What I mean by the latter is that after tripping the shutter, I have to hit the camera's underside below the film take-up spool to advance the lever. That's not haw it's supposed to work, but for some reason the lever locks. I suspect that the gears have gummed with age because when I bought the camera I had to hit it with decent force five to ten times to unlock the lever. Now I have to give it a solid, single smack. I accomplished this progress by running the equivalent of five rolls of 36 exposure film through it. No film, just shutter actuations, smacks, and advances. Over the span of a few hours, the problem lessened. Before I use the camera again I plan to inject some lighter fluid into the mechanism to loosen any old grease.
I knew about those issues going into the day but discovered, on processing the negatives, that the camera also has a light leak. It's minor, a pinhole, and it only affected some negatives. I correlated the negatives with the issue to the ones that sat the longest between exposures, indicating that the light leak is near the hinge, probably resulting from missing and degraded light-proof batting along the hinge.
So the camera needs some repairs. The lens, too, needs some repairs. Under the first element group there's a dust haze around the element's perimeter. It's visible, but I was unsure if it would affect image quality. I'll let you decide.
For film, I used Kodak TMax 400 ISO and a yellow filter. Also, with the exception of the crane photograph, all of these shots are almost straight out of the camera. The crane needed some additional gamma correction to correct for 'flatness' my scanner sometimes causes. The rest received nothing more than automatic contrast balancing.
This is one of numerous mythology-based sculptures above a building in SOMA. If you're ever at AT&T Park, look across the street between the Willie Mays entrance and the Second Street Muni stop. They're great sculptures and I hope to come back with a better lens to photograph them all for a later blog post.
Speaking of AT&T Park, here is it. There's a wharf and construction area south of the stadium and I had the opportunity to walk around there when I had the FTn out. The park framed up nicely in the 135mm. For those of you math nerds out there, this image takes up about 92% of the frame. The 135mm lens has an 18-degree cone. The 12 visible seating areas along the top have a rofline linear distance of 413.66 feet. How far was I from the stadium?
Cranes amaze me. Delicately balanced, incredibly strong. The engineering behind crane design seems impenetrably complicated and difficult. But, get two cranes in the same picture and there's an opportunity for something interesting. With luck I'll have more, better crane photographs at some point.
Monochrome photography lends itself to photos that in color would be less visually interesting. In color, this would be a rock with some light shining through tree branches. In monochrome, it presents an interplay of contrasts, tones and shades layering on rocky textures. Monochrome photography lends itself well to impressionistic photos and interpretations. That was my aim with this photo.
It's a garbage can's shadow on rocks, for the same reason as the above photo. It's not as good, I don't think, but there's something there which may warrant a reinvestigation in the future.
My last photo for this post, I liked how this building's windows mostly all became different tones in monochrome. I remember some variation in color, but not this much.
I'm not sure if I've linked you to my Picasa album before. It has all the photos I take and upload -- those I feature in my blog and others which I don't. It also has photos from last year. Check it out and leave me comments and be sure to like the photos you appreciate. I'm happy to try and take more photos like the ones people like.
https://picasaweb.google.com/102333270936007447976
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