the exposures right. There was only one photo which was blatantly wrong, which isn’t bad at all.

As mentioned earlier, this camera’s lens has what I’d call some world-class flare. It’s at least party responsible for the terrible contrast in the photo above: the bright sky’s light overflowed into the darker parts of the photo, washing out the color and really essentially ruining it, in my opinion. I like how I composed the photo, with the nice hood in front, pretty foliage, and the Drake building and sky looming in the back. But it’s kind of lost in the lousy image quality. If you keep the contrast in the shot low, it works OK, but what fun is that?

Well, that’s why you shoot a test roll with an old camera, before taking too many important shots with it. On the whole, I can’t say I’m too inclined to run another roll of film through it any time soon. Between the lens flare, parallax, and difficulty focusing, I can’t say I was too impressed. Maybe at some point, I’ll encounter a better rangefinder camera (optics, viewfinder, etc) and that’ll be more interesting. We’ll see… at least the price was right on this one!

PS, Graflex RB Super D fans, I’ve got a roll of 120 Black & White film in it right now. I just need to finish it off and develop it… I haven’t forgotten about it! (And did I mention developing? Oh yes I did. More on that soon, too…)

50mm f/1.4 SMC-M Lens

Folks who follow my Flickr photo stream far too closely are probably aware that we’ve got two 35mm SLR cameras: a Canon Rebel XTi/400D (digital) and a Pentax K1000 (film). I’ve come to appreciate their respective strengths and abilities. I’ve also found that I really wish I could share lenses between them, but of course the K1000 uses Pentax K-mount and the XTi uses the EOS system EF mount.

For example, there are two Canon primes I’d like to get for the Rebel: the 50mm f/1.4 and the 28mm f/1.8. I’d get the 28mm lens to replace the 35mm f/2 we’ve got: it’s a little bit wider, a little bit faster, and has silent USM focusing. (Not that this is going to happen any time soon.) And the 50mm f/1.4, pretty much Just Because. (Probably not going to happen, period…)

Too bad I’ve got a 50mm f/1.4 lens for the Pentax, and intend to get a 28mm f/2.8 for it soon. They’d probably be really killer to use on the XTi. If only…

50mm f/1.4 SMC-M Lens upside down

It turns out that the “lens registration” distance (the distance from the film surface to the lens mount) on the Canon EOS system is very short compared to many other mounts, which means that you can make a physical mount adapter which will allow many other lens brands to mount and focus to infinity. This means that there are mount adapters that allow you to put a K-mount lens on a Canon camera! (It really only works reliably with small sensor EF-S cameras because of the K-mount’s aperture stop-down lever. See the picture on the right… if you have no idea what that means, just take my word for it.) Some of them even have a chip on them that enable the focus confirmation lights in the viewfinder to work properly! But I have only been able to find them on eBay, sold from China, so far (relevent eBay search), and via one US vendor that sells them without focus confirmation for entirely too much money. Neither Adorama nor B&H Photo (both in NYC) offer this.

Pentax K1000 with 50mm f/2

What the heck? I really, really don’t want to use eBay to buy this directly from someone in China, even if the price is reasonable. Then, I’d have to use paypal. I’m not “confirmed” on paypal because you have to “link” a checking account to it, which gives paypal entirely too much power over/access to your checking account. (See paypalsucks.com for all the reason that you really don’t want to do that.) Even if I was “confirmed”, the shipping address would have to be different than the billing address. We have a “private mailbox” at a store that offers that service, because we live in the city, and if UPS or FedEx left a package at our door, it would be stolen nearly instantly. The PMB receives our packages and holds them for us; it’s secure, convenient and inexpensive. A very legitimate reason to have a PMB, but apparently makes paypal suspect fraud. Screw ‘em.

Isn’t there a reseller in the US that can sell me this thing without screwing around with eBay, paypal, and importing stuff from China myself, without ripping me off for over 3x the price while lacking important features?

So. All I want for Christmas is a legitimate US-based vendor to sell me a K-to-EOS mount adapter with focus confirmation chip. (Or, failing that, someone to get one for me. )

Trolley Car Diner Sign

A few weeks ago, after checking out the Morris Arboretum (located as far northwest as you can go in Philly without actually leaving the city), Craftyangie and I decided to check out the Chestnut Hill/Mount Airy sections of Philly. We also had in mind the idea of going to have dinner and ice cream at the Trolley Car Diner (warning, egregious use of Flash on the website) on Germantown Avenue.

Trolley Car Diner

We actually had tried to do the exact same thing a week earlier, but were completely foiled at our attempts to do by a) getting distracted by the Allen Lane train station, which delayed getting to the Arboretum; b) torrential thunderstorms which closed the arboretum just as we arrived; c) construction on Germantown Avenue itself to repave the street and restore the Septa Route 23 trolley tracks, which made the Trolley Car Diner very difficult to find. (Especially in the crazy rain.)

Wait… back that train up… trolley track construction? I am so there!

Completed section of trolley tracks and street

Well, on our second attempt, we did get to the Trolley Car Diner. It is located next to the most recently completed stretch of street and track; the next section is currently in progress just down the street. After a most satisfying dinner of a Reuben Sandwich (for me) and Cheeseburger (Craftyangie) washed down by a delicious malted vanilla-chocolate shake (shared, awww!), we poked around the construction.

