My photo for today. I caught Frank the cat asleep at Michael’s. Stopped for a visit and to give a hand tinkering on a Mac problem. Seems his cd-burner is dying in the laptop. And I got to try out his Grado headphones… damned nice! Everything sounded good through them.

Well, let’s start writing again, shall we?

I finished a roll of Fuji Provia last Thursday and dropped it off for processing on Friday. Too bad it’ll take a week and has to leave town for the job to be done, but oh well. What can you expect for E6 processing in this digital age? Anyway, I have quite a few PAD’s on that roll, all shot around town using the Olympus Trip 35. I can’t wait to see how the shots turned out. I’ll post a few after I get them scanned…

I loaded some film into the Olympus Trip 35 this morning; Fuji Provia 100. David has been shooting some in a new camera he found on eb*y and it gave me the itch. I had a batch in the fridge from a few months ago so I loaded it up this morning and stopped on my way to work for a couple shots.

I’m in a quandary when shooting film these days. I find myself trying to change the way I shoot and my subject matter. I don’t know why, but when I’m shooting color, I start looking for bright colorful scenes; when shooting b/w I look for contrast-y scenes. I completely avoid my usual thinking and I shoot like I have someone watching over my shoulder. I think I see some style surfacing from my last few years of shooting digital, but when that film camera gets in my hands I lose my perspective. Hmm… They say you should dance like no one is watching, I say you should shoot that same way, too. I’ll try to keep this in check.

Here’s a few of my favs from my PAD since my last post:

Anyway, here’s a few of my favs so far:

I don’t have the words to describe what I feel today, but over at Deus Ex Malcontent, Chez says it better than I ever could: Wide Awake In America

We took a couple days off and headed for the beach. Really, it was a short vacation for us compared to how long we usually stay, but we weren’t going for ourselves. The trip was really to take the dogs for some sand and surf. Though Jack and Sophie have been before, this was a first time for Teddy. For fun, Cathi’s mom came along with her little dog Mo. On thursday we spent the better part of the afternoon letting the pack run loose on the beach. All the dogs ran until exhausted, after which we checked into our rooms, cleaned everyone up and had a short nap. Friday morning we walked to breakfast on the patio at the Sea Shanty. The staff was fawning over the pups and being rather free with the dog biscuits. I was pleasantly surprised at how well behaved the dogs were considering this was their first visit to a restaurant. We spent the rest of the morning on the beach before checking out of our room and heading home.

Vivitar 285HV
I had a little photo job this past saturday night. The Wife asked me to take pictures at her 30 year high school reunion and, being the husband that I am, I gladly stepped up to the plate. I needed to get some things ready first, though.

I decided to put to use several of the e-bay strobes I’d been collecting, all Vivitar 285hv’s… I’d seen these mentioned in various places as a good choice for off-camera flash, most notably over at the strobist. Since I don’t have any wireless triggers, I needed to work out some type of wired-setup to use these strobes. I did a couple internet searches and found an article by Nathan Kerr over at shuttersnapstudios.com with a mod for adding 3.5mm plugs to the 285′s, effectively bypassing the proprietary Vivitar connector included on the flashes and the need for expensive adapters and cables .

Closer Views…

This mod wasn’t too difficult, but it did involve opening the shoe, drilling a hole and doing some soldering in a tight space. If you’re not comfortable with that, avoid the mod… I chose not to goop up the cable with epoxy where it leaves the shoe. I may pay for that later but I’ll take my chances with my soldering and careful handling. Ideally there would be room for a zip-tie inside the shoe, but it’s just too crowded…

I wasn’t going to need all the strobes at once, but decided to do all of the mods at the same time while I had the tools and parts out and ready… After working through all six of my 285hv’s, I made a few connecting cables with male 3.5mm ends and a four-way Y to join everything together. A few tests with the strobes and my wiring and all was ready.

The Funky Clamp: The screw turns, the clamp misaligns as it tightens…

Next I needed a couple of umbrella/shoe mount multiclamps. I’d seen some on ebay while looking for the 285′s and ordered a couple from some shop. These arrived and I found them to be less than perfect. The way these were designed left much to be desired, the shoe was funky with a clamping mechanism that didn’t clamp straight and didn’t offer a very secure foothold for the strobes.

The Photoflex Multiclamp. So far no problems…

After more research, I opted to purchase a couple more adapters from Adorama by way of Amazon. These were by Photoflex and much nicer: a better build and a far more secure shoe. I won’t hesitate to order more of these later. The others? I’ll chalk that up to the cost of education…

The night of the reunion went well. The affair was at a small restaurant with a lot of atmosphere… a great place for a meal, but awfully tight for setting up light stands. I did my best to wedge the lights in among the aisle and chairs, trying to keep any of my wires out of the way. The only downside was all of the memorabilia. Almost everything was in glass-fronted picture frames and securely mounted on the walls. With the tight space I couldn’t get my umbrella stands up high enough or at enough of an angle to avoid seeing the strobes reflected in all the glass. I decided to just live with that, having been assured by The Wife that my chimping-shots already looked better than those taken by the photographer at the last reunion. Aside from the reflections (I’m still unhappy about that!) the pictures turned out decently and the folks were happy with the results.

Most of these photos have been in an old, crumbling album that was in the family for who-knows how long… After both mom and dad passed away it fell into my hands. A couple years ago I was concerned about the safety of these old pics so I transfered them all into a new album with acid-free paper and so on. Not an easy task, as somewhere along the line someone had either taped or glued many of the photos onto the pages. How does one recover from that? I looked everywhere on the net for some advice but found nothing directly related to what I was going through, so I opted to leave well enough alone and simple cut each pic from it’s mount and slipped them into the new sleeves.

Over the fourth of July weekend, with the bad air (I live in California and the forest fires rage nearby) and the heat (we’re looking at 100′s!) I opted to stay in and start this project. I probably got about a quarter of the way through the black and white photos, scanning each at 300 dpi. I probably could have gone higher on the resolution, but I don’t think it would make much difference. After that step, I opened each in Photoshop and started a restoration process: Duplicate the image onto a new layer for spotting and cleanup, then duplicate that onto another layer for levels adjustment and any burn and dodge to even out the photo. I saved that and then exported the photo to a jpg for posting on the net. This step showed me that the brightness of each photo was exporting too dark, so I added an additional step of adding a brightness adjustment layer in PS to compensate. I’m assuming that exporting from the original file in 16 bit gray level to jpg in 8 bits was the culprit here. No problem, adjusting the brightness by 10 or 15% lighter seems to work and saves the original at the best quality for the time being.

Almost every photo showed signs of wear and time. Many had scratches and spots, wrinkles or cracks and the evidence of fingerprints and the aforementioned tape. I chose to deal with these in Photoshop by using the spot-healing tool on the spots in the open areas and the stamp tool in the tight spots. I tried to be very careful not to change the the feel or look of the original image. My levels and burn/dodge were done to even out the faded places and the poor printing of the original.

All in all, I’m happy with the results so far. The scans look good, the old photos are safe, the family are getting to them and we may even figure out the who/what/when/where of a few of them. I’ll be adding more photos to this gallery as I get them scanned and cleaned up…