Knuckledragger

I've been busily going through photos I shot on film in in '07 and '08. I used a variety of different cameras, and many film stocks. Many of the exposures are lousy and more often than not the scans are bad as well. Eventually I will buy a scanner and correct some of these problems. Over a long enough timeline I will buy a slide scanner and get revisit the expensive, risky and hugely rewarding world of Fuji Velvia 50. I've got several posts to make about my old film shots, but they're going to have to wait for the moment. While going through scans of a roll of Fuji Superia X-Tra ISO 800 color print film, I found a number of frames I took with my then new to me Meyer-Optik Orestegor 300mm F/4. I've mentioned the insanity of this lens repeatedly. Sadly, my copy has grown some fungus and haze in the 15 years since I last used it regularly. I was not great at taking notes about exposures I took for the first few rolls of film I shot, which is a fact that comes back to bite me in the ass every time I revisit them. By the time I got my second Canon film body (and EOS Rebel K2, which I still have) I began recording time, date, lens, exposure settings etc. For this shot I wrote "Frame 3: Edgartown, 10/06/08 - 2:35PM - Orestor 135mm @ F/6.7 1/2000 - tree + reflection vert. oops shot!" That means I didn't plan on taking that photo. For several reasons (mostly having to do with the crap shoot is that is shooting color print film), I like it better than the shot I meant to take. Most modern SLRs display metering info when one half presses the shutter button. This is a super handy feature. It can be difficult to avoid a full press sometimes, triggering an unwanted exposure. In the digital world, this is irrelevant. When shooting film, it's a PITA and can be an expensive one. I've done it a bunch of times. This summer I can count two accidental exposures I did with the little Leica C3 I got a the second hand shot as well as at least two more with the Rebel K2 which I have pressed back into service. Even though we live in a "post tag" world now because of abuse by things like bots and spammers, I still obsessively tag every photo I post to Flickr (itself a site that is a relic of the past). My personal favorite is Taken While Driving, each frame of which represents me endangering myself and others. Yesterday I decided I needed a name for "oopsie" photos I didn't plan on taking. August 2005, which I was slightly past the "shiny bit toward subject" level of photography. I think this was at Landmark College, my old alma mater. October of that same year. The PowerShot S60 I had slipped out of my hand and went for an impromptu bungee jump on its wrist strap. I decided on the term "accidental exposure." I checked Flickr for the term. It turns out that "Accidental Exposure" and "Accidental Male Exposure" (which comes up in the same search) are commonly used terms for specific types of dick picks, and there are thousands of them on Flickr. There's at least one group dedicated to the subject and one user who had that as a name. I'm ...not opposed to consenting adults who want to share dick picks amongst themselves, but I don't want my clumsy shutter presses getting lost in the sea of old man peens. So I went with "Accidental Shutter Release" instead. This has been your "there are a lot of dicks on the internet" moment.

While Tice was boosting his health, I was endangering mine(!) Not so Cool Story Bro: Tonight I had some vegetarian quiche, which was good but kind of bland. I added some Tapatio hot sauce to make it more interesting. I took a bite that was bigger than perhaps it should have been. A bit went down the wrong pipe. A bit soaked in hot sauce went down the wrong pipe. I felt instant irritation and blockage. I spat out what I had been trying to chew (gross, but this was an emergency.) I stood up, I began coughing frantically and pounding myself on the chest. I stumbled toward the sink while my (sainted, octogenarian) mother watched on in horror. To her credit, she did not panic. There is nothing quite as scary as the feeling of "I need to take a breath now" followed by "I can't." I sort-of knew I was going to be alright, as I wasn't genuinely choking so much as having a reaction to my attempts at breathing hot sauce. Eventually (mere seconds, but it felt like time dilation at light speed) I got a few haggard breaths in. I hacked up "I'm okay" and kept coughing for a bit longer. Eventually I managed to drink some water and in time even finish my dinner. I'm "fine" now, but my throat feels like something mean got at it. It's been quite an evening.

In case any you were wondering what ol' Prig's domicile looked like:

A Midjourney AI image I actually like. It's not too late to invade England. A Midjourney AI image that's laughably bad. She forgot how to gun. BC, CA RN. Maui last week. The current state of Dumbfuckistan. "Jewish Space Lasers" is the Dunning-Kruger Effect meets modern blood libel.

Wow. Doom 2 Map 01 for KF1. That brings back some memories. Brent screaming "medic medic MEDIIIC" while I try not to run out of ammo with the Crossbow.

