A step into an old direction.

Heavy Metal

November finds me playing with a pair of vintage Pentax K1000's legendary beasts of burden for photography students for decades. And reflecting on the blatant flimsiness of the Minolta bodies I grew up with.

As a SLR crazed teenager in the pre-ebay, pre-digital 90's I craved and lusted after a Nikon FM in black, such a beast was not to be had for less than $250 (Body) in those days so I had to settle for a Minolta X-370n. What glass was available here in the vast wilderness of the midwest was either out of my pricerange or pure crap. So the supplied 50/1.7 saw a lot of work. I picked up a few misc lenses and got by, drove to Michigan for a battered XG-7. (And killed it a few months later), and kept shooting. Another flea market X-370 found years later lasted me all of a week!

Mom and Grandma buying me the Pentax P30T in about '97 laid the foundation for my second chance at Photography. It survived many years of rough work, cold weather and abuse. Pentax worked a lot of reliability into their most basic of cameras.

A sad new era

I don't usually talk about politics here.

But we are living in an occupied nation, under the control of a bunch of lying criminals from Illinois. The dems are noting but a bunch of mindless sheep following around the puppet president.

It's just sad we have been brought so low....

We all have to start speaking out against the rapidly creeping socialism in the US, but peacefully, never sink to the level of our enemy.

Pray for real change in 2010 and 2012.

Never stop moving ahead.

Still fighting off the last of this lung thing, working on the farm and playing with my camera.

So I have little to write about.

I lived.

That is all.

Ohh...it's just another fourth of july...

Happy birthday to me, and it was another unique one.

I've been under the weather for a few days. Congested, trouble breathing, discomfort in my chest. Being the natural hypochondriac that I am, I immediately came to the conclusion that I was dying. I ended up in town today, on the 4th, on my birthday, looking for a doctor. Mine was out, one walk in was closed, and the other would not help me. So I ended up in the ER.

Three and a half hours later, two chest X-Rays and a breathing treatment which I can't even begin to describe. Other than it looked like something from a rock stage show, and three perscriptions and I'm out the door. And into the bathroom.

Not much to say.

Been a difficult time, dealing with some negative emotions while searching for a better job, while trying to finish up some long held over projects.

Writing sort of fell off the list.

I did have time however to clean all my optics and set the new contents of my Camera case for the rest of the Summer.

K110D Digital

K1000 Film

Vivitar 2X tele-converter

SMC-DA18-55 kit lens, though I never use it.

SMC-M 28/2.8

SMC-M 50/2

SMC-A 50/2 (On the K100 at the moment.

Focal 135/2.8

SMC-M 135/3.5

SMC-M 200/4.0

I have a few holes to fill, A SMC-M 35/3.5 and a 100/2.8 are on my wish list. Love to have something in the 85mm range, and a cheap 300mm zoom just for fun.

One last hurrah.

After having recently found out that Kodak has ended Kodachrome production I feel somewhat compelled to revisit a part of my past one last time. I have a roll of K64, and I'm going to try and pick up a couple more. Part of this summer I'll be shooting K64 again, this time in a classic Pentax K1000

The end of an Era, 74 years of Kodacrome comes to an end.

I guess it had to happen,

"KODACHROME Discontinuation:

Eastman Kodak Company announced on June 22, 2009 that it will discontinue sales of KODACHROME Color Film this year, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon. Sales of KODACHROME, which became the world's first commercially successful color film in 1935, have declined dramatically in recent years as photographers turned to other films or digital capture. Today, KODACHROME represents just a fraction of one percent of Kodak's total sales of still-picture films. Despite all its outstanding features, KODACHROME involves a highly complex development process that led photographers to experiment with and adopt newer KODAK films that deliver outstanding color images through a simpler workflow. Although KODACHROME has very distinct characteristics and no film will give the exact same results, current users are encouraged to try other Kodak films. Kodak continues to bring innovative new film products to market, having released seven new professional films -- over the last three years alone. "

Kodachrome was part of my youth, as soon as I had a second SLR body I kept it loaded with K64. Thanks to my finances I never shot more than 150 rolls over a decade or so, but I always had some around.

