It’s hot here

 Last one of this not-very-interesting series of seaside new builds in Portstewart, you will be glad to hear:

OM1, 135mm on Adox MCC

Hopefully there’ll be something a little different next week on this place. We’re not at home this week…we are in Sardegna, or Sardinia if your prefer. We booked it a few months ago, after my cochlear implant surgery. It’s our first holiday without Missy, which is obviously a bit of a milestone. Our last holiday with just my wife & I, pre-Missy times, was 20 plus years ago. Fittingly enough that was also in Italy, but that time on the mainland, Trieste&Venice. This time we’re in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. The ‘g’ in Cagliari is silent, by the way. 

Cagliari reminds me of Porto (Portugal) in many ways - lots of places to eat & just a great city to explore on foot, albeit it a tad hilly in places. It’s our sort of place, not too touristy, a bit off the beaten track. Our apartment is right in the middle of the city, with about 50 restaurants within a 10 minute stroll around the narrow streets (Sardinians eat out a lot, it would appear).  We chose to go at this time of year as it’s not too hot for our Northern Irish skin. Its lovely in the morning & late evening and gets to about 25 degrees in the middle of the day - I certainly wouldn’t want it any hotter. We’re walking round with linen clothes & still sweltered…some of the locals have three layers on. And a hat. 

Seaside living

 The balconies look like lower mandibles with razor teeth:

OM1, 135mm Zuiko; on Adox MCC

Some body looking wistfully out to see from the balcony would have made this shot a lot more interesting. But it might have been a long wait for that somebody to appear.

I think I mentioned before the 135mm was a charity shop find, along with the now-repaired OM10. The lens is a f/3.5 version & is really light and small. I’m liking it a lot.

Check your background

 Local film star spotted in Portstewart:

OM-1, probably 50mm Zuiko; HP5+ in Ilfotec HC; Foma 133 paper, toned in home-brew thiourea.
Cropped from 35mm as there is someone's leg just out of shot on the right.  And a big wheelie bin thing...both of which are somewhat distracting.  Anyway, portraits suit the square.  

Well, she's my little star, and she's on film, so that's good enough for me.  Update on the health issues she's been having lately: the rheumatologist thinks that her recent bouts of sickness wasn't a reaction to her meds per se, but more a result of her lowered immune system, which is a known side-effect of the meds.  So there isn't a lot we can do, it seems, other than a few tweaks here and there - go back to wearing a mask when on trains/buses, be more rigorous about washing hands and perhaps a few dietary improvements.  It wasn't the answer we were looking for but What can you do?  She's on the buses to and from campus pretty much every day, not to mention being in close proximity to other students from all corners of the world during lectures and so on.  The doc held out some hope that after the year she's had her immune system is bound to strengthen, so perhaps better days lie ahead.  

Here’s the original, leg&bin included:

Obviously I was too focussed (literally!) on the subject in front of me to notice anything else

Prime location

Meanwhile down in Portstewart every available plot looking over the Bay is being built on.  All the old 1930s style bungalows are being replaced by glass-and-concrete mansions, or apartments, or both.  Naturally the ones right by the seashore are the most desirable, as no-one is ever going to build in front of you.  Unless they do like Monaco and make a new seashore/artificial island - but I doubt that's ever going to happen here.

OM-1/135mm; HP5+ on Adox MCC paper

OK so the view here is somewhat compressed by the 135mm lens but still, it's beginning to look a tad over-developed.  There ain't much privacy to these new glass-fronted builds, what with a busy seaside walk in front and neighbours all around, but that doesn't seem to bother the occupants too much - if there are any, that is. I always make a point of looking into the rooms as I walk by, just 'cos I can. Occasionally I see someone sitting reading a newspaper but most times I see no-one.  Are they all hiding?  A lot of these are second homes/holiday apartments so perhaps the owners are somewhere else 90% of the time.  Seems a shame.  Holiday times and weekends the place is heaving - the cafes full and the restaurants queued out onto the pavement.  But during a normal school week it's a different story.  Seems to be happening all over the UK from what I read - the South of England and Cornwall in particular has gone completely mad by the sound of it.  Residents in Wales complain about the number of second homes, which effectively means locals can barely afford to live in their own towns any more, young people can't get on the property market as they are being priced out by outside money.   Some Councils are doubling the property taxes for second homes but I doubt that will have much effect - if you can afford a few hundred thousand for a second home what's another few hundred a year?  I don't know what the answer is.  Actually I'm not even sure I know what the question is.

