Downtown.

Around the plaza.

My familiarity with downtown San Jose is a result of working at The Tech Museum of Innovation from 2000-2006.

I did web marketing and design for the museum and it was the coolest job I had in my 43 years of working.

The museum was just off Plaza de César Chávez, kitty-corner from the San Jose Museum of Art. The Tech staff was housed in a building around the corner on West San Carlos, and I had a decent sized work-space near the entrance, big enough to park my old Schwinn Collegiate in my office.

Whenever the weather was decent, I’d jump on my bike at lunch and ride around downtown with cameras, my Domke F6 fitting perfectly in the basket hanging from the handlebars.

Lots to see and shoot, with San Jose State, City Hall, The Children’s Museum, Japan Town, and older parts of town well within reach on bicycle at lunch hour.

Jump ahead to 2007, after a short stint as webmaster for San Jose State I landed at Santa Clara University, where I did web marketing until I retired in 2015.

The lure of the city was strong and I would still head downtown on occasion, just to find interesting and unusual subjects for photography.

These six shots were taken around the plaza late December 2008 using my old Pentax K10D and a Sigma 28-135 ƒ/4 zoom/macro lens.

Bums.

Another drive-by shooting.

October 2007. Polaroid Spectra AF + Spectra 990 film.

Described as “Fall ‘Roid Week 2007, day two!”, here’s what I wrote about it for my original Flickr post…

“I tried walking into this place once before. It gave me the heebie-jeebies! I had to leave. Really!

I was on my way home after work yesterday and knew this opportunity was presenting its spooky self once again. Since I was carrying my Spectra with me I decided to stop. I’m glad I did. I went in. Got permission from the owner. Took two shots. This was the better of the two. Still gave me chills, but I got the shot I’d envisioned.”

13 years later, I still have this camera. But no film. Polaroid Originals stopped making film for these cameras earlier this year and I know the Impossible folks aren’t producing any, either.

eBay prices are a little out of my comfort zone, so I guess my Spectra AF will be for display only.

Sad.

Out and about.

In nature.

Torri n’me took a drive over to Garey Park yesterday morning. It’s about a 12 minute drive from the house. Not bad. It was a beautiful Fall day here in Central Texas. Not a cloud in the sky and low 70s. Perfect for a hike.

We strolled the meadow and along the south fork of the San Gabriel River, probably walking a little over a mile. I got a few shots with the X100V and she used her iPhone.

The morning’s highlight was a pair of deer crossing our path about 15 feet in front of us, and Torri exclaiming “oh, look!” and scaring them into the bush before I had a chance to raise my camera.

The only people we ran into were the young lady taking our $4 for entry (Tuesdays are half price) and right at the end, two ladies walking their big brown Standard Poodle, Bugsy. We gave them plenty of room, 20-25 feet between us.

This was our first venture from the house for fun since March. Seemed like walking early morning around a big park would be safe, and yup, it was.

Argus Autronic I.

Broken beauty.

I was given this old Argus Autronic I by a friend, who tells me it belonged to to his dad.

It was produced between 1962-65. 50mm ƒ/2.8. For a 35mm camera it is huge. And it’s pretty heavy, weighing in at 2.77 lbs, including the fan-flash, half-case, and strap.

He also gave me the original manual, a bit tattered but intact.

First thing I did was open up the back, crank the film advance and checked to see of the shutter opened. It didn’t. I tried a few more times, could see the the shutter leaves moving, but no light was coming through. Bummer.

I’m gonna make a wooden stand for it, counter-sink a hole on the top of the stand to accomodate the case knob – so the camera sits flatly on top of the stand – and another hole on the bottom of the stand for a short 1/4-20 bolt/washer to secure it.

I’m thinking I’ll decopage/collage the manual pages to the stand and glue a chunk of felt to the bottom.

It’d be cool to find an old, unused M-base flash bulb, as I’d want to open up the fan-flash while on display and having a bulb in it would be a nice touch. I’ll check eBay.

Very cool.

The arc of progress.

Old, but not dead.

Over the past three weeks I’ve been checkin’ out the #ShittyCameraChallenge tag on Twitter and I’ve noticed that folks are using any old shitty camera they can get their hands on, including ‘vintage’ digital.

I still have my old Pentax Optio 300GS. It’s a tiny compact digital camera I bought in 2003. It’s a whoppin’ 3.2 MP, uses a 128 MB Compact Flash card, and it runs on AA batteries.

It’s not really shitty, but it is old.

It’s not really shitty, but it is old. And after 17 years, the sensor has a handful of dead pixels.

So, yesterday I walked around the house, garage, and backyard shooting whatever caught my eye.

These two shots had a similar feel, seemed meant for each other. A wagon wheel, and leaves from one of the Pride of Barbados plants out back.

Cool and dark.

Life’s about making adjustments.

My extremely rocky re-entry into developing film last year resulted in one botched and one barely salvageable roll of Ilford Pan F Plus, shot with my Hasselblad 500c/m and Holga 120S.

I was using a new dark bag to load the film onto Paterson reels. Even though it was done in an air conditioned room, the amount of heat my nervous and excited hands and arms generated caused enough steam in the bag to make the film stick to itself, totally ruining the Hassy roll.

The Holga roll wasn’t much better. The edges of the film got pretty crinkled, but I managed to feed the whole roll onto the reel without sticking to itself in the process.

Seems like a lot of trouble, huh?

The hall bathroom in our home has a separate water closet with a door. I can close the hall door, get my film rolls, reels, the tank parts, scissors, and any thing else I might need set up on the lid of the plastic tub where all this dev stuff is stored. I then turn off the light over the sinks. It’s easy to move the tub into the closet and close the second door.