I remember being at a slideshow at a friends house, and staring in awe at the quality and brilliance of slides shot on the old K10 between 1940 and 1960 or so, they looked like they came straight out of the old Findlay processing lab. They were rich, completely lifelike and, well perfect. Kodachrome was archival, it rendered color perfectly, it was the photographers film, in nearly every genre of photography there is an active, vocal sect of K-chrome fans.

But in many ways it was a difficult product to deal with, it's expensive to make, expensive to process and Kodak didn't keep it up with the times, Findlay closed, and one by one so did all the other Kodak labs. Now only one little independent lab still deals with it, and this week, the great yellow father finally pulled the plug on Kodachrome.

Rest well my friend.

My new toy, my Pentax K110D, got to say I'm loving the instant results you get with a digital SLR, but I do wish that they had simplified it some more, I'd like a proper meter, a split focus screen, and a dial on the back I can set to emulate K25,K64,K200,gold 100,200,400,T-max, and T-pan...ect.. Leave the complex menu crap out and emulate a K1000. It would be perfect!

That said, the kit lens is useable but noting to be impressed with. I've stocked my Kit with an M28/2.8, M50/2.0, M135/3.5 and M200/4 Old glass kicks ass, you just have to learn to meter for yourself, there is no help from the body. Toss in a couple old Focal primes of surprising quality and a 2X teleconverter and we are in business.

Next up I plan to hunt down a used K100D for a spare, and hopefully next year upgrade to a K10D.

Into a new world.

A few short months ago, chance, and a unfortunate mistake who was then a part of my life led me to take the dive into digital. My former fiance is a photographer, I can credit her with giving me the motivation to pick up a camera again. She shoots with Cannon equipment, but lacking the needed budget I started investigating what Pentax was doing with digital.

Happily, I discovered that the latest generation of Pentax Digital SLR's use the exact same lens mount as a 1975 built K1000! Obviously this is a boon to the addiction called LBA, all the crusty old K-mount primes I can find will work on a new digital wiz-bang body.

I made the jump with a new in the box, $330 leftover K110D, it's only 6.1 megapixel, the world is headed towards 20mp as a standard, but it's a great learning tool. And all the old, odd, glass I find is useable, what a blast to make images with a Focal (K-mart) tele from 1978, locked onto a digital slr, and have them come out pretty damn good! A lot of the cheap old glass will rival the latest and greatest.

One, and it's not much of an issue for me, is that, there is no Auto Focus, no auto shutter speed, and no auto F stop this way. Pentax lets us down with the disgraceful lack of a proper match needle meter! Well...at least those of us so Luddite as to never used an auto everything SLR.

My K110D is being used as I would a K1000, set in manual, a Pentax M-series prime hung on the front, and my best judgement as a meter, photography as photography should be, I just get my pictures a lot faster!

Childhood dreaming pt 2, Photography then and now,

After a few years in the Minolta camp, and desperately in need of another body, (This was in the film era still) My Mom, and my Grandma, drove to lima to the Montgomery Wards store and bought me a brand new in the box Pentax P30T. I had been vainly attempting to buy a Nikon FM10 or something similar from one of the big eastern houses, but met with nary a shred of honesty in advertising, or the slightest quantum of customer service skill.  

Mom and Grandma took the chance to give me a terrific gift back in '96 and changed my viewpoint. For the rest of my time using film cameras as my primary equipment, I ran the Minolta with a 50mm Prime, or a 70-200 zoom tele, and the P30T with it's 35-70. Not the most handy kit to work out of but it go done what I needed done.  Another, 3rd? 4th? X370 spent time as my 3rd body before I parked my original X370 and switched completely to Pentax K mount. 

The end of my film era. 

A chance encounter with a Vivitar V2000 SLR in a antique store for $10 brought me back to Photography, for an all plastic shell, fully manual camera it's amazingly well done.  It took it's place in my bag beside the P30T and I went back to shooting off and one, even though the rest of the universe went digital already.  A $35 ebay buy brought me a second V2000 Body and a Vivitar 70-200mm Tele zoom.  

