Winter Garden

I have been finding that my photography has been naturally finding its own themes.  The past few months I have been often drawn to the effect that the winter sun, low in the sky, has on the garden landscape. Not much of a post today other than just to point to a gallery with some of what I have seen so far.
Winter Garden

Useful Photoshop Plugin and More Found Film

At least a couple of my goals with this blog are to give some information that is useful or at least interesting. For useful this morning I am thinking of Nik's Viveza plugin for Photoshop.  Viveza lets me with a click add control points to an image that will adjust things like contrast, brightness, saturation, and so on. In the example below I wanted to get the cat ornament to stand out more from the background.

The one on the left is the before picture.  In the picture on the right I used control points to darken some of the background while leaving the ornament alone.  I also was able to make some adjustments to the ornament without effecting the background.  In the past the main option for making non-global changes like this would be by using selections. And that can be a difficult process.  With Viveza such changes are pretty quick and easy.

I'm not sure if this is the most impressive example of Viveza's capabilities, however it was something I did today that bought Viveza to mind.  I would rate Viveza as one of the most useful plugins for Photoshop.  If you have not heard of it it is worth checking out.

In another development I uploaded a few more images from the negatives that I wrote about finding earlier.

Looks like a visit from a son in the military.
Found Negatives Gallery

Official Girl Scout Camera

The Herbert George Company made the Official Girl Scout Camera in the 1950's.  I don't know if anyone made an unofficial version. The OGSC is pretty much the same as the Herco Imperial with the exception of the faceplate.  The camera is a simple box type which uses 620 film to make 12 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 images.  There is one shutter speed probably somewhere between 1/30 and 1/60.  The aperture appears to be around f/11.  There are a couple of holes on top of the camera to hold a flash attachment. 

I used some Arista.Edu 100 with the Official Girl Scout Camera to make the gallery below.  I think most of the scratches are from where I used an Bower X camera to wind 120 film onto a 620 spool.  I remember when I was doing the rewinding thinking this is so easy I wonder why I hadn't used this method before.  When I saw the scratches I remembered that I had used that method before.  Hopefully next time I will remember to use a camera that doesn't enjoy scratching film so much.
Official Girl Scout Camera Gallery

Found Film Negatives from the 1940's & 1950's

Image from some of the found negatives.







Saturday I visited a couple of antique shops in St Joseph IL looking for camera stuff.  Didn't find much until I came to a bookshelf piled down with cameras and assorted film items.  Upon a closer look most of the stuff was broken or dirty and priced like the dealer thought his stuff was mint.  The only thing I ended up getting was a box with some old film containers and a 1951 issue of Popular Photography. 

The box with the film containers was wrapped in plastic so I didn't check it out much until I got home.  Once I took a closer look I found that the containers each held at least one roll of developed film.  There also were some rolled-up 35mm film loose in the box.  I also found a few black & white slides which were mostly unmounted. Overall there are probably enough developed film to make a few hundred images.  In the past I have found underdeveloped film in cameras, however this is the first time that I have come across discarded developed film.

Mostly the film is in fair shape.  It has some dust and scratches and some deterioration, however most should be able to give a usable image.  I don't know if these were made by one photographer or by several, or who the people in the images are.  The results I have gotten so far are mostly family type pictures from what I am guessing is the late 40's or 50's. Hopefully, I can get some information about the source of these pictures from the dealer that sold the negatives.  Scanning the negatives looks like it will be a slow process since they have a lot of curling and therefore require some effort to place into the negative holder.  So far I have just scanned a few strips.  A few of the images that were the most interesting to me are in the gallery below.  As I do more of the images and maybe find out more about the source  I will share the results and information with you.
Found Negatives Gallery

Upset Stomach Prevents a Profound Post Today

During the night my stomach was bending me to its will in various unpleasant ways.  I feel better now, however I am low in energy so my plan to reflect on why I decided to do a blog will be put off to another day. Instead I think it is a good day to share a couple of things I have come across in the way of images.

The first is a collection of digital images that the Villa Grove Public library has listed.  Actually the library is called the Camargo Township Library, however I call it Villa Grove because it is in Villa Grove Illinois.  Villa Grove was for a site of maintenance of Steam Engines for the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad. When the age of steam died out in the 1950's the shops in Villa Grove were closed. Some ruins still remain of the roundhouse and a few shop buildings.  The wonderful thing about the images in the Camargo Township collection is that they show the time when the shops were thriving.

