Buckshot’s Blog

ready to hit the rocks tomorrow morning!

Finally stepping up to 35″ tires, it’s been a long time in preparation, but today was the day!  My friend & coworker Karl helped me mount the new tires.  All is well, they sing a bit louder and lower tone than the old tires, but who cares!  I can’t wait to break them in on the trails

Enjoying the outdoors with some friends up in Frazier Mountain

went with a small group to big bear for some offroading.  We hit Holcomb Creek, Dishpan, Heartbreak Ridge, John Bull and Gold Mountain trails.  Many more photos to come as soon as I go through all of them!

almost finished with my 2nd table project, this one smaller, and made of african mahogany.  My first try at mortise and tenon joints, they aren’t perfect, but they are quite sturdy.  (no screws or nails used).  I also sketched this one out in 3d (Maya) before I built it, to get a feel for how I wanted it to look.  It turns out that this is quite a nice way to pre-visualize what the furniture will look like, I’ll be doing this on all of my future projects.

starting to get into woodworking, here’s my first table, made of maple.  Will be a small computer table, still need to sand down the screw plugs and apply a stain to the wood.  Very simple design, but getting my feet wet!  The next table will have tapered legs, and hopefully mortise and tenon joints.

And the jeep, put some blinkers under the headlights in preparation for metalcloak’s flat fenders that are soon to come that will replace the current fenders (and thus the blinkers too)

New River, a north flowing river, is said to possibly be one of the oldest rivers in the world.

Here’s what I saw along the way to Chattanooga:

Somewhere in Louisiana…

Somewhere in Mississippi…

Somewhere in Alabama…

Somewhere in Tennessee…

somewhere in Louisiana…

drying after the rain…

a cat that loves me…

changed the oil, rotated the tires, greased the suspension and steering, ready to hit the road again!

Somewhere in the middle of Arizona…

Somewhere in the middle of Texas…

South Louisiana and New Orleans

trying out the new anti-rock front swaybar setup and 1″ body lift.  Seems to be working just fine

a bit of an upgrade in the safety department!

getting ready to drive across country for some time off of work to visit friends and family.  Installed cruise control, new stereo, independent switches for front and rear lockers, CB radio, and in-cab winch controls.  The interior is stripped out right now, and the interior metal will be sprayed with truck bed liner.

trying out the 28mm summicron on my M9, it’s a keeper for sure!

a cloudy but still beautiful afternoon near Mt. Wilson

taking the jeep out for a spin, and getting my hands/eye comfortable with the M9, it’s fun to shoot!  But I feel that compositionally and functionally I need to get used to using a range finder.

on a speedgraphic 4×5 with a petzval lens, many years expired Fujichrome 64T.

getting back into stitching again, here’s a quick stitch:

the jeep, resting in the shade after a few trail rides

enjoying the jeep some more!

some 8×10 shots from “Hole in the wall” in the Mojave Desert.  Arista 100 8×10

My new “get me to new photography locations” vehicle  (and get me back and forth from work too!)  I took it off the pavement for the first time today, (a nice easy dirt path!) I had so much fun I almost completely forgot to take photos

I’ve had this lens for a few months now, but have not had a chance to try it out. I’ve got some bungee straps to help hold up the weight of the lens for a few test shots.  I will work out a better more permanent mounting solution.

And here’s the test shots!  I think this lens will make for some interesting photographs for sure.

And the case that I’m putting this beast into, an old Aviator’s night vision metal case that I picked up from a military surplus store, finally putting it to use!  Complete with foam and pressure valve, hah!  Probably overkill for sure, but it makes carrying this guy around simple, and don’t have to worry about where I put the lens, I know it’s not going anywhere.  (soda can for size comparison!)  Will also put a few other necessary items in the case, since there’s left over space.

finally got to shoot one of these!

One of my old lenses, a test subject for a new flash I just received, to replace the one of my older ones that kind of blew up a few weeks ago

Went to the June 26th-28th Historic Sports Car Festival this weekend, alot of fun!  Brought my speedgraphic (now with a working flash!) to shoot some cars in the pits!  With all the classic race cars out there, I think my old camera got the same amount of compliments as most of the cars out there, hah!