I also gathered up a pair of Zenit EM's and started chasing M42 mount lenses.

2009 Brought the new and the old,  A digital K110D, a classic K1000 and my infatuation with classic primes begins.  

Childhood dreaming

I became obsessed with photography at an early age, from the time I was about five I had some kind of camera in my hand a string of less than spectacular Kodak 110's and ancient garage sale 126's passed through my hands in the mid 80's before I switched to cheap plastic fixed lens 35mm's.

I dreamed about an SLR, the unatainable dream for a pre teen fixated on photography, the glorious luxury of being able to compose through the lens of the camera. A chance encounter with a very complete, though now I know very limited early 60's Kodak outfit was the closest I came for years.

amazingly, I was in my late teens before my first SLR came into my life, a 70's era Minolta X-370. It survived and thrived for a decade of College classes, vacations, and Railfanning, which is about the most dangerous occupation for a consumer SLR, I gathered up a fair selection of glass for it, though nothing spectacular. And along the way managed to kill an CG-7 and a second X370 Body before switching to more robust Pentax Bodies, and thats where I'll take up tomorrow.

It's been awhile for this blog, I never set out to ignore The Middle of Nowhere, but I've been trying to keep focused and keep busy. Depression and loneliness are hard subjects to talk about, and so is setting aside what was going to be the biggest part of your future. Sometimes you do things because there is no better choice, sometimes you have to make the wrong decision for the greater good.

The wheel in the sky keeps on turning...

Or something like that anyhow....

A tale of weakness and moral outrage.

It was the summer of '08, and I had completed my first semester as a rather long-in-the tooth junior at the local private college. All A's of course, but being a decade or so older than your classmates doesn't hurt when it comes to focus. It had been a long road just to get there, with precious little help from the University I might ad. But I was hanging on.

I always dreamed about going to a real University, not as an end in it's self, but as a path to spreading my love of History to as many people as possible. My first semester went great, not cheap, but great otherwise. Liked the professors, liked my fellow students, a few seemed to have real potential as human beings. Thinking about joining History club and getting to really experience some campus life, or at least as watered down a version as I could stand.

The trouble, and my lack of courage began to show it's self as I signed up for classes. High on my list of remaining requirements was the glaring PHE121, crap, why a Health class?? My Advisor was quick to brush aside my concern, assuring me it was something that could be slept through and still attain a B. Fine, I though, watch some movies and talk about healthy eating, No problem.

Not the crux of the problem is, I'm not the prototypical College Junior at this point. I'm a walking contradiction in Wranglers and a Co-op hat, even though I'm an avid bicyclist, I'm not avid enough. With my classic, pudgy German farmer build, (Short legs, long torso) I'm not built for speed of any sort of elegant fluidity of motion. Ok, I'm a big dumpy farmer. And thats how I show up for the first class, ahhh o, first thing I see wrong is it's in the athletic center aka the gymnasium, not good, I have not set foot in any sort of gym since jr High, it's against my personal beliefs! I find the room, a crowd of Children mulling outside the door... Freshmen, dressed in workout clothes... Crap... double crap, I'm standing out like a billboard, the big guy in jeans and T-shirt. The toddlers are looking at me too, like I'm a misplaced janitor or something. Thoughts about how much I hate college administrators are flying through my mind as the Professor pushes through and opens the door.

And bad got worse... This meatbag has "Coach" written all over him, it might as well be stamped on his forehead.. ()*&*&%^$%!! and other unrepeatables are flying though my mind at lightspeed. I have an aversion to coaches that runs so deep I skipped physical therapy after they rebuilt my knee! Chnka chunka chunka goes my heartbeat, every second this is looking more like some sort of horrid organized activity, how could these monsters be heartless enough to toss a 30 year old man with high blood pressure, an ulcer, acid reflux and a limp in here with a bunch of kids.

