Wild Blue Yonder
Winter Morning: Winding Kalamazoo
Lots of hoar frost on a bright and sunny winter’s morning along the Kalamazoo River.
I pass over the Kalamazoo River a few times during my commute into work, and it’s always lovely no matter what season.
Trying (And Failing) to Fix a Yashica Electro 35
So it goes. You push yourself a bit beyond the comfortable, but sometimes it’s a bit too far.
That was the case with my Yashica Electro 35 GS rangefinder, an eBay pickup that I thought would be a fun dip into the camera repair pool. I got it for a great price, not knowing what was wrong with it. But the idea of a fixer-upper appeals to me, after all the work I did repairing and upgrading my Macs and Newtons over the years.
So I bought a Yashica thinking it would be DIY project, like the old days.
Looking around online, there’s tons of resources available for these Electros: custom-made battery holders, step-by-steps for taking it apart, the Pad of Death replacements.
None of those resources, however, helped me with the basic problem: fear. Or at least nervousness.
You see, digging into one of these rangefinders feels like taking apart a mechanical watch. These are delicate instruments, with tiny screws and interlocking parts that are engineered within a millimeter of precision.
It’s different that opening up a PowerPC-era Mac and swapping out the RAM. With those, there was plenty of room to work in.
The problems with these older Yashicas, though, are often solved with a soldering gun and precision screwdrivers. The old batteries leak, the wires become corroded, the shutter doesn’t fire. All that information is out there.
Mine? It seemed to be an electrical issue, because the battery check light didn’t come on, even after a fresh battery. There was a bit of leakage from an old expired battery, but nothing too messy. I cleaned the battery compartment, cleaned the contacts, took the bottom plate off to make sure everything looked fine. Nothing.
Then I moved into the top plate, to see what the wiring situation looked like. Sure enough, there were two white wires, one connected to the battery compartment and another from who knows where, hanging loose. To get to the battery wire, I’d have to take a lot of the view finder apart. The other? Who knows.
Eventually, I got to feel like one wrong move and I’ve ruined the darned thing.
So after buying a specialty screwdriver, ordering the custom battery thingy, and taking a look inside, I can reasonably say I have no interest in pursuing this repair further. My comfort level only goes so far.
The good news is that the camera shutter still fires at 1/500, so with a bit of math and some 400 speed film, I can get a good exposure using the Sunny 16 Rule. I loaded a roll of Lomo 400 just for testing, to see what the limits are.
My limits? I think I just found them, thanks to this little Yashica.
US-12 Yard Sale
Dean-o
Chickens!
George and Abe
Furious
What Now My Love?
Imagine it: 180 miles of LPs, kids clothes, and missing-piece puzzles.
That’s the US-12 Yard Sale – a giant bargain bin stretching across southern Michigan.
We typically check out the local section, stretching from Clinton and Saline in the East to Allen (Antique Capital!) in the West. The tough part isn’t the driving – it’s the figuring out which yard/garage sale is worth stopping at.
This past year, I had no complaints: I picked up a Canonet in fantastic condition for $5 in Jonesville. Everything beyond that was gravy.
‘Feel Like Falling’ Tab by Riverside
Finally submitted my first guitar tab, featuring the song “Feel Like Falling” by Riverside.
It’s taken me a while to find the right combo of (a) a song I could sit down and teach myself and (b) a song that hadn’t already been tabbed. But this ear-worm of a tune made me want to learn it on guitar. I failed to find any tablature for it, so I thought, “What the heck?” I went home that night and fingered(!) it out on my own.
It took a few days to get the phrasing just right, and a day or two to get the tab just how I liked it. But now it’s been approved at Ultimate Guitar, so I’m officially a tabber.
Enjoy the song, because it really is damned catchy.
Bringing Back the Bohm
Proud to present my debut as a documentary film maker with Bringing Back the Bohm, the story of a dedicated group of community leaders coming together to restore a closed and dilapidated theater in Albion, Michigan.