More Olympus troubles

In my last post I wrote about bringing an Olympus OM-10 back to life.  I've yet to put a film through it, but everything seems OK, so I'm hopeful.  The shot of the cows was taken on my OM-1.  Not the same OM-1 I had when I was young - that one parted company with me a long time ago, unfortunately.  That pain is slightly mitigated by the fact that it was fairly beat up and had a lot of desilvering of the prism that I understand is common with OM-1s.  The OM-1 I currently have I bought  about 10 years ago.  It was a not-terribly-expensive eBay purchase (around the £50 mark I think) and I sent it off to get cleaned, new light seals and a general check-up.  I was fortunate to hit upon Michael Spencer to do the work - he was absolutely first class, knocking out a small dent on the top plate and re-wiring it so that the meter runs on SR44 batteries, rather than the original (now unavailable) PX625 batteries.  Michael retired a few years ago, which is a pity, as there were a couple of issues with that last film that suggest all is not well with the camera.

The first thing I noticed was a light leak.  It happened intermittently, on a couple of frames near the beginning of the film and again towards the end:

You can see the vertical band towards the left of the first two frames

Then at the end of the film there was something weird happening with the framing:

The framing is off for the last two frames of the film.

Since I developed the film I've fired the shutter a few times at different speeds (with the back open) and everything seems fine, but obviously I'm only eye-balling it.  The wind-on mechanism appears as smooth as ever, so I don't know.  I'm hoping that both issues are due to lack of use and not something more serious. It's been a while since I picked up the OM1, to be honest.  I think I've too many 35mm cameras lying around (I know, it's a nice problem to have).  Maybe I need to be more structured about cycling through them to keep them all in working order. Anyway, I've loaded another film - a short one, just 15 frames - and I'll shoot that and see if either problem recurs.  If it does, I'll have to look into repair options.  

 

Cows (and bringing an Olympus OM-10 back to life)

This is, more or less, the view from our kitchen window these days.  The farmer has put half a dozen cows in the fields to graze, along with their calves.  The wee ones are cute but are heavily guarded by the mammas.  Even if my wife or I just step into the garden their eyes are on us, watching to see what we're up to.  Start to approach them and they stand up, turning to face us as if to say, 'Hold on there a minute, buddy - don't be coming any closer'.  Needless to say I stay this side of the post-and-wire fence around our garden.

OM1/135mm; HP5+ on Adox MCC paper

The 135mm Zuiko that this was taken on was a rare charity shop find.  It came with an OM-10 in a very nice brown leather hard case, which I think is an original Olympus item although the only identification mark on it is a 'Made in Japan' embossed stamp.  The OM-10 was in great cosmetic order - not a mark on it.  Unfortunately, though, it was locked up solid - the mirror was half-up/down, it didn't wind on, shutter release didn't work and the meter wasn't functional.  A new set of LR44 batteries didn't appear to have any effect but I took it home anyway.  I looked at a couple of YouTube videos and websites and thought, Well, I might as well have a tinker as there was nothing to lose.  I unscrewed the four small screws on the baseplate.  They are tiny, and look identical but in actual fact the middle screw is every so slightly longer than the others.  Took me a while to figure that out.  With the baseplate off I could see that I was well out of my depth - it's a mass of small gears and levers and I was only going to do more harm than good.  So I put the baseplate back on and turned my attention to the stuck mirror.  There's a slider on the right of the mirror assembly which seemed to reset it in the down position so I worked with that a few times and I thought it did seem to free up a little.  Or maybe it was my imagination - it was still a dead camera.  