I stayed long enough to get the sylabis, which sadly confirmed my worst fears, words like BMI and maximum heart rate littered the page. My mind turned to mush and the wind fell from my sails like a ship in the doldrums. And I walked, no way I was going to spend $1500 for humiliation. Today, a year later, I might have limped my way around and embarassed myself for the semester. But probably not. I'm ashamed, and a bit dissapointed, but I still don't know quite why they could not have just let me skip that stupid class.

End of an age, French steel in the 80's

A beautiful machine I need to take some proper pictures of, my '80 Motobecane "Super Touring" France, much to the supporters of British and Italian bikes denial, dominated much of the American bicycle market. Seemingly millions of Peugeot's, Motobecanes's Gitane's, Merciers's and countless others poured in in the 60's and 70's. By the 80's though the handwriting was on the wall, cheaper, but still amazingly high quality bikes from Japan, and progressively more decent machines from Taiwan began to fill the market. All too soon, the old names faded from our national eye.

I was lucky I guess, in a way, I had a Peugeot P8 I won in a bike-a-thon when I was 8, so after I was tall enough to ride it, I got to spend part of my childhood on a steel french 10 speed, just as the golden age of the Road bike was coming to a close.

Now, I spend my very limited bicycle budget trying to recapture a past I only touched in the tiniest way, from the back rooms of bike shops, or the vast wasteland of e-bay I have gathered up a few old machines I play with. Such as the Motobecane shown above, and yes, I have replaced the seat and shortened the cables. The Motobecane "Grand Touring" had a reputation well earned as a competent road machine in the day touring style, brazed up from Vitus 172 tubes, double butted, and a close match to Reynolds 531 it rolled on throughout the 1970's. But in 1979 or '80 The grand old name was transferred to a new machine, similar in shape and intent. But made from the somewhat heavier Vitus "888". An economical decision I'm sure, but leaving a sad gap in the Motobecane line up.

This filled soon after by the rebirth of the "Grand Touring", if not in name, the most certainly in spirt under the guise of the "Super Touring" complete with it's heart and sole, the Underapriciated Vitus 172 Tubeset, and clad in nearly bulletproof Suntour equipment. It would roll on for a while longer before Motobecane faded from the American market.

My Super Touring was a happy accident on e-bay. I was close enough to avoid the $100 shipping charge! So the old war horse came home for $65! New tires and replacement wheel finished a refurb that included new paint and home made decals. Not to mention a few months of cleaning, painting, tinkering and wrenching.

Standing your ground: a recipe for an immobile life

Here is an interesting pic for you today, a snapshot of my '53 International Harvester "Super" C, for those not in the loop, it's a rather archaic farm tractor. It's also a battered, rusty, artifact we dragged out of a junkyard. Happily though, this one runs! My history obcession tends to run away with it's self, and a couple of years ago, it ran right into collecting old farm tractors. Hefty beasts these, even more cumbersome than the basement full of vintage ten speeds, but not, thankfully as immobile as the collection of industrial lathes I have somehow taken in.

But my half dismantled farm tractor is not the point.. mostly. My point is, heaven help me if I ever have to move, somehow in my life I've assumed the mantle of unpaid, untrained and very unofficial museum curator to the Midwestern race. From the box of old Bell Telephones to the garage full of woodworking equipment I have enough stores of antiquated stuff to keep three or four 1950's Illinois farm family's well provisioned and comfortable, Everything down to the books to teach them how to use the tools, (and educate the whole family somewhat comprehensively for that matter). Battle scars of the unstoppable flea market picker are the thousands of books I somehow amassed on unconnected subjects, from flying to fishing.

What I need, is a gigantic time capsule, A King Tut's tomb of middle America, that way, 10,000 years from now people will know what a Zebco 33 Spin-casting reel is, or a Bell 500 Rotary phone. Then I can start collecting stuff all over again.

In the mean time, I think there is an Apple //+ under my bed, stacked beside the pile of Successful Farming from 1964......

RNW

On lost arts, and vanishing icons.

Image stolen from Wikipedia

vanishing icons.

Know what this is??.... Most won't, but this simple looking piece of furniture gave birth to the age of technology we live in. 

