Well, today I decided to give my Graflex Pacemaker 23 Speed Graphic camera a whirl. The thing with the older all manual cameras is it requires you to slow down and actually think about everything you’re doing. Well, needless to say, I was rushed a bit and missed a couple quite vital things today. I did manage to get a couple digital shots, but the black & white is questionable. But I did stumble on a new thing growing out of the Thames River.
Another 90+ degree humid summer day was on tap, so like yesterday, I headed out in the morning for my walk. Today I decided to bring along my new to me Graflex Pacemaker 23 Speed Graphic with one film holder loaded. That holds a whopping two frames of 2 1/4″ x 3 1/4″ film (circa 1979 Kodak Tri-X Pan 4164). So I walked around looking for angles with the medium format camera while listening in on the scanner. While walking NR-2 reported in that they were south of MP12 in Norwich. OK, I’d better decide on a spot so I can set up. I picked a spot overlooking Mill Cove, grabbed my tripod and mounted the speed on it. 20D came out to meter the scene (it’s another completely manual camera). It looked pretty cool there, so I decided to take a shot of it, trying to get the image on the ground glass after I’ve focused it.
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OK, stepping back a bit here – to focus one of these old girls, you need to lock the shutter open so the image is projected on the ground glass which is at the same location the film would be when loaded. Keep this in mind – the shutter’s locked open as you can see above.
I decided that I hadn’t heard NR-2 blowing for Dow Chemical yet, and I had a couple minutes to relocate the camera – I wanted another angle. So I moved to that spot, set things up and was ready to go. Just then NR-2 sounded for Dow to the north – that gave me less than a minute to get ready. So I loaded the film cassette, and removed the dark slide, exposing the film. Then it dawned on me – I left the shutter open! Crap…well, at least I’ve got one more frame. So the slide goes back in, pull the cartridge out, put it back in, shut the shutter and re-cock it so it’s ready for the next exposure. Then I pull the dark slide and I’m ready to go. A moment later, NR-2 pulls onto the causeway, and as I’m watching in the wire loop viewfinder, I hit the shutter trigger at the moment I want. Perfect! After that, I grab the 20D with the telephoto on it, and snap a couple run-of-the-mill shots of NR-2 across the causeway.
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Just then something else dawns on me – did I put the aperture where I wanted it? I had figured the exposure on an f/11 aperture. Walking over to the camera confirmed my fears – I still had it set wide open at f/3.5 – about a 4 stop difference! Crap…talk about overexposed! Well, I might be able to salvage something – I’m doing the processing, so I might be able to make up for it in the developer stage. We’ll see over the weekend (if I can get the chemicals tomorrow).
Somewhat disappointed, I packed up my gear and headed back to the car, all the time sweating my ass off. I loaded up, and made my way south. On the scanner, NR-2 was heading for Tilcon, and I was way out of position to get ahead of them, so I figured I’d head back to the office. Something told me, however, to take Thames Street back and pull into the parking lot on the Thames. As I got to the lot I looked up at the drawbridge to the north. Something new caught my eye – a large grey piece of steel truss. But it was vertical, and mounted to the eastern pier of the drawbridge. It looks like they had placed the first piece of the east tower! So I headed to the other parking lot right at the bridge and got a few shots. Here’s two, but I’ve sent shots off to the major railfan magazines for possible publication, so you won’t see those here.
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Pretty cool seeing some actual visible progress on the project. Hopefully they’re still on target to replace the span in June of 2008. We’ll see… But it did kind of make up for my screw up with the Graflex.
That’s it for today, thanks for looking!
Tom