Today I got another manual focus 135mm prime lens in the mail. Ya rly. This makes ...I've lost count. It's a Japanese made Suntar Auto 135mm F/2.8. The copy I got is very clean. I stuck an M42/EF adapter on it and ambled around my yard during the golden hour. First thing of note. The minimum focus distance of the Suntar is eight feet. This thing is more farsighted than I am. For comparison, the Orestor can do just over 4 feet, the Tair does 1.2 meters (feet are capitalist propaganda), and the the Sonnar can do 3.3 feet ...and that's just the 135mms I have on this desk. What that meant is I had to completely rethink the way I shoot. Goofing around with DoF during the golden hour. I think this shot was around F/8. Next major point. The Suntar only has full stop aperture increments. Hello? What decade is it? The Great War called. Jerry's up to his old tricks again. This is a colossal limitation that will greatly impact how I take photos. Using a modern digital body, I can of course futz with shutter speed and ISO in 1/3 stops to compensate. I've been spoiled by all my vintage glass with its free floating aperture settings. This one was either F/5.6 or F/8, I do not remember. The Suntar has a not insignificant CA problem wide open, but it seems to lose it quickly when stopped down. I need to test this more, of course. Another bottle shot. This is documentation of me trying to make sense of the minimum focus distance. I will not be using the Suntar for close up images of small objects. TBH, this is not a problem. I already have a small army of manual 135mms and while each has their own quirks and character, they're all good at capturing a bottle sized object. The Suntar is an odd beast, and I will have to move outside my normal comfort zone to make use of it. I should mention I got it for $18 shipped, which is less than I'll pay for the UV filter I eventually put on it ...just as soon as I figure out its filter size (it isn't marked.)

Ukrainian drone destroys Russian supersonic bomber.

In spite of the above, I spent much of the weekend shooting with the 5D IV. It's quite a beast. The 100% viewfinder is really something. Being me, I dug out a big chunk of my manual focus glass collection and began taking pictures of stationary objects. I make no secret of the fact that I am not greatly impressed with flower macros. Bottles on the other hand, I find highly amusing. Long time readers will know of my interest in old manual lenses with an excessive number of aperture blades. These lenses allow for precise "bokeh shaping" of the OOF area of a photo I'm starting with the king of them all here, the Russian made Tair 11a 135mm F/2.8, which has 22 aperture blades. I don't know of a widely produced 35mm lens with more. This shot was taken around F8. I say "around" because like most of my old manuals, the Tair doesn't have F-stops. The aperture ring spins freely throughout its range. I should say "freely" as the ring is quite stiff on my copy, particularly past F/8. To be fair to it, I dropped it in 2008 and it's never been the same since. Being old, Russian and probably afflicted with some haze, the Tair is not a contrast king. I'd not shoot film through it, but with digital imaging it's a trivia task to adjust the levels in Photoshop. Next in line is the massive Meyer-Optik Orestegor 300mm F/4 and it's 19 blade aperture. The 300 is 5 pounds by itself and the 5D with a battery grip is not exactly light either. I cannot handhold the combination steadily enough to take photos with it. I ended up bracing the 300mm against a fence post and framing as best I could. This shot was also taken around F/8. I had to bump the ISO up to 1600 to get a sufficiently high shutter speed. With the 300, I always observe the "one over focal length" rule even with the lens is supported. My Orestegor copy has visible haze and fungus in it (sad) so I always have to edit photos taken with it. This one was relatively easy to clean up. As is the case with most of these old lenses, it's quite sharp stopped down. The same bottle gets boring after a bit, so I used my mid 1950s Praktica F. X 2 35mm SLR as a subject. Taken with the Tair 11A, around F/8. If the camera looks kind of grubby in this photo, that's because it is. I took this shot after I spent considerable time cleaning it with a toothbrush. I only ever put one roll of film through the F.X 2, and got like 3 usable shots out of it. I love old lenses. Old SLRs, not so much. Attached to the F.X 2 is an E. Ludwig Meritar 50mm F/2.9, which was the "kit lens" for this camera when it was new. I've never used the Meritar much. I have a bunch of 50s and for me it's not a particularly interesting focal length. I did attach the Meritar to my 5D IV briefly. More on that later, maybe. I have been photographing bottles on Marthas Vineyard for a long time, using a large variety of lenses and cameras: The reason I bought the Praktica F.X 2 in 2007 was not for the little 50mm Meritar. Also included in the auction was a Meyer-Optik Orestor 135mm F/2.8, which has a 15 blade aperture. It's the lens that got me started on collecting old manuals. I took this shot in the spring of 2008. The Orestor was around F/8 (there seems to be a pattern here), on a Canon Rebel G film SLR using expired Kodak Portra 400UC. I had minimal idea what I was doing here. I should have set the EV down by a third of a stop ...or a half, I don't think the Rebel G did thirds of a stop. The worst thing about color print film is that it's such a crapshoot. I took this on 06/07/08 - 4:30PM (as my notes say), with Kodak Gold 200 AKA one of the most meh film stocks imaginable. In this instances, the Gold 200 decided to one up its much more expensive sibling. This shot has a wonderfully dreamy quality too it. Lens was once again the Orestor 135mm. I have no idea about exposure settings. My notes for my earliest rolls of film are spotty at best. This is a fact that comes back to bite me in the ass repeatedly. Facing the other direction for once, with a neatly shaped bottle. Taken in the spring of 2009 with my 30D and humble 35mm F/2. This was not long before an idiot knocked that combination off a table in a nightclub and broke the 35mm's AF motor. I've used it as a manual focus lens for 14 years now. Going out with a bang here. 10/06/08 - 11:53AM. 135mm Orestor at F/5, 125th. Canon Rebel K2 with Fuji Velvia 50. Cropped to 5:4 but otherwise unedited. When I list of the things in my life that I have encountered that lived up to and even exceeded the hype (Citizen Kane, Tapatio Hot Sauce, Canon 85mm F/1.2L, Biosphere's Substrata, Fuji Velvia 50) I am not fucking kidding. Velvia 50 absolute smokes every other color film stock on the planet. The way it renders blues and purples makes digital cameras look like toys. It's ISO 50 and mercilessly unforgiving about exposure tolerances. It was dearly expensive 15 years ago and even more pricey now. It has no peers. The cobalt blue bottle speaks for itself. Later I'll do a post of a bunch of V50 shots I took in 2008. Right now I have to contact the seller of the 5D IV I bought and tell him he bent a CF card slot pin.

