In Mechanica Antiqua

I regrettably didn’t take as many photos of this machine as I wanted to.  This machine was another repair, and it needed some escapement tuning and a bell tuning.  The bell was easy, the skipping escapement was not.  This machine doesn’t have a star wheel like most other typewriters, instead it has two teethed pieces that move in and out of alignment with the carriage rack, one of which is on a small compression spring that regulates spacing.  This makes the machine pretty sensitive.




The escapement was eventually fixed by reforming a section of the spacebar linkage over a torch, the same with the letter spacing leaver.  The rest was polishing.  That’s that, a very short story for a very interesting machine.  Wish I had more time with it!  I do want to note the level key top action, which does not cause the keys to shift forward or back more than a fraction of a millimeter.  Very remarkable!  The Coronas tend to lock up if you don’t let the keys travel a few millimeters forward.  The…

Never developed C41 before, I’ll admit I was intimidated to begin with.  It’s actually quite straightforward.  So I’ll cut to the chase.  I purchased the Unicolor
C41 2-liter kit.  I gathered three liter containers and a gram scale, and cut all the powders in half.  Exactly in half.  I took hot water from the faucet, within 5 degrees of the target temperature and mixed everything up.  Things spilled, things got cold, things happen.  It’s okay, as soon as they’re mixed they’re on a highway to hell.  They won’t last long enough to be anal over.


After that, I loaded a roll of Ektar 100 and things got dicey.  I broke my UV filter and replaced it with a faint magenta 1a filter, I dropped the tank and exposed the finished roll, and I dumped chemicals everywhere.  Roll one was a bust.





Not to mention the fact that the developer was eating away my storage carton.  Okay, so I had a major disaster.  Several, actually.  I pulled together a roll of XP2 on my Nikon L35AF and shot it.  I took a pa…

This afternoon, I realized that it had been a very long time since I last posted.  Sometimes things get busy, and other things get forgotten.  I don’t like it when that happens.

I took the above photo at the Milwaukee art museum a couple weeks ago.  I shot it on my Nikon F3, with a fresh roll of Ilford HP5.  The geese just happened to fly by as we drove past, taking flight in front of a building designed to look like a bird in flight.  Just happened to snap it...just happened to.  125 of a second, stuck out to me.  Just fast enough to freeze them.
It always amazed me how many photos are down to nothing more than happenstance.



And of course, a lovely photo of a typewriter just to fit the blog.  Took this one with Kodak Tri-X.  Somewhat less grainy, somewhat sharper at times...could never make up my mind between the two.  Go find out for yourself on that one!


And lastly, this beautiful macro shot of a snowflake, taken digitally actually.  Freezing cold when I took it, handheld.  I’ll p…

A long long time ago, cameras utilized what we call a pin-hole lens.  This was a close fitting lens without glass or plastic, but rather a tiny pin-pricked hole.  There's a lot of careful math involved to create a good focal length and diameter, but I dislike math so I disregarded it entirely.  I was initially inspired by my impatience to get a lens for a Nikon F3HP that I recently purchased, and wanted to see what quick alternatives there were.  So, with my Canon DSLR as a test subject, I decided to try my hand at making a pinhole lens for fun.

I initially started off by tracing the lens cap on some scrap paper, and used it to cut a small disk of aluminum.  Then, I wasted a ton of time looking for my misplaced calipers and ended up having to use this ancient piece of trash.



With that done, I went ahead and center-punched/drilled a hole at the center point i marked out.

Along with my misplaced calipers, was some misplaced foam, so I used a circle of white leather that I cut out i…