Large Format Smokehouse Ruins

Back in April, I visited Round Valley Regional Park in Brentwood, California, with my Pentax K-7 and a few lenses. At the time, I identified an old stone house along Marsh Creek. On my trip in May, I met a park ranger who told me locals said the stone building was a smoke house, but he didn't know anything more about it than that.

I managed four shots worth sharing from the trip. My goal was mostly to learn about the camera. I attempted one mega macro, extending the Calumet's bellows the full 22 inches. This led to the five-inch width covering about a half inch of real space -- an in-camera 10X macro. Maybe more or less (I didn't measure the subject.) Anyway, the macro didn't turn out, but it's good to know that I have mega macro capacity in my camera all the time.

Another goal was to try some tilts and swings. Here are the first results. For a lens, I have one large-format lens, a Caltar 165mm in a Seikosha SLV shutter. The lens is amazing with substantial movement available and very sharp rendering. The shutter is great with no discernible movement, a very pleasant sound, and reliable times. For film, I used Lucky 100 and Arista 100. I also shot four images on Rollei Orthochromatic ATO 2.1 but have not developed them yet (I just mixed some XTol tonight, though, so those images are likely coming in a future entry.


Testing out a standard shot but at f32 or 45 to obtain the deepest field marked on the shutter. The shutter actually closes down to about f165, and I tried a shot at that aperture. However, I didn't have a very deep range when I tried that, so it's hard to see the difference between f165 and f22. So I'll have to try that again in the future.


This was at the maximum aperture -- f6.3. It's shallow because of the aperture, not because of any Sheimplung-type trickery.


This one, however, is super-shallow due to Sheimpfulng-type trickery. Basically, I went craxy with the shifts and tilts.


I shot this at f8, f22, and f165. This is the best because it's the least blown out of the three. I accidentally made the Ilfosol-3 too strong for the Arista batch, and all the negatives were over developed about a stop and a half. Oops.

Round Valley Regional Park

A few weeks ago I took in Round Valley Regional Park in an attempt to see some golden eagles. Following my mis-identification of a nesting pair of red-tailed hawks as golden eagles, I decided to see if I could find some real eagles to photograph. Low Vasqueros reservoir has some trail closings, so those eagles would probably be  inaccessible. Round Valley State Park has had historic eagle sightings, and no current trail closures.

To spoil the plot early, I did not see any eagles. Lots of eagle food:


ground squirrels and rabbits, for instance.



But the trip wasn't a total wash. I managed to get some great photos for my Panoramio account. Have you checked that out yet, by the way? I have, right now, about 800 photos active in Google Earth. Here's a link to all my photos on the Panoramio map. It's a fun website, by the by.

Anyway, in the park I found an old stone building along Marsh Creek. I don't know anything about it yet, but when I have more details I'll go back and take more photos for another blog entry. In the interim, here are some photos of the stone house.


It was kind of warm that day, so I stopped to take this photo under a tree.


Some interesting deadwood by the house.


I could have done a better job of not blowing out the highlights on this shot. The stonework turned out nicely, though.


More really blown-out highlights.


It's worth noting that none of the shots on this page are high-dynamic-range images. It's possible to expose an image in a DSLR for a wide dynamic range without using multiple images and having software slap them all together. In fact, one of the reasons I chose my Pentax (an earlier model than but similar to this one) was because of the camera's range.



Lest you think, though, that all Round Valley has to offer is the stone house, here are a few other photos from the hike:




A California Aligator Lizard (Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata)


An old tractor with caterpillar treads


What I'm pretty sure is an American Goldfinch


I know there's a squirrel earlier, but this one wanted to play hide and seek with you.



This photo is just heartbreaking to me. It's a good angle, nice framing, and a good atmosphere, but the problems from the camera metering the images different make it a severely flawed finished product. I'll have to re-take it.