It is absolutely dark in there, but I put a rolled up towel at the base of the door, just in case. I also take off my watch. After everything is situated, I sit on the toilet lid with the tub in front of me and turn off the light.

Seems like a lot of trouble, huh?

I haven’t screwed up a single roll since making this change, so the effort is worth it.

Plus, I’ve ditched the dark bag.

Offbeat.

Fun and funky lenses.

It must be my love of toy cameras that compels me to experiment with offbeat lenses on my mirrorless cameras.

I have a good collection of weird add-ons, from Lensbabies to C-mount CCTV lenses and I recently added an Olympus M.Zuiko 9mm ƒ/8.0 Fisheye Body Cap Lens to use on my m43 boxes. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but reviews and sample images I found were convincing.

Pictured above are are four from my stash of curious and weird lenses… Olympus 9mm ƒ/8 Fisheye Body Cap, Thingyfy Pinhole Pro S, Pentax 25mm ƒ/1.4 CCTV, Lensbaby Composer Pro/Sweet 35.

Rusty shutters #35.

Diana Mini.

August 2009.

I already had a Diana 151 when the Lomography folks released this little guy, and I thought adding this 35mm camera to the collection could be fun.

It’s a cool toy that’ll shoot half-frame and square, but I keep it on the square setting.

Loading film is super-easy, and all the controls are quite similar to what you’d find on the Diana 151, so there’s zero learning curve.

I’ve run 3 rolls of Kodak film through it so far, BW400CN, Elite Chrome 100 (XPRO), and Gold 200. All three performed well.

Yet another film camera I need to put a little more effort into using.

Film type: 35mm
Shutter Speeds: ~1/60 – 1/100 sec
Aperture: ƒ/8, ƒ/11
Focal Length: 24mm
Viewfinder: Optical
Focusing: Manual/zone – ~2ft – infinity
Dimensions HWD: 2.8in x 4in x 2.4in

50¢

Studebaker

3 beauties

Lily

Green flames

New Old Stock.

Quirky new addition.

This little guy arrived in the mail last week. It’s a Smena 8M. A Russian viewfinder camera.

An eBay purchase, it’s New Old Stock. Seriously. The box that showed up in the mail was sealed and unopened. They were manufactured from 1952 until the late 80s, but a little internet research reveals this one’s likely closer to the late 80s.

To call this thing quirky would be an understatement.

Full manual. 35mm. No battery. The shutter needs to be cocked before each shot.

The aperture ring – ƒ/16 to ƒ/4 – is inconvenient as hell, and loading and unloading film will be interesting because the rewind is a smaller-than-a-dime button with a serrated edge on top of the camera. No crank. The film take-up spool is loose.

It has shutter speeds from 1/8 to 1/250 second, or one can go by sunny to cloudy icons at the top of the lens barrel.

There are videos aplenty on YouTube, if you’re the curious type.

So, besides the Smena 8M, I’m down to about 20 cameras to document:

• Fujifilm Instax Square SQ6
• Diana Mini
• Shen-Hao HZX45-II
• Polaroid Land Camera Model 180
• Voigtlander Bessa I
• Minolta XG-1
• Minolta XG-7
• Polaroid Colorpack II
• Argus 520
• Debonair 120
• Pinholaroid (hacked Polaroid Colorpack II pinhole)
• Sprocket Rocket
• 8Banners Mc (pinhole)
• Zero Image 2000 (pinhole)
• Ondu 6×12 Multiformat (pinhole)
• Fujifilm XQ1
• Spartus Fullview
• Argus Argoflex
• Yashica-Mat 66

It’ll take a while to go through them all since they’re mostly old film cameras, but it’ll give me a chance – and excuse – to use up my film stash.

I’m pretty sure I’ll keep adding cameras to the list – because GAS – but putting these cameras through their paces will be my main focus for 2020-2021.

Take a few seconds and check out what I’ve put together so far over on @rustyshutters.

Not quite Spring.

Felt like it, though.

I spent the first Saturday morning of February walking around Zilker Botanical Gardens in Austin. Around 10 folks showed up for Simi’s PhotowalksATX gathering.

There were a few familiar faces – Greg, George, Ed, Ana – and a few folks I’d not met before – Justin, Derrick, Another Ed, Scott – and some folks whose names I did not get nor hear.

It was a beautiful Winter morning in the garden.

It was a beautiful Winter morning in the garden. A little chilly to start, but by the time folks were heading to lunch, it’d warmed up nicely.

It was my first visit to Zilker Gardens. Beautiful grounds. It has a lot of nice winding, gently sloped, paved paths, for ADA compliance I’m guessing, but there were also steps to use. Thoughtful.

I brought along the Sony RX100 III, my trusty Panasonic Lumix LX100, and it was my first outing with the Fujifilm XQ1.

There were a few paper whites popping out of the ground, and rose blossoms, pansies, and a few other flowers, but since it’s the dead of winter, mostly palms, ferns, and well, just a whole lot of green.

… it was my first outing with the Fujifilm XQ1.

Entrance into the gardens was $7 US for me, a senior, but that included parking. Not bad really.

There was a beautiful waterfall in one section of the gardens that I’m pretty sure everyone got a shot of… my picture was a little off-center, but it managed to catch a little cool lookin’ sun flare.

I was so busy focusing on getting into the gardens that I didn’t notice the front entrance gates, but the Rose Garden Gate on the north side of the property was something to behold. The only reference to the artist that I could find online was Lars Stanley and Louis Herrera.

Lunch was at Schlotsky’s on South Lamar. There weren’t as many folks as on the walk, but it was still a good crowd.

Simi’s photo strolls are always awesome.

Butterfly

Stack-o-washers

Fire

Anna

Ed

Spigot

Cracked

Weathered

Granite Rose

Simi

Symmetry