As usual I shot a ton of pictures on our vacation. The lion’s share were taken with the Fuji, although I did bring the Nikon out to the beach one day. The runner-up was a Canon Powershot a540, an 11-year-old point and shoot that I inherited from work with a waterproof dive case. Proving the adage the best camera is the one you’ve got, I took this into the ocean with us every day and just kept pushing the button whenever I saw something. Almost every shot taken from the water was with this camera, and I don’t care if they’re only 6MP; they’re all good.
I played around a lot with a cheap egg timer/photo turntable while we were at the beach, and had some mixed results. In short, I can see why it only got three of five stars on Amazon; what was supposed to revolve 360˚ only made it to 180˚ before crapping out. Still, what I got with a GoPro set to 5MP normal, and stitched together with a little app called Time Lapse Assembler wasn’t bad. I’m toying with the idea of taking it apart to see if I can wind the spring up tighter to make it work better; for a $14 investment I’m not too upset. Besides, the GoPro I’ve got isn’t good enough to really get excellent stills–I’d love to set it up for nighttime timelapses of the stars moving but the camera isn’t sensitive enough.
I definitely brought too many fucking cameras and spent too much time trying to organize gear. Next year I’m going to pare back and replace the two camera bags I lugged there with one good backpack. I’ve narrowed the field down to the LowePro ProTactic 350, which will carry two bodies, a couple of lenses, and a 13″ laptop with more room for gear than the model I’ve got at work. I’ll leave the Nikon at home and bring take the Fuji kit with me, as well as whatever manual gear I’m fucking with at the time. I did shoot two rolls of 35mm and one roll of 120 film, so I’m going to try and finish the 120 off this weekend and send it out for processing.
I recently acquired a Yashica-D Twin Lens Reflex camera, made somewhere between 1961 and 1973. From the number range I’d say about 1968 or so. It’s the Japanese-made brother of the Rolleicord I’ve had for a number of years. Both cameras have f/3.5 lenses, and both have their controls in the same basic places. They are identical in weight, size, and basic layout. Side by side, I’d say the aperture and shutter speed controls on the Yashica are arranged with better ergonomics: they are accessible by spinning the two wheels between the lenses and their values are visible through a window on the top of the viewing (top) lens.
I brought it on our beach vacation so that I could orient myself to how the camera works and shoot some 6×6 film of our friends and family. Looking through some online videos, I found one that describes how to load and unload the film, which was super helpful. This and a couple of other links were enough to get me up and running with the basic settings, and then I was off and running.
I brought along my Minolta X-700 so that I could use the built-in light meter to eyeball the basic aperture and shutter settings before switching to the Yashica, and to also shoot a test print on 35mm film of the same basic frame. If I had more time between shots I’d be taking notes on the technical specs but with an 8 and a 6 year old (and now a 2-year-old) as subjects I’m lucky if they’re still in front of me while I’m fooling with the second camera.
So far I’ve got one roll of 12 prints in the can, and I know I’ve screwed up at least two of those frames. It’s easy to forget, in this digital age, that one has to advance the film manually, and there’s no lockout mechanism to prevent double-exposures on the Yashica like there is on the Minolta. I think that I’ve got a couple of really good portraits on that roll though, and I loaded another roll this evening for tomorrow’s pleasant weather.
Day one: perfect, perfect weather. Warm ocean water. A mile of empty beach to ourselves. Cold drinks and dinner on the deck.
I realize I’ve been sort of light on details around here lately. The weeks leading up to the 4th of July were a hot, sticky blur of activity as the family and I got the house put together for our guests. I spent several weeks on ladders scraping and painting the windows from the back corner of the house around to the front, and made it as far as priming the front windows before I ran out of time. Jen went nuts with mulch and cleaned up the entire yard. Our front garden looks healthy and lush this year, for the first time since we’ve lived here. All of the wood is cleared out of the backyard minus three big rounds, which are tucked up against the woodpiles waiting for a chainsaw. Unfortunately, the week before the parade, the original cradle, which was built over 10 years ago, decided to fall apart and topple over at about 1AM. I moved the wood off to the side, quickly made repairs to both cradles, and the girls and I restacked everything.
The day before the parade, our kegerator decided to crap out. It had been making a bubbling sound for a few months so I knew the time was near, but all of our beer was getting warm. I pulled all of the loose bottles and cans out and iced them in a cooler and left it for after the parade. The replacement I bought is 1″ narrower but both kegs fit just fine. I built a new collar around the top out of trex and got the lid mounted, and all of the beer is back to just-north-of-slushy 39˚.
This weekend we decided to spend some time on the cars. I made a quick dump run (old cooler: bye-bye) and then we busted out the cleaning supplies and aimed them at the CR-V. All the mats came out and everything got vacuumed. Then we got the soap out and washed the outside, sills, rockers, and roof. I pulled the spare tire off and scrubbed the leaves out from underneath. I even used some engine brite to degrease the motor. The clearcoat may be peeling off the hood, but the rest of it looks like a new vehicle. Finally, Jen asked if I would show the girls how to change a flat tire, so we held a clinic in the driveway.
Then it was off to Oregon Ridge for our friend Jen’s client appreciation party, something we’ve done almost every year since she started them. She’s an old friend from the Cidera days and she has ice cream and bubbles and facepainting and Finley has always loved it. This year she had food and Kona Ice and we got to catch up with friends under a big pavilion in the shade.
The whole weekend has been awesome weather, actually; Sunday the humidity was low so I took advantage and did a bike ride with my neighbors through Patapsco, stopped for a bloody mary at the bottom of the hill, and then rode home. My legs felt like jello but it was worth the workout. Then after Finn’s piano lesson we took the bikes across the street to get her rolling on two wheels. She was nervous at first but pushed off and within seconds was doing easy laps around the parking lot. I couldn’t be prouder of her.
Our 2017 parade party was filled with friends new and old, laughter, and an easygoing vibe. We didn’t knock ourselves out to provide 13 menu choices; we offered two jumbo cases of water (which was all consumed), we had a mister and the sprinkler running, and we had plenty of shade available. The parade itself was fun, but there weren’t any giant bugs, Elvis sightings, Lone Rangers, Jesus dancers, or Mummers (although we did have a Falun Gong float, which was odd). It was hot enough that by 5:00 all but two families had left for home. We cleaned up the yard and then holed up in the air conditioning to cool down and recuperate.
