There Is No Cat - 52@52 Week 29

A huge orangupoid, which no man can conquer

Thursday, February 18, 2016

52@52 Week 29

So much shooting this, so little to show for it.

Last Friday, I took out my Canonet QL-17, loaded with the Film Photography Project’s RetroChrome 320, government surplus Ektachrome that they say “looks a little warm” I self developed it with an E-6 kit I got from them, and boy, was it warm. Positively yellow. Not as bad as the time I shot much of a roll of Ektachrome through a yellow filter on our Rolleiflex, but not something I was happy with, either.

So then on the weekend, I took the Wanderlust Travelwide out to the boardwalk in Asbury Park with one holder loaded with Kodak Portra 400. I took what I thought were a couple of pretty good shots. Unfortunately, I messed up, and they wound up on the same piece of film. Measure twice, cut once. The double exposure was interesting, kind of, but I’m really sorry I messed up the shot inside the arcade at Convention Hall.

I wasn’t happy with any of the shots I took with my Polaroid SX-70 that day, either.

So, last chance, brought the Travelwide to work with me yesterday, one holder, again loaded with Portra 400.

I’m reasonably happy with this shot of Winston Churchill Square in Greenwich Village, a short walk from the office.

I shot this at f/11, 1/100 of a second, and developed it in a Jobo C-41 kit, the way I develop all my color negative film. Because of the threes overhead, there’s less light than I would have liked. And it’s impossible to accurately frame a photo with the sports viewfinder Wanderlust provides. It might help if they posted some instructions for how to best use it to their site at 4×5.camera (clever URL, that).

The Travelwide is an interesting camera. It lends itself to more snapshot-like photos than I usually associate with large format cameras. That’s probably not a good thing, especially since the thing I value about shooting large format is the thinking process in setting up a shot. But damn, it sure is light and convenient, and I can see myself taking it out on the street at lunchtime a lot more than the Intrepid.

Posted at 7:58 PM

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What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

- Albert Einstein, explaining radio