And here’s a photo of me at the track, taken by Aaron Kupferman www.motorsportlens.com

These shots are from Christmas of 2008.   I really don’t like developing roll-film of any size, it’s just not as enjoyable as sheet film for some reason.  So anyway, I put off developing this roll until I found it sitting there with a few other more recent rolls that I just shot, so I just dropped them off at the lab to be developed instead of doing it myself.  Shot with my old Zeiss 6x9cm folder camera

a photo of the whipple supercharger on my mustang

I’ve shot this old truck quite a few times, last time I was out there I shot a color 4×5 “just for the heck of it” since I had some old expired color film (Fujichrome 64T), just now got around to having it developed, didn’t do to bad   The color balance was off (tungston) and I probably need to practice scanning color film!  but I’m happy with shooting the color film, the chromes are nice to look at, so I think I’ll shoot the rest of the color film I have, and buy some more!   4×5 speedgraphic with a B&L projection “petzval” lens.

Took some Infra Red shots in Death Valley (and other places around the area), these are batch converted, I’ll go back and adjust the colors later to be consistant with each other.

pulled out the old infrared 10d yesterday, forgot how much I enjoy using it! 

All of the blood and wounds are fake, but if you get queezy very easy you may not want to click on the images for larger views.

4×5 Speedgraphic with Stroboflash and Adox Ortho 25 film, developed in Rodinal 1:50 for 6 minutes.

And here are some digital shots.  The digital shots don’t seem to be quite as ‘authentic’ looking as the film shots, I think this has alot to do with the lighting though, since for my digital shots I used off-camera flashes instead of a camera-mounted flash.  I think that makes them look a bit more ‘theatrical’ than the single flash film shots.

More digitals to come.

A few shots around the office building I work at, as well as a 4×10 landscape from a while ago that I just got around to developing.

continuing my experimenting with flashes, the silver paint on the Subaru responds very well to the flash hits!

Here’s my ‘first’ run of the speedgraphic with the stroboflash, also my test run with the grafmatic film holder (which seems to be working perfectly!).  These were shot f5.6 at 1/200th, with Adox 25ISO Orthochromatic film (not sensitive to reds).

I shot this about 1/2 a year ago along a side road on I-10 in Arizona, I really like this photo because it has the clouds that were gathering before a storm, such a nice feeling in the desert!

8×10 Tmax 100 with a 240mm lens I believe.

I don’t know all the details about this structure, but from what I heard it’s some sort of monument to ‘art’, or something similar to that.  If anyone knows what it is, feel free to correct me   4×5 tri-x, 90mm on Chamonix 4×5.

a 4×5 photo, of a 70 pound case  of Ukranian 7.62x54R ammo

I’ll be hauling this combo around to some vintage auto races as well as other events/gatherings/projects in the near future!  I haven’t weighed the entire setup yet, but it’ll probably build some nice forearmes    I’m still waiting on the correct clamps for the flash handle and a way to securly mount the flash head to the flash handle, I should have both of those worked out in a week or so, provided I get over my cold soon!

For anyone interested in the flash setup, it’s been modified by Al over at stroboflash.com to take modern rechargable batteries (which go inside of that thing  next to the camera sitting on the floor, the powerpack and electronics are 1/2 the size of a car battery!)

This is my second 4×5″ speedgraphic.  This one appears to be one of the later models, as best I can tell (I haven’t really gotten to much into the history of these things).  It’s got some nicer features to it compaired to my other speed. Shutter trigger on the camera body, focal plane shutter is easier to adjust, more sturdy viewing hood, flash sync on the lens instead of the lens solinoid, a working shutter on the lens, and overall a camera that looks to be in a cleaner shape.  Hopfully I’ll be giving it a good new lease on life!  They are so cheap to come by, I bought a 2nd one!  My first one is reserved for shooting barrel lenses (and as such, I’ve stripped off the rangefinder, and some of the other features) and now I have this model to use for my vintage flash shooting

Should have some results soon!

And here’s my first two exposure tests, f8 at 1/4 power on the first shot, and 1/2 power on the 2nd shot.   The negatives were a little thin, but that might have something to do with my developing since I haven’t yet nailed down my developing times for the Adox ISO25 Orthochromatic film, developed in Rodinal.   I’ll do some more tests later, for now I’ve just got the flash head taped onto the handle…. hah!

