Photography by Naomi Drew
Before they added a second entry, this was the first tree to greet you as you walked in. Every autumn its leaves change color, and tumble to the ground. Sometimes they fly past you when the wind picks up. They are large and colorful, and something I look forward to every fall as much of California, where I live, is populated with non-deciduous trees and bushes.
Olympus Trip 35, Fuji Superia 400.
I don’t remember taking this picture at all, but I rather like it!
Kodak UltraMax 400 with 50mm lens on Agfa Ambi Silette.
Over the next few weeks, expect more pictures of the local scenery. When I went out, at last able to do more than a hobble because of my foot, I went up to the botanical garden. With the seasonal changes come color changes, even here in Southern California. The local garden is always changing, and autumn and spring are the seasons with the most changes.
On this trip, I was determined to finish up a couple of rolls of film – the Olympus Trip 35 had Fuji Superia 400 in it, and the Agfa Ambi Silette, loaded in 2019, still had a lot of Kodak UltraMax 400 to be used up. The Agfa, too, had never been tested – it was one of those vintage cameras that intrigued me, so, being me, I bought it. The Trip 35 and the Agfa are small, but compared to the Trip 35, the Agfa is a tiny tank. A nice tank, but still a tank. It has no lugs, either, so I had to use a wrist strap that screws into the tripod mount. Awkward, but it works.
I always play with my photos, digital or analog, in Lightroom. Post processing is part of the way I see photos – like pictures and paintings – I want them to show what I want them to show, not what is straight out of the camera. One of my friends says this is cheating . . . ah, well. It’s autumn and time to show those colors and textures!
I busted a toe about 5 weeks ago and am finally able to wear more than a piece of tape around my 3rd and 4th toes and tight shoes. I have been hobbling around and taking, slowly and surely, short walks. I think I am out of the woods for the most part, and last week I was able to walk, very carefully, along the trails at the botanical garden. These wheel barrows reside behind their maintenance building, and I rather liked their colors and lines, so neatly stacked upon each other.
I took these with my Olympus Trip 35 and Fuji Superia 400 film. I picked up the film today and scanned and edited in post. The little Trip 35 does a great job for a camera ca. 1967. Some of the roll didn’t advance right, but when it did work, it did a pretty darned good job.
I save a lot of money on film since I don’t process it myself by scanning my own images in either my vintage Pakon 135 scanner, Epson V600, or Pacific Image scanners. Here I used the Pakon and my old eMachine XP laptop. It’s a pretty easy process. Once scanned, into Lightroom, and the rest, as they say, is history. There is something about film, even when edited in the digital darkroom, that a totally digital experience cannot replace – not even those great Fuji films mods in the X100V.
I have no idea what the name of this bush is, but it always fascinates me when I see it on my walks through the botanical garden. I should look for a tag. It’s such a cheery plant, and the long seed pods seem rather impossible given the pom-pom shape of its flowers.
My world really doesn’t look like this, but sometimes it does feel like this!
I have been soooooo busy with everything! People, projects, classes, etc., etc. I finally got out for a bit of a hike, and brought my camera along, too, loaded with Portra 400. I used my Olympus OM-1n, which is a favorite camera of mine. The lens was the 50mm I had attached to it. Interestingly, my tape that I put on any camera with film in it told me I had loaded the film on 3/6/2021, exactly one year to the day that I was out and about!
I am always rather “hmmmmm” about Portra 400. A lot of people like it, but in post I always need to do something to it. I probably should just not use it for anything but portraits since that is what it is intended for, but I don’t often take pictures of people.
Anyway, the hike was fun – and kind of scary since I went by myself and part of it was rather steep, with fall-offs that could be treacherous. Getting old is not fun, and losing a sense of independence in some areas is not where I want to be. However, prudence was there insofar as my husband knew where I was, and I had my phone.
This is a little sage plant, newly growing in the moist soil above a creek. I couldn’t get a really nice shot of it by itself, and that is when I set my exposure and took multiple images to stitch together. In the end, I liked this composition, and just messed with it until I got something I liked.
I took this photo a few years ago with my pre-WW2 Voigtlander Brillant. It is a simple camera that gives lovely results, as only a vinage camera can. I wonder if it is from their uncoated lenses.
I haven’t been to the local botanical gardens since last year, where this picture wast taken, when I fell down a hill and came home looking like something out of a horror film. A bit trepidatious to return, I admit. However, after the rains of last months, I know I have to go. The hills are greening, and the air of spring is in the air.
Definitely time to get out. I think more Ektar is definitely indicated, too.
As one year ends, we look back. As a new year begins, we look forward.
Happy New Year, everyone!
I re-scanned some Portra 400 I took in 2015 with my husband’s old Ricoh XR-10 camera from the last century. I have a Pakon 135 scanner that digitizes 35mm film. It is a real life saver, slow, and overall, reliable. There are some quirks that go with it, such as crippled software which I have worked around, but it makes scanning film very easy.
A few days ago, my husband replaced the old hard drive with an SSD in the vintage laptop I use exclusively with the Pakon. He removed the old HD and mirrored it. After that, he used an interface of some variety to make the old machine – an eMachine from 2005?? – running Windows XP (the only software that the Pakon software will work with) – think it is using an old HD. Yeah, techie stuff. So, I needed to see if the Pakon would still work – and it does! Now let’s just hope the old laptop will continue until I die, and the Pakon, too. What is interesting, too, is that my wireless mouse dies and resurrects itself periodically on the eMachine, so I ordered a USB cabled mouse and a USB hub to see if some of the other laptop quirks can be resolved. The laptop has a touchpad, but I don’t like them at all.
Besides checking out the workings of the new HD and the Pakon, I finally got around to seeing how to save the scans as negatives so I can process them using Negative Lab Pro 2.3 and Lightroom Classic. The Neg Lab Pro website gives very good directions – far better than when Nate began the product – and this scan, which you can enlarge on Flickr, shows how nice it all works out. The beauty of the film is still there, even digitized.
I think this combo is a ball hit out of the park! More to come.
The Glass Aerie 