Hi,

Hope life has been good. Hopefully the extreme weather big parts of the country suffered from lately did not affect you or somebody you know, and if it did, I truly hope everybody is okay.

Living in Miami, we know a thing or two about extreme weather conditions, which makes it easy to sympathize with anybody who goes through extreme weather. They say, we get more hurricanes this year. We’ll see. Their accuracy track record hasn’t been the greatest. Besides, one is all it takes. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 taught us that. The only named storm that year, a little lone storm, but with a huge impact.

Talking about extremes, I bit the bullet and got myself a new 8 x 10” pinhole camera. You might remember when I wrote about my first 8 x 10 pinhole, well I still have that one, but it has a 300 mm focal length, which is very long for an 8 x 10” pinhole camera and it gave me some problems, and even though I am still very happy with it, and I will still use it from time to time despite its shortcomings, I thought I spoil myself and bought a brand new high end model. The camera is a Zero Image 810 and it came with an extension module so I can change the base focal length of 80mm to 160mm. Zero Image cameras are all handmade by Mr. Zernike Au, who is based in Hong Kong. Zernike is very well known and liked within the worldwide pinhole community. His cameras are a work of art.

The official manufacturer’s name of this camera is “The Challenger” and that sounds about right

 

That camera arrived last Thursday, and its maiden voyage was supposed to be the next day on Friday. I said “supposed to” and it would have been a maiden voyage if it wasn’t for Mr. Murphy, the founder of “Murphy’s Law”, who decided otherwise.

It all started that morning after driving for 25 miles only to find out that my bright red protective sleeve with my film holder loaded with film was still laying on my desk. No film, no pictures. Mind you that I choose a bright red sleeve for a reason…..Anyway, I was still early enough and I was determined to use my beautiful new wood and brass camera that day, so back home it was.

It gets better from here, but before I tell you about that, you need to know that a film holder has two sides with one sheet of film on each side. This film is kept in the dark with a “dark slide” that has a white side and a black side. The white side facing out means that the film is unexposed. Once the film is exposed, you turn the dark slide around so the dark side faces out.

So, here I am finally at my destination and just took my very first exposure with my band spanking new camera. As a good citizen, I turned the dark slide around, so the black side was facing out. So far so good. Unfortunately, I realized at that moment that I set the camera on the tripod in the general direction of my subject, leveled the camera, but did not bother to look a little closer to the composition or anything else. No idea if my subject was even in the picture. Oh well, it was only a test shot I told myself. (it was not). I left the film holder in the camera without bothering to flip it over to the second sheet of film.

Got back in my truck, drove to the second spot where I wanted to take a picture. Set up the camera, actually paying attention to details this time and pulled out the dark slide to take the exposure. I did everything right except for one minor detail, I still did flip the holder over to the unexposed film side with the result that the exposed film was now exposed twice like I was supposed to!  Upon realizing that, I pulled out the dark slide and removed the (probably) ruined sheet of film. After removing the film. This dummy put the dark slide back in with the white side facing out. So now I had one film holder with one sheet of film and two dark slides with the white side (unexposed) facing out. Instead of leaving it what it was and take two exposures, one on each side, in which case, one side would have had nothing obviously and the other side with the film would have been fine, Rudy here, the same Rudy you all know and love (maybe), figured what side the film was one and puled the dark slide out of the opposite side “to make sure”. Well, you guessed it. Two ruined sheets of film. Surprise, surprise! Since I only had one film holder with two sheets of film on me, that was it for the day!

Sometimes I amaze myself with how dumb I can get. Every time I think this is it, it can get dumber apparently. Five (5) considerable mistakes within a few hours. That must be a record of some sort. All mistakes of things I normally don’t make and are burned in my memory, or so I thought.  Don’t know if it was a negative magnetic field, a convulsion of those solar flares we had recently, or if the gremlins were just playing tricks on me, but one thing was for sure, the equilibrium was upset that day for some reason. The funny thing is, I didn’t even feel bad about it. I just giggled a little, shook my head, and told my wife what happened. Yes, she still loves me fortunately!

The results are very satisfying. Very happy with it! The images are extremely sharp! (For a pinhole that is)

https://rudy-umans.pixels.com/featured/tree-after-life-in-the-everglades-rudy-umans.html

https://rudy-umans.pixels.com/featured/mangrove-in-west-lake-everglades-rudy-umans.htm

 

In the meantime, I also had cataracts surgery on both my eyes. This went fairly well even though I have a warranty claim on one eye that needs a redo.

I don’t want to bore you anymore than I already did, so I will tell you all about that in my next newsletter. I will also tell you then about the new summer series of blogs I am about to start writing again.  The subjects are mainly about the philosophy, subject matter, and the art of photography. I can tell you though that the one coming up is called “The oneness of photography”. Sounds weird? of course it does, but you might find it interesting anyway!  It will be different. Technology takes a backseat, even more now than in the first series last year.

Let me know if you have a photography or art related subject in mind you would like me to write about.  If you like a reminder of the blogs I wrote so far, you can find them here: https://rudyumans.com/   One of the posts is just about pinhole photography.

For purchasing a print, there are two options; you can get a signed limited edition handmade print, including a Certificate of Authenticity,  by contacting me directly or a regular print through my fulfillment store here: https://rudy-umans.pixels.com/

Thank you very much! Thank you for reading and thank you for subscribing!

So long and have fun. Until the next time!

Rudy

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