Track with Flangeway

The construction is actually a little bit non-traditional. I’m used to seeing rails with built-in flangeways (as seen in the photo on the right, even if that is a former freight line, not a trolley line). But they are using conventional rail here, and simply molding a space for the trolley wheel flange to go out of the concrete. I’m sure this is cheaper, but who knows if it’s better?

Historic photo of New York trolley tracks

They’re also using metal ties, spaced one every several feet, rather than wooden ties, as shown in this very old photo of trolley track (re)construction in New York City. (I have no idea where I downloaded this picture from, probably nearly a decade ago.) Interestingly, they’re using rail with flangeways in the foreground, but when the rail straightens out, they stopped and used regular rail instead. So I guess you could say what they’re doing on Germantown Ave is not without precedent…

Anyway, that’s enough chit-chat. From here, I’ll just show some pictures of the progress, along with my “best educated guess” caption describing what’s going on. If you know for sure what’s going on in these photos, please feel free to comment here!

Metal trolley ties. This is probably a really really easy way to ensure that the track is laid in gauge. No guessing: just put the rails in the slots provided.

The next section of track in line for concrete. It's interesting how they've gone around the manhole with the concrete pouring form here.

The view around the bend. This section looks like it was ready for concrete to be poured next, with all the re-bar and forms in place.

A view of the track supports and jacks. It looks like the ties are adjustable vertically on the ends. When the concrete is poured and sets, that carries the all the weight. Also see the jacks that make the track bend around the curve. Looks like they have a steel spike that is driven into the asphalt; then the spike is jacked up to make the rail bend the way you want it. (I wonder at what point the jack can be removed before pouring concrete?)

A view beyond the concrete forms. The track is simply laying on the asphalt, waiting for ties, re-bar, concrete forms, etc.

The rails sure look flexible running down the street like this. What amazes me is how incredibly heavy and strong that steel is, yet it can look like all you'd need to do is just kick it to bend it out of shape. (Yeah, right!)

Let's get a good look at that digging machine!

There are more pictures of the whole thing on my Flickr photo stream…

Graflex RB Super D SLR 3x4 camera

What’s 7 inches tall by 7 inches deep by 6 inches wide, has a big 152mm lens, and a giant mirror inside?

A World War II era giant SLR camera, that’s what. And now, thanks to Marisa’s Closet of Photographic Mystery, I have one of my very own: a Graflex RB Super D 3×4 camera!

Adjustable Aperture

Yes, once again, Marisa found an old camera in the deep, dark depths of what used to be her grandparents’ closet, and figured I’d be able to provide it with a good home. I was pretty thrilled with the Vigilant Six-20, but this is just another couple of steps beyond that.

View through the Viewfinder of the RB Super D

It’s a really neat, well-designed, well-made, interesting machine. You look down through the top at ground glass, and focus using the knob on the bottom right. The view in the finder is 3-d in appearance, and really something if you’re not used to large format cameras. (I’m not used to them, and it’s definitely still “wowing” me.)

How I got the view of the viewfinder

The shutter is a big wind-up vertical plane shutter. It’s like a curtain with five different sized slits cut in it. The film gets exposed as the slit passes by; the larger the slit, the longer the exposure. This also means that the entire image doesn’t get exposed all at once, which apparently is an interesting looking phenomenon.

Graflex SLRs are a surprisingly difficult kind of camera to find information about. There’s graflex.org, which has a bunch of information and a discussion board. Precious few photos are attributed to these on Flickr. Photo.net has some active and archived discussions about them, which helps.

Graflex RB Super D folded up

As I mentioned, this one is a 3×4 model. Strictly speaking, it’s designed to take 3 1/4″ x 4 1/4″ sheet film in a variety of different film backs. It actually came with a Graflex Mode 2 Film Pack Adapter, with film still inside! (Ancient Kodak Super-XX film.) It holds 12 sheets of film, and you pull out a paper tab every time you take a photo. Whichever of Marisa’s relatives that used this never finished off the pack that’s in it. I thought about trying to develop it, but it’s so old it’s almost certainly completely fogged and unsalvageable.

Side View of the Graflex RB Super D

Of course, 3×4 sheet film is difficult to find (4×5 is easy to find), and these film packs haven’t been produced in at least a decade. So the Model 2 Film Pack Adapter goes in the “interesting old oddity” category.

The camera’s kind of hard to take pictures with without a usable film back! Fortunately, they are interchangeable, and possible to find on the used market. In addition to 3×4, you can also get various Medium Format backs. I stumbled onto one at a used camera vendor’s website: a Graflex “22″ Roll Film Holder back, which holds 120 film and exposes 6×6 photos. Looked reasonable at $35 plus shipping, so I ordered it.

It turns out $35 plus shipping was extremely reasonable! Since then, I have read that these rollfilm backs are very rare and expensive. Then, I started finding dealers asking as much as $145 for it! I think I just lucked out on that one! Though I really want a 6×9 back for it, I can certainly deal with 6×6 for the price. It’ll get me started…

Yep. There’ll be a lot more to read about this neat-o new camera in the future right here.