S95 – Rt 31 over the Seneca River
Baldwinsville, NY. April 2011. Canon S95.
S95 – It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
Icicle. Shot with a Canon S95
So my delayed/back-ordered Christmas present finally arrived from Best Buy this afternoon! My wife decided I needed a Canon Powershot S95, as I often told her that I would like one.
In essence, it’s the pocket camera I’ve always wanted. Small, compact, yet capable; or so I’ve read.
I haven’t quite had the chance to put it through any paces yet, but I anticipate it becoming a constant companion, joining the ranks with my cellphone, Moleskine & spacepen in my pants pockets.
Therein lies its charm. Too often I find myself without a camera when I suddenly want/need a camera; or conversely, lugging my Canon 40D and backpack full of lenses around without taking a single frame.
For awhile there, my beloved fBHF filled the niche of a constant “on hand” camera, both literally & figuratively; but its bulk, lack of versatility, and the need to carry spare spools, not to mention the cost of film, lead to its retirement from daily use. (I also took a chunk out of her film advance knob this summer, when I accidentally clipped a cement fence post outside of Fordham. So I had been carrying her with a tad more careful trepidation than I had in the past, lest I cause any further irreparable damage).
A digicam that fits comfortably in my pocket, shoots both RAW & 720p video and has an added ADH warranty to boot sounds pretty good to me.
Maybe this will help snap me out of my creative funk; maybe it won’t; it can’t hurt.
Knee high by the Fourth of July
Knee high by the Fourth of July.
Or an example of the relative height of maize as compared to the lower extremities of able bodied human beings on the fourth day of the seventh month of the Gregorian calendar.
The wife & I, trying to remember any semblance of normalcy, drove all around the area farms yesterday looking for knee high corn, given the titular colloquialism. To our surprise, we discovered most of the corn was already way past chest height.
After almost giving up on the concept, we found this comparatively stunted crop in a nearby community garden.
The image itself is kind of an inside joke. I have a habit of butchering colloquialisms. Such as “six of one; half dozen of another” in regards to equal quantities, becomes “half of one; six dozen of another,” but still used in the original capacity in a manner of attempted ironic humor.
“Knee high by the Fourth of July” entered our lexicon as “ankle deep on a rainy Thursday in the third week of April” or “hip length on the 17th of June” or “up to your armpits in August” and other such variations of nonsensical meaning.
My wife & I often bat these pseudo-sayings around without regard for our audience, sometimes leading to semi-awkward explanations, akin to the one you’ve just read.
Holga Hike – Another Beaver Lake Shot
Flooded Meadow, Beaver Lake, Baldwinsville, NY. Holga on Ilford HP5+, developed in Diafine.
Another image from the Holga Hike / Beaver Lake shoot.
The recent snow melt had created a temporary pond around two winter-barren bushes. There were all kinds of little birds frolicking amongst the branches, chirping, hopping and occasionally splashing away.
Even though I stealthily approached the scene in my best Elmer Fudd-esque stalk, my fine feathered friends all took flight before I could even raise the camera. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have been humming the Pink Panther theme out-loud.
Anyway, now looking at the image I ended up capturing, I don’t think it would’ve actually made much of a difference if they had stayed, as they prolly would’ve been indiscernible in the details.
Oh well.
Sorry for the dearth of updates lately. Physical therapy on my stupid knee has been taking its toll on my motivation, if not free-time.
Holga Hike – Beaver Lake Nature Center
Wood Swamp, Beaver Lake, Baldwinsville, NY. Holga on Ilford HP5+, developed in Diafine.
Alas & alack, it just wasn’t meant to be…
I didn’t submit my Holga Hike image in time due to a mix of FedEx fumbling the delivery date of my fresh developer, family visiting for Easter and a misinterpretation of a vague deadline.
C’est la vie.
The good news is Randy from HolgaMods assures me that he’ll be running another Holga Hike in the Fall. So hopefully I’ll have better luck with that one.
At the very least, I was able take my wife on a lovely nature walk around Beaver Lake, while enjoying the beautiful first day of Spring; that was more than enough of a reward in & of itself.
Oh, and I also ended up taking a couple of photographs as well (all images taken with a Holga on Ilford HP5+, developed in Diafine):
Bush
Fallen Leaves
Sapling
Trees above
Wildflower Bokeh
Wildflower in Beaver Lake, Baldwinsville, NY, Three Meadows trail. Canon 40d, 50mm f1.8 II.
Expired Film – Dragonfly
Taken with a Kodak Brownie Fiesta on expired (Nov 1962) Montgomery Ward Panchromatic 127 film, developed in Diafine.
BHF – Strawberry Picking
Bucket of strawberries @ Hafner’s Farm, Baldwinsville, NY.
Kodak Brownie Haweye Flash with a flipped lens; Ilford HP5 Plus developed in Diafine.
Kodak Jiffy II
The Kodak Jiffy II, a nifty $5 find at a recent garage sale.
A folding 6×9 ‘six-20’ camera with two viewfinders (horizontal & vertical), the original Jiffy had a really cool Art-Deco motif; the sequel here just has a plain black faux leather covering. It has a ‘twindar’ lens with two focus settings: ‘5-10ft’ & ‘beyond 10ft’; two shutter speeds: ‘I’ (about 1/60) and ‘T’ (bulb) and two apertures as well.
It needed some TLC after I purchased it. After a thorough cleaning, the biggest problems were a sticky shutter and folding mechanism. Careful application of some ball-bearing oil resolved both issues. As Kodak discontinued its ‘six-20’ film for quite some time now, I trimmed the plastic spindle on a roll of 120 film and used the metal 620 take up spool that came with the camera.
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