Before Computers and cad,  Engineers, Artists, Draftsmen and Architects designed our reality by hand, skilled fingers put pencils and pens to vellum and made some of the most stunning works of mankind posable on this simple looking device. 

  Drafting tables are quickly becoming a vanishing species, in industrial and commercial settings.  Save for among students and artists, few now seem to prefer manual work to the ease that the personal computer brings.  With my interest in old machinery last year I had casually started buying drafting sets, and books on technical drawing.  A  few tool purchases led to a bit of research, which of course, led to the desire for a drafting table of my own.   Looking, in a brief moment of fog-eyed consumerism I considered a new table, but with the dismal quality of the $150 ish student tables at the craft store, and the $300+ cost of a vintage wooden table, I nearly gave up.  

Days later, while browsing craigslist I stumbled upon the ad, laced with the words every deal hunter desires, adjectives like, "Moving", and "Must Go". So I made the trip into the city, around by-passes and through pot holes big enough to swallow a semi, down to an out of the way self storage  area where I met "Doug" former Engineer and motivated seller.   Shortly after, my war torn Jeep Cherokee was packed to the roof with 300lbs of a  ca. 1985 Hamilton, fully adjustable Drafting table.  

I sit at it now, tinkering with a sketch of a GWR Pannier tank locomotive, or some farm building I'd like to build, and I reflect at the history that even this (In Comparison) very young table experienced. My table may have only had a twenty year life of designing gas stations, but it's brothers and cousins were used to design everything from steam locomotives to space shuttles. Workspaces touched by skilled hands and  brilliant minds, works of art flowed from them under the thin guise of blueprints and technical drawings.  

Yes, the computer is worlds ahead of pencils and paper,  drafting machines and erasers, and out friend the drafting desk,  but something of the soul is lost in it now, something of the person behind the creation. 

 

I freely admit it, he people at Brooks saddles in England http://www.brookssaddles.com/ are heros of mine, they are still making some of the same models saddles (Bicycle seats) they were making in the 1890's, and using the same methods. Some of the production machines have been in use for decades. 

Now, Brooks saddles are not for everyone, go to any cycling forum and you will find divided opinions on the subject,  for some, they are a revelation, for some they are a quaint throwback to a bygone era, and for some, they are pure torture. 

Granted,  I'm one of the lucky ones, a new Brooks B-17 standard is perfectly comfortable to me right out of the box. Some people have to break a Brooks in, and some never adapt to a tensioned  leather saddle.  I have three B/17's a vintage B/15 and a B5n  mounted on my bicycles, in addition to the new saddle featured below.

The new Brooks Imperial

Last year I had the honor to serve as a product tester for the new, or rather old, depending on your viewpoint Brooks Imperial slotted saddle.  Cut out saddles have become all the rage in the past few years as health issues have blanketed the cycling news. Brooks re-issued the Imperial for the first time in a century. 

More on leather saddles later on. 

RNW

Welcome to my Blog, Day 1: May 7th 2009.

Not that I believe any great number of people will bother to read it, but as the entire rest of the planet seems to be blogging. I decided to jump feet first into the arena and start one for myself.

I've been a student of history all my life, not so much of historical figures and there personalities, but more so of what people have created, human life is fleeting. Brief moments of existence passing by in a flash of time. What they left us, however can be preserved for future generations and learned from. I like the stuff people made in the past too, old stuff is usually better, wood and steel and craftsman ship have been replaced by computer design and cost cutting.

So in this blog, letters from nowhere, you might read about just about anything. But expect me to talk about companies that maintain a living link to the glory days of western industry, about cycling and vintage bicycles (1960's to 1980's) Farming, with my focus on history and equipment and the occasional foray into anything from vintage phones to model trains. I also have an interest in Photography and transportation, anything from bridges to Railroads to great lakes freighters.

I admit I'm crazy and not the greatest success in the financial arena, my best course in life would have been to hide in some university using my limited gifts to go as far as I could in education. However that course is closed to me due to financial restrains. So off we go.

RNW

P.S. This blog is first and foremost about meeting life face first, no matter if you triumph or fail there is no exit button.