Last fall, through my job at Albion College, I had a chance to photograph students learning about the theater’s restoration process. Elizabeth Schulteiss, the executive director of the Albion Community Foundation and lead cheerleader of the Bohm project, and I talked about how several documentary offers had fallen through.
Having done video work for the college, I volunteered to complete a short documentary for the theater in time for their grand opening on December 27, 2014 – the 85th anniversary of the theater’s opening in 1929.
The project was well outside my comfort zone. A five minute video I can do, but a half hour video?
Luckily I had lots of help from the Friends of the Bohm committee, my co-worker (and producer!) Erica, and the resources at the college.
The documentary debuted at the grand opening, after a rushed few weeks to get all the interviews and editing done.
I’ll say this: it’s a heckuva thing to see something you made on a real big screen. The film has its quirks, and I see lots of stuff I’d like to make better. But the point is, it’s done and out in the world for lots of people to see.
Learn more about this great historical community theater, and catch a movie there. You can order a copy of the documentary on DVD by contacting the theater, too.
Book Review: ‘A Lesser Photographer’
Think about all you’ve learned about photography. Think about the photo blogs, the podcasts, the seminars, the preset packs.
It’s not really “photography.” It’s the business of photography. That’s mostly what we hear about on the web. The gear, the reviews, the tips and tricks. It’s photography as commercialism.
CJ Chilvers woke up from all that one day, hiking in woods in Illinois (I’ve been there – it’s lovely). He woke up from the “gear talk” that pervades most of what is photography culture, sold all his DSLR equipment, and started over.
Then he started the A Lesser Photographer blog, and shared a different philosophy: What if we cared more about the photos and ideas than the camera and lenses? What if we quit obsessing about technique and kept things simple?
Now Chilvers took the best of the A Lesser Photographer blog and put it into book form – short “chapters” with simple ideas and great accompanying art. The chapters are little nuggets to think about. There’s one on The Best Photos of the Year (hint: they’re yours, and they’re wonderfully imperfect), and one on not shooting the clichéd and obvious. Live your life instead of shooting all the time. And (my favorite) embracing the “amateur” in amateur photographer.
That last one really resonated with me. Yes, I do make a little side money from photography. And yes, it’s a part of my jobby-job. But mostly, it’s a hobby. I’m not looking to make a lot (or even a fraction) of my income from photography – either paid gigs or selling prints. So what do I need a portfolio for? My work will (most likely) never hang in a museum. And I have plenty of outlets for my work (Flickr, Instagram, this blog).
Chilvers’ message is today’s photography counterculture. Photography as a hobby is all about gear and technique – about special effects (HDR, light painting, etc.) rather than emotion. Chilvers says, “Enough.”
The perfect camera for you? “Check to make sure you don’t already have a camera.”
It’s an easy trap to fall into, all that gear lust. Starting out, I remember caring about fast primes and ISO sensitivity and all that. I wanted to try cameras and buy the latest and greatest. That urge still grabs me every time I visit canonpricewatch.com.
Technique wasn’t so interesting to me, luckily. I mostly cared about taking good, interesting photos and capturing my friends and relatives. But the gear, man.
Maybe it’s a guy thing, to care about the specs. The latest and greatest. I do care about the tools in the same way I care about my car. There needs to be a certain amount of comfort and flexibility that allows me to get the job done (photos, driving, whatever). And the sports model is always something to drool over.
But Chilvers’ advice is to spend money on the images instead of the gear. Buy a plane ticket and shoot the hell out of your destination. With your old, clunky, dented camera. That still takes good-enough images.
Not all of us can be pro photographers who get to fly to India and test out the latest Fuji. But we can fly to India. I bet our old cameras still work there.
A Lesser Photographer is a good, pointed, fast read, and it does make you question how you approach this hobby. If you’re a pro, says Chilvers, you already know this stuff.
It’s the rest of us “advanced amateurs” that need reminding.
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Pick up A Lesser Photographer: Escaping the Gear Trap to Focus on What Matters at Craft & Vision for $5 (cheap), and follow the blog.