*update*

Here’s the flash head with the PVC mount onto the flash handle.  It’s not pretty, but it’ll do until I find the real mount.  In the mean time, I may paint the PVC black just so it doesn’t look like pumbing… hah!

So my latest direction in photography is off-camera flash photography!  This is starting out just with digital, but I will probably use some of the techniques on my film work as well.

Here’s a few of my test subjects, small subjects done for the ease of learning the settings, I’ll move up to larger test subjects soon

Here it is, it’s the last few minutes of 2008, and today was the last day of the old Method studio building.  Here are some of the things I’ll miss:

And my last meal in the building, was satisfying

here is a typical before & after comparison for alot of my digital shots.  The original I process from the RAW file flat, and then give it the snap in contrast that it needs in Photoshop, mostly global changes, with a few local areas.  Some of the changes are subtle, some are more obvious.

A friend’s Dodge Challenger, out on El Mirage!  first three are digital, last two are 8×10 Arista EDU 100 film

Death personified, the grim reaper, harvester of souls, and so on.  I’ve wanted to shoot something like this for a while now, and I finally got around to doing so!  I wish that I would have had a robe that was much longer and less ‘cloak’ looking, it does look a tad bit like a “Disgruntled Monk” but I’m happy with what I have so far!

These may be a little dark against the white background of the website.  all 8×10 accept for the last one, which is 4×5.

Trying out a hand full of old lenses (ranging from early to mid 1900s) on 8×10, at a local park that has a few interesting looking trees.

4×5 tri-x, 90mm on the carving and pumpkins, and a petzval projection lens for the still life

Taking photos of a moving child is difficult with a big camera!  Gundlach Radar 12″ lens mounted on the Chamonix 8×10 camera.  Shot at f8 for the shots of Lilly, and f22 for the shot of the beach.  I would liked to have gone down to f4.5 for the shots of lilly, but I was unsure of my focusing on her (she was moving around!)  so I left it at f8 for a tad bit of wiggle room on the focusing.

I took this some months ago, my first time trying some portraits with the 8×10, and incidentally one of the few times I’ve shot under studio lights.  It was enjoyable, but I was uncertain of my results.  The look was intended to have an early hollywood feel.  If I try this again, I will try and make the background curtain brighter, to enhance the silhouette a bit more.  I wasn’t particularly fond of the photo when I first looked at it, so I stuffed the film into my box and didn’t really look at them since then.  I checked them out again today and found that it has grown on me a bit   Tri-x 320 on a Tachihara 8×10 with Gundlach Radar 12″ lens.

In an effort to find the 8×10 camera that is ‘perfect’ for me, I’ve ended up back with Chamonix.  For my 4×5 camera, I tried a few different cameras and ended up with a Chamonix 4×5 that has been serving me very well for close to a year now!  For my 8×10 camera, I’ve tried and owned a few, but have never been quite satisfied all around.  The Chamonix 8×10 just arrived this week, and it feels like a winner!  Light weight (though not quite as light as the Ritter 8×10), remarkably ridged, sturdy, and well made.   It is very easy to open, close, adjust, and use in general just like the 4×5 Chamonix that I have become accustom to.  By trial and error, once again I managed to end up with a Chamonix brand camera, I guess the design of these cameras (both of which, the 4×5 and 8×10 are very similar) just really fit me best, and satisfies the needs and wants for what I have been looking for in large format cameras!

Here are some photos of the camera, with a 450mm fujinon-c mounted.  Scanned negatives from the camera to come very soon!

Here are 6 negatives from a camping trip in Joshua Tree with some coworkers

What an interesting day!  The first 1/2 of the day El Mirage was just like it usually is, hot, windy, and dusty!  After we grabbed a bit to eat and noticed that the sky was getting filled with big dark clouds. When we came back to wait for sunset, a strong wind must have come by and blown all the dust away.  At first we thought the lake bed was wet once we got out into the middle, because we were seeing a reflection on the ground!  (A reflection up close, not a mirage off in the distance), but the lake was bone dry, and completely void of the dust that is usually on top of the hard surface!  The ground must have been so sand-blasted that it was smooth enough to shine a little, it was quite surreal.  You can see the shine in a few of the images here. Also uploaded one real good shot showing the mirage, where the lake bed got it’s name from

last batch of negatives from Riley’s farm, as well as a dead crow (I think?) I found in my driveway yesterday, hah!  I really like the framing on the crow, I think it turned out nice… for what it is I suppose

Not the most elegant solution, but it works!  A barrel lens with a cardboard ‘lens board’ snugly fit to the back of the lens.  Then with 4 rubber bands, I ‘mount’ the barrel lens & cardboard onto the front of the Betax shutter.  With these small lenses, I get no loss of coverage, and use of the betax shutter speeds!

here is a video of the shutter working:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke9zehk2sfw

Had a nice day at Riley’s farm, took some photos of the area, heard some good music, age good BBQ, and had some wonderful apple cider!  I took a jug home with me, but it didn’t last long! 