As I have said before, I find the perspective distortion brought on by the wide angle lenses on smrtphnes to be greatly disconcerting. Nice doggo, however.

Oh dear. Today has been one of bad discoveries. First off, the 5D IV is running ancient firmware. After much banging of head against various objects, I managed to go from 1.17 to 1.4. I still cannot get the (gosh darn) Canon EOS utility for MacOS to connect to the 5D via USB. I was able to connect the 5D to my WiFi network and get things working that way. While all of the above has been stressful and headache inducing, it pales in comparison to this afternoon's discovery. Since yesterday I have tried every single one of my many CF cards with the 5D. It has rejected all of them. At first I wasn't too surprised as my CF cards are old and older. My cranky old 30D doesn't like most of them. My ID 5D classic is less picky. I now know why the 5D IV doesn't like any of them: It has a bent bin. The paste eating absolute chucklefuck previous owner shoved a card in the wrong way and either never noticed or never told anyone. I'm now weighing my options about whether or not I want to keep this camera. I still have not successfully gotten app that will report the camera's shutter actuation count. It's looking like I'm going to have to pursue that on (shudder) Windows.

I mean sure, no piece of camera gear with make one a good photographer. Camera bodies notwithstanding for a second there is something important to note here. Otters are a lot like birds: Small, fast moving and easily spooked. Otters offer the additional challenge of being under the water most of the time they're in it. To even attempt capturing one, I'd need a 400mm or longer lens on a full frame sensor. Truthfully I'd probably do better with a 500mm or 600m. Canon makes some killer primes in those focal lengths, and they each cost as much as a decent used car (400/2.8 is $12K; 500/4 is $9K; 600/4 is $13K; there's a 1200mm F/8 that's $20K.) There is a reason, in spite of living next to a hotbed of avian and aquatic (and aquatic avian) activity, I don't try to be a nature photographer. I actually did try to capture the otter, with my manual Meyer-Optic 30mm F/4 Orestegor. Handheld with no tripod: That row of bubbles is his doing. You'll have to trust me on this one as I managed exactly zero photos of him with his head out of the water.