Man holding flowers in the C&EI shops. I wish I knew the story behind this image.










I took the image above from the collection and cleaned it up and enhanced it some back when I was learning more about Photoshop.  I was particularly interested in the railroad images because my grandfather worked for the C&EI most of his life.  There also are images for local people, for something called the Pancake Festival, and for reunions of the Villa Grove High School classes.
Digital Images at the Camargo Township Library

I think the Camargo Township Library and its volunteers should be commended for making the effort to put these resources online.

One of my favorite sets of images on Flickr is from Flickr user GaleChicago . The images are from a road trip that she made in 1975 through central Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.  They were taken with a Minolta SRT 101 on Tri-X.  I feel they are wonderfully evocative of the time.  Also the set contains the only photos that I know of for the departed Philo Illinois Dog & Suds.  Viewing these photos was partially an inspiration for me to do B&W film again.
Small Towns, 1975

Gale is also responsible for saving the sign for the Chuck Wagon Diner formerly in Champaign Illinois, now in Princetown, New York.
Chuck Wagon Sign Leaving Chicago For New York

Minolta Hi-matic 7SII

So far the Minolta Hi-matic 7SII has been my best find in an antique shop.  I got it for $10 last fall.  The camera is in excellent condition and came with a case and flash in the same condition.  I didn't know much about this camera when I saw it, however its condition and obvious quality told me it was worth the $10.  A funny thing is that in the same group of cameras there was a fairly common SLR that looked like it had had its hot shoe pulled off with a pair of pliers. The asking price for that camera was $25.  All I can figure is that the dealer was pricing the cameras by size. 


The Minolta Hi-matic 7SII is a compact and light-weight rangefinder with a sharp 40mm f/1.7 Rokkor lens.  It has a very quiet mechanical copal shutter with speeds from 1/8 to 1/500 and B. The rangefinder on mine is bright and easy to see.  I started out in photography at the time when SLRs were taking over from rangefinders.  I had never actually used a rangefinder until a year or so ago.  Back in the old days my eyesight was much sharper than today and focusing an SLR was easy.  Now with my decreased eyesight I often find the rangefinder easier to focus.  


The Minolta Hi-matic 7SII uses a CdS cell that was originally powered by a 1.35v mercury battery.  Since these batteries are now banned you will have to work out a substitute like one of the Wein Cells. Without the battery the camera will still work fine in manual mode.  With the battery you have the option of using shutter priority auto-exposure.  So far I have been using the camera in manual mode and a hand-held meter, however I just got a battery and plan to test out the auto-exposure soon.  I imagine that in auto-exposure mode that this light weight quiet camera will be very good for things like street photography.  


I have been well-satisfied with the results I have had with this camera and it is definitely a keeper.  In fact it is a camera that I think I would enjoy even if it didn't work just because I like the way it looks.  The B&W photos in the gallery below are Legacy Pro 100.  Fuji 800 is the color film. 
Minolta Hi-matic 7SII Gallery

Camera Older than Me and Newer Camera

I am getting to an age where I see items that once were a familiar part of my daily life selling in antique shops.  So it is nice to find there are still some collectable things older than me. The camera older than me is an Agfa Sillette. The Sillette was made starting in 1955.  It is a range focusing camera with shutter speeds from 1/25 to 1/200. It also has a B setting. The lens on mine is an Apotar 1:3,5, 45mm. Other versions have an Agnar lens.  These sold for around $40 back in the 1950's.  And considering how many I see on places like Ebay they must have sold a lot of them.  I haven't gotten around to taking a photo of mine yet, however you can see what one looks like here.

The Sillette is a solidly made camera that fits well in my hands.  It also appears to be a good picture taker.  I think the shortcomings in some of the images in the gallery below are more from the photographer than the camera.  I think that if I were to work with this camera more it could produce some excellent images. That being so, here is what I done so far.
Agfa Sillette Gallery

The newer camera is a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX7.  It came out in 2010. Since newer versions have come out I got this one for a much reduced price.  What I wanted it for was for a digital camera that was easy to carry around and also could take quality images. So far I have been very satisfied with it.

I took Simon for his shots yesterday. I do think the 25mm lens makes the vet assistant look a little heavier than she is.











One of my favorite features of this camera is iSweep Panorama.  Here you can make a panorama in one go just by picking a starting point and moving the camera across the area you'd like in the panorama.  The images are stitched together in the camera.