I’ll add more photos to these as they dry and scan.

stopped for a rest during a nice ‘happy birthday’ drive in the mountains!

I went to the VARA races yesterday (Vintage Auto Racing Association) with a photographer friend, I brought my 4×5 speedgraphic and 8×10 to shoot some of the vintage cars! Here are a few of the 4×5 shots, I’ll post more of them later, as well as the 8×10 shots.

And here’s me doing my thing, thank you Aaron K. for the photo!

some photos from my 4th of July weekend. I enjoyed using the Bausch & Lomb lens and speed graphic, it makes an interesting combo! For the tree shot, I had to hold a few ND sheets infront of the lens to get my shutter speed down to something the speed graphic can handle. f2.0 aperture plus 320 ISO film sucks up alot of light! The sheet of ND filter got the shutter speed down to 1/500th

The last image (of the door) was taken with an achromatic doublet lens element held inplace by a piece of cardboard onto my speedgraphic.  About a 6″ focal length, and 2.75 inches across (roughtly f2.0 aperture) Interesting effect, but I don’t like it as much as the Bausch & Lomb lens, the B&L doesn’t stretch the edges of the picture, it curls them around.  The single achromat element smears the edges right off the edge of the frame.   I may play around with sticking another doublet lens behind the first lens (mirrored), see if I can get something a bit more interesting to happen!

The Ritter 8×10 went on it’s maiden flight this past weekend, and it was great! The weight savings was very noticable, I didn’t have to take my pack off until I reached my destination! Same with the return trip, wonderful! It does seem to pick up a little vibration in the wind, though I guess this is to be expected with a large camera that doesn’t have much mass. I’ll be rigging up (or purchasing) a stabilizing rod to connect the front and rear standards together, see if that helps out in windy condition. I’ll develop the negatives tonight!

A lens for my speedgraphic arrived today, I don’t know much about it, but according to the person I purchased it from, it’s a “Bausch & Lomb Theater lens”, about 145mm f2. I’ll be using this lens to see how I like the odd effects that this type of old lens can produce. First negatives from this lens are going to be developed tonight!

Here’s the first two shots from the Bausch & Lomb:

And the first 3 shots from the Ritter 8×10!

In an effort to make my 8×10 hiking photography easier on the back, I’ve picked up some light weight items to replace some of my current items.

First up is the lens 450mm Fujinon-C f12.5 weighing .6 pounds to replace my monster 360mm Sironar-N f6.8 weighing 3.4 pounds! And give me some extra length that I was wanting as well. Next up, the 8×10 camera made by Richard Ritter to replace my Tachihara 8×10. The Ritter comes in at about 1/2 as much weight as the 12lb Tachihara, and gives me room to store a lens inside the front standard while it’s closed up. This is a feature I really grew to like while learning on my uncle’s 4×5 Wista. The addition of front and rear lateral shift, as well as more rear swing and longer belows extension are a welcomed upgrade from the Tachihara as well.

The design of the Ritter is very different from the Tachihara! It folds up mostly the same, front standard supports fold backwards and the standard flips facing down, the rear standard folds forward on top of everything. However, the workings of the camera are quite different, most of which I assume are done out of the desire to save weight. It seems to be a very ingenious design, and seems simple to operate once I gave it a good look over. I’ve noticed the camera to be a bit less ridged than the Tachihara (which was very solid) However, I haven’t had a chance to securely lock down the Ritter camera to a tripods because my tripod screw isn’t short enough, so I haven’t been able to really evaluate it’s rigidity.

I hope to be out and shooting very soon, as soon as the shorter tripod screw arrives!

And some obligatory “pretzel” shots, showing off movements to the extreme that I’ll probably never do! But it’s a cool way to show the camera, haha!

