I’m back in Texas (and have been for a couple of weeks). Costa Rica programming will continue for awhile (11 more days, at least), but since this is the last week in the current office, I’m going to try to share some random pictures from this nondescript office park before we move to a different—but still nondescript—office park.
And the sunrise was just amazing this morning.
Equifax hired some new linkage people in Costa Rica and sent me down to train them again, this time for 12 days. I arrived Sunday the 15th of February and returned to Dallas on February 27.
It was a good trip: the training went well; I stayed in a different hotel in a classy neighborhood and with restaurants nearby; I had a weekend to myself—more or less—that I could spend exploring around the hotel and doing whatever; the food was good, people friendly/smart/eager, and the weather lovely. But it was still a work trip. I put in just under 100 hours in those 12 days and since I started at 7am and went until at least 4pm, I only got out to see the San Jose or the country a couple of times.
I don’t have pictures from corresponding dates, but the plan here is to share pictures from the trip for the next 12 days: as the days and dates in March correspond to the days/dates in February, this seems like a good-enough plan.
So. One month ago today, I boarded a plane at DFW in the late afternoon and flew direct to San Jose. I sat in a middle seat and arrived after sunset, and my confidence in shooting strangers is low, so shooting options were a bit limited.
Petzval Week
Season 3, episode 6: Flowers by Petzval Continue reading “Flowers by Petzval”
Petzval Week
Season 3, episode 5
You’ll be happy to know that I did more with the testing than just shoot from the car window.
I also shot in the yard on the way from the garage to the house, and in the house, near where I keep the briefcase. There are no limits to how far I’ll go in the quests for lens tests…
Don’t do what I did… or maybe do, now that you know what can happen.
Petzval Week
Behind the scenes: Fun with Curled Film
Film curls.
Some film curls more than others.
Some film rolls up along its length as if it misses being stuffed into the canister. This one can be a bit of a bother to scan, but it’s usually easy enough.
Other film winds itself up in a spiral. This one can be tough to scan, but patience tends to win, and with decent results.
In my (limited) experience, many rolls of film tend to curl along the width. This is a nightmare to scan with the Lomography Digitaliza that I use as a film holder in the scanner.
I found a solution that works, sometimes, but I don’t recommend it:
Yes, those are teeth marks.
And, yes, they helped flatten this 5-frame strip of film enough to stay in the holder long enough to go through the Scan-O-Matic 7000 mk II.
But they also left quite interesting marks on (and through) the film base, and did fun things to the emulsion, as you can see above and in an image I shared as part of the flare tests. (An aside: emulsion tastes a bit funny. You should take my word for it and avoid trying some for yourself.)
This has in it some possibilities, maybe, for experimentation… I think others have already mined these, but still, could be good times! Continue reading “Fun with Curled film!”
Petzval Week
Season 3, episode 4
The city is working on making the street corners wheelchair-friendly all up and down Highway 161. Allah knows why. Sure, there’s a train station nearby, and there are a bunch of office parks and light industrial and shopping around, but there are no sidewalks to connect the corners… Cities function/plan in mysterious ways. Continue reading “Steet Photography-ish with the Petzval”
Petzval Week
Behind the scenes: Fun with Flare
Quite accidentally, I ended up with a couple of shots that demonstrate the flare characteristics of the Petzval on film (aka full frame).
This, of course, is something most competent lens testers would do as a matter of course. But I’m not a lens tester: I’m a (hack) photographer.
I don’t test. I shoot.
The blue and black marks in the bottom third and the swirls in the upper right are unrelated…