It has been quite a couple of days. I awoke yesterday to a message from eBay saying the shipment of my 5D Mark IV was undeliverable because of an incomplete address and was being sent back to the seller. I skipped coffee and went to the post office. I waited in line and the very nice lady behind the counter told me that said error message was auto-generated by the system and my package would arrive that afternoon or the next day (today). Back at home I received several worried emails and a phone call from the seller. He was well meaning, but of questionable competence. He had a representative from the USPS on speakerphone and had me explain what I knew. I told him I'd contact him when I received the package. Well, today the package arrived. That's an EOS 5D Mark IV, battery and charger, BG-E20 battery grip, and an EF 85mm F/1.8 lens. Each item is carefully covered in bubble wrap but then left loose to rattle around in the box while being shipped from Mississippi. There was no filler in the box at all. No packing peanuts, no expanding foam. Not even an old T-shirt. I would pack an AM radio better to ship it cross town, never mind a couple grand in camera equipment cross country. I gingerly unpacked everything and there were no obvious marks. The battery was dead so I put it on the charger. I attached the 85mm F/1.8 and tried to focus. I couldn't hit infinity focus to save my life. I attached my OG 50mm F/1.8 (not the STM, but the original 1986 model.) Same deal. I tried my totally manual focus 135mm F/2.8 Orestor. Could not hit infinity focus. I took the lens off and inspected the focus scree and mirror. Both seemed fine and not broken or otherwise detached. Hours and minutes crept by as I waited for the battery to charge. I got several emails from eBay and the seller. I ignored all of them. To make sure I wasn't losing (what was left of) my mind, I dug out my Rebel K2 film body and attached all of the above mentioned lenses to it. All hit infinity focus just fine, including the new 85mm. I wondered if there was some kind of internal viewfinder calibration that the 5D IV does upon boot. Certainly it's possible that something got knocked the fuck out of alignment by the bumpy ride from MI. Finally the battery charged. I then had to face the battery grip. I've never used one before. Getting the batteries seated in it was much harder than I imagined. I considered removing the grip (as I only had one battery) and using the camera without it. It was then that I discovered that the seller has neglected to include the battery door. Canon cameras do not function without one. That means I'm married to the battery grip until I get a replacement. I managed to get the battery seated correctly in the grip, at least. Next task was the memory card. I tried ...seven CF cards, all of which are old but of good pedigree (SD Ultra and Extreme series, plus one Delkin Devices.) 5D IV rejected every single one of them. Worried, I dug up a ghetto AF Walmart "Onn" branded SD card I bought on deep discount years ago. IV liked it just fine. Then I began going through my lenses. The viewfinder was now magically working. 50mm F/1.8 Mk I was happy. 35mm F/2 has had a broken AF motor since 2009 thanks to a clumsy drunk, but I was able to manually focus and meter with it. 135mm Orestor now showed infinity focus in the viewfinder just fine. The 85mm F/1.8 also worked. Much fussing (setting time/date, turning off RAW, etc.) later and the camera works more or less as described. Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. While this drama has been unfolding, a cute little otter has been swimming around Jernegan pond in my back yard. He pops his head up, dives and then a series of air bubbles reflect his path through the water. It's like an aquatic version of Bugs Bunny. I have failed to get a single picture of him, but he's provided considerable amusement while I've struggled with camera gear.

Click for slightly larger.

Jerome Isma-ae - Mellow Yellow Tracks (1998), vinyl. I haven't heard this release in probably 20 years. The DHP Mix of Flu Bassoon is on a bunch of CD compilations from the early 00s. It's often listed with no remix title. I know, because my obsessive ass has tracked down most of them. The DHP Mix is very up energy as far as deep house goes. It's more than a bit of an earworm. In my estimation, it pales compared to the original. The original mix is much more subdued and less obvious than the original. It's also only on this damn piece of vinyl. I picked up my copy around the turn of the millennium. While it never precisely went missing, I didn't have immediate access to it for a very long time. I carefully stored it along with a number of irreplaceable bits of vinyl in a secondary record bag I got ages ago. I just discovered it today while looking for ...something else entirely. I dropped it on the platter of the mini setup I assembled in my bedroom. I really need to get around to digitizing this record. It straight up does not exist in the information age. EDIT: Apparently it DOES exist now. Silly record label finally got their act together.

OOF. Found the first real casualty of moving today: That's a bootleg house remix of Air's "All I Need" that is now utterly destroyed. The bootleg mix is not on YT, of course. I don't really buy vinyl anymore (I own ~2K records and don't use them for DJing) but this is one I'm going to make a point to replace. Hopefully Discogs (bless its heart) doesn't block the sale of it on their marketplace.

That is certainly some wiring voodoo.

Neat.

I showed amazing restraint today. This sold for just over $400 shipped. 5D Mk II, 80K shutter activations, a pile of memory cards, SIX (5 pictured) batteries, two chargers, cables etc. Guy also had a 40mm pancake, a tripod slide mount thing and some other kit. All of his auctions ended this morning, when no one was around. I resisted bidding on any of it. I've set my sights on a 5D Mk IV and am sidestepping the alarmingly cheap 5DIIIs and 1DxIIs, no matter how tempting they might be. Tonight. Tonight there's gonna be some shit.