While visiting friends in Phoenix, I ran out of my usual tri-x 320 (only brought a few sheets that fit in my holders) and had to pick up some film along the way. Tmax 100 was the only thing I could find in 8×10, so that it was!  I got lucky with some interesting weather and clouds!  In the last shot, it started raining (413th Avenue) right as I finished packing up my camera in the car, just in time!

So I’ve got a new toy, an old Zeiss Ikon 6×9 camera! It’s nice and folds up slim, fun to use!

Here’s some shots taken with it from the first two rolls:

I’ve been enjoying the wider aspect ratio of 4×10! Using 8×10 film, with a dark slide cut in 1/2, I can get two 4×10 shots onto each 8×10 sheet of film!

buildings around Hayden Ave in Culver City

90mm on 4×5, photos at El Matador beach in Malibu, getting my feet wet!

beautiful clouds this afternoon! Hiking with the digital this time.

A very cool looking old school motorcycle! I like it! First shot with Canon 1Ds2 and 85/f1.2 lens, 2nd shot with an Anniversary Speedgraphic 4×5

Poppies from the california poppy reserve, also an abandoned Cadillac! First time trying velvia 50, the film looks beautiful! But as I I’ve read and been told, it’s not as easy to scan as less saturated color film.

Quite an interesting thing, shooting the very slow speed paper with limited highlight/shadow range in broad daylight! It seemed to have worked though, better in some images than in others. Here are some scans that closely resemble the prints.

An abandoned Cadillac in our parking structure, have been meaning to shoot it for a while now, finally did this weekend! One 8×10, and two 4×10 shots projected onto the other 8×10 sheet. Used a cut dark slide to cover up the other 1/2 of the film, and vice versa for the second panorama shot. An interesting way to do panoramas, I can fit two of them on a single 8×10 sheet! The other panorama didn’t turn out as well.

taken with a speedgraphic 4×5, an interesting photo I think

More photos from the speed coming soon!

Here is something nifty, Efke makes a positive paper! http://www.freestylephoto.biz/sc_prod.php?pid=1000002925

Sticking normal photographic paper into a camera (may shoot pinhole cameras this way) and shooting the paper instead of film will give you a negative image on the paper. Well, this positive paper gives a positive image! A positive print straight from the camera! This could make pinhole cameras much more fun! Here’s my first test shot of my kitchen, on an 8×10 inch sheet of the Efke positive paper. Shot at ISO 6, developed in Dektol. The print came out very dark, so I’m going to try metering for a lower ISO next time to get a brighter image. I’ve brought up the brightness in the scan a bit so that the photograph can be seen better, but the actual print is darker, way to dark. More tests on this to come soon!

(edit) ok, here’s a better test! I did two identical exposures (this time at ISO1 instead of ISO6) that got my image much brighter now! I developed the first paper in Dektol at 1:3 dilution from working solution for 3 minutes. The second exposure I developed at 1:6 for 6 minutes. Both came out identical, very high contrast. I’ll have to see if there is something I can add to dektol to reduce the contrast, or maybe dilute it alot more than 1:6, if it will make any difference.

I’ve never seen anything like this, so much color! No smell from the flowers at all, and no bees, butterflies, or other critters usually associated with flowers (accept for a few lady bugs). With the lack of smell and the super blue (and cloudless) sky, it was like a dream! I also shot some 4×5 Velvia 50, but in retrospect I think velvia will be way to saturated for these bright flowers! Heres some digital shots:

8x10s from Charmlee Park meadow area.

Here are some 8x10s from this past weekends hike in Red Rock Canyon

digital photos from a hike through the Mojave’s Red Rock Canyon area.

El Matador Beach in 8×10 (cropped to 5×10), as well as two more scans from my outing in the snow a month back or so, just developed them this weekend.

I’m going to be trying my hand at shooting 8×10! Here’s the Tachihara 8×10 next to a Wista and Chamonix 4×5, as well as an SLR.  The 8×10 is big, but I think it’ll be manageable.  the 4×5 will still be my usual hiking camera, I’ll reserve the 8×10 for locations that I know would provide relatively easy hiking and shorter distances.

scans of the 4×5′s I shot in the Mojave Desert last weekend.

I’m sure this looks exactly like everyone elses shot, but hey… who cares