The OM-10 has an electronically controlled shutter.  From what I read online there's a 'dead battery' fixed shutter speed of 1/60th of a second but as I said, this camera was locked solid, even with brand new batteries installed.  It was clear, however, that someone must have forced the meter on/off switch (which surrounds the rewind crank) past its normal range - it was loose and wasn't stopping at the On, Off or Check positions as I rotated it.   A YouTube video showed me how to take it apart - there's a big screw in the middle of the rewind crank, so it's pretty straightforward, although you have to open the back and jam something in the rewind mechanism to stop it turning in order to get purchase on the screw.  With the rewind crank off the meter dial just lifts away.  Ah-ha...I could see that the electrical contacts had been bent out of shape, which obviously wasn't going to help matters.  I straightened them out,  re-assembled the dial and rewind crank and guess what...it worked!  As I set the dial to the On position I heard a faint click and the whole camera sprang into life - everything seemed to reset itself.  The mirror returned to the normal position, I could fire the shutter (all the speeds seemed OK) and it wound on without a problem.  A quick look through the viewfinder confirmed all was well - even the Leds lit up as expected.  I was rather proud of myself - apart from changing light seals that's the first camera 'repair' I've attempted.

I've still a little work to do on the meter switch as although it makes contact as I turn it to the 'On' position it's still rotates freely and doesn't 'click' into the On, or Off positions as I'm sure it should.  However, I've seen from another YouTube video that there's a detent lever under the contacts which (a) sometimes falls out of place due to wear on the plastic rivets and (b) needs to be aligned with the rewind lever during re-assembly.  So when I get a spare hour I'll take the switch off again and see if I can get it re-assembled correctly.  In the meantime I've still got a fully functional OM-10, so I'm a happy boy.

Maisie

 Our tabby:

Maisie via the M6/90mm; FP4 on old Kentmere Fixed Grade paper
It's hard to see her markings in this very poor shot but she is rather lovely, with a thick striped coat and a tail like a lemur.

She's got PTSD at the minute, the poor thing.  We arrived back from the Liverpool-Belfast ferry early last Wednesday morning and discovered that she wasn't putting her hind leg down.  Uh-ho, we thought...has she twisted it climbing, or worse, broken it?  So, no rest for the wicked and all that - off we trotted to the vet.  We have local vets but most of them appear to have been taken over by some larger concern and seem more interested in ££ these days than anything else so we go to a country vet about 12 miles away in Garvagh.  Unfortunately she got very stressed - started panting like a dog, which is apparently a sign of respiratory distress, so the vet gave her some painkillers and antibiotics and suggested we bring her back the next day, when they would stand a better chance of x-raying her.  The good news is that after a close examination the following day the vet discovered she'd been bitten on the lower leg - a bite which was becoming infected.  So, more painkillers and antibiotics and thankfully she's been as right as rain since then.  

Well, physically she's OK, but she's not back to her usual self yet.  She's sticking very close to us (and our other cat) these days, and while she's normally a very affectionate cat anyway, she's looking for even more attention than usual.  There is one large feral cat that plagues us (her in particular) and we think what happened is that it has caught her on the leg as she was making a dash for the safety of home, via the cat-flap - just nipping her trailing leg, perhaps.  Hopefully she'll be back to her old self soon. 

Daffodil Garden

I had a walk around the Daffodil Garden in the University grounds last week.  One of the first PhDs at the New University of Ulster (as it was called back then when it opened in the late 1960s) was on daffodils.  This caused much merriment around the town - no doubt folk expected PhDs in astrophysics and what have you rather than flowers.  One of the legacies of the PhD was, however, a rather lovely garden which at one time had a wide variety of the aforementioned flower.  These days I think the garden has by and large been left to its own devices and as a result there wasn't the carpet of daffs that I remember a few years ago.  But it's still a rather lovely place to dander around, with or without a camera.  I had the M6 with me, with the 35mm lens and FP4+ loaded and snapped up the waterfall near the entrance, which was in full flood on account of all the recent rain:

Handheld around 1/15th of a second.  Yup, I know, should have used a tripod.  On Foma 133 paper.