Albuquerque is having fine Fall weather.  Daytime temperatures are in the 50s, while the nights are cold enough to cause the mulberry trees to lose all their leaves.  I spent the week walking around with my Olympus  Pen-FT, visiting the botanical garden, the riverside forest and the Rio Grande Nature Center.

 I shot some Arista 200 in the Leica IIIa with the Elmar 3.5/50mm for the purpose of comparison with the images I have been getting from my half-frame Olympus Pen-FT.  At the size I normally show on-screen I think there is little difference, but at larger sizes the full-frame images from the Leica do show some better sharpness and finer grain which allow considerably more enlargement.

On a bike ride along the Bosque trail north of Central Ave. I came across the firetruck and a group of firefighter recruits being trained in the use of portable pumps for fighting fires in the riverside forest.

Some cloudy days are bringing nice light to both Old Town and the Bosque.

 

Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas la están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.

Romance Sonámbulo
Federico García Lorca (1928)

The Olympus Infinity Stylus (mju) metering system has an uncanny ability to get the exposure right under any condition of lighting.  

This was my fourth roll of color film in my current Unicolor C-41 kit.  I was pleased to see that the kit is mostly performing as it should.  I decided to see how it would work at a lower temperature and longer time, so I processed for six minutes at 95F.  That seemed about right,  so I'm going to stick with that time and temp, adding 2% on the time for each subsequent roll.  The normally recommended developing time of just 3.5 minutes at 102F is a little too short for comfort, and I'm thinking that a lower temp will also be a little gentler on the emulsion.

The cottonwood forest along the river is bursting with life in June.  The Yerba Mansa is particularly impressive this year and I am seeing more varieties of wildflowers than I recall in past years.  Even though it has been warm and rather wet this Spring, there are no mosquitoes in the bosque; that makes riverside walks more pleasant, but may not bode well for the ecosystem.

Cottonwoods

Yerba Mansa

Siberian Elm

Pale Evening Primrose

Sandbells

I have had poor luck with my C-41 color processing for some time compared with the results I was getting initially when I started with it a few years ago.  I am seeing quite a bit of color shifting and red staining.  Both the Unicolor and Cinestill kits are giving me only half the number of rolls before exhaustion that I was getting before.

The cottonwood forest beside the river seems to be in a state of sleep this time of year.

Left to my own devices I would likely not have acquired my Nikon FE.  It was a generous gift from an on line photographer friend.  The design and construction of the camera are right up there with Leica in regard to quality.  That becomes immediately apparent when you pick up the camera and crank the winding lever; the movement is extraordinarily smooth.  And, there is a vast number of Nikon lenses available to the camera.  My resolve to work more with the FE was further bolstered recently when I figured out that I could use my nice old 105mm Nikkor-P Auto f2.5 lens on the FE by just flipping up a tab on the lens mount.  So, I put aside a couple other projects, loaded some TMAX 100 in the camera, and took a stroll through the neighborhood.









With half the roll of TMAX remaining the next day I mounted the Nikkor 1.8/50mm and took a walk beside the river.  That turned out to be a less than fair trial for the camera and lens as I had Margaret's very active dog, Roxie, tethered to one arm.  So, the equipment performed rather better than I did.  Still, I saw a lot of nice subjects that I'll get back to again soon.  The cottonwood forest is carpeted now with a dense layer of dry leaves.  The river this time of year is full of migrating bird life.  There were five Sandhill Cranes on a nearby sandbar when we stepped out of the trees.  Two raucous ravens across the river drew my attention to a Bald Eagle perched high in a cottonwood's bare branches.





I processed this roll of TMAX in HC-110, dilution H.  That formula uses half the dilution-B concentrate of developer and requires twice the time to develop.  The outcome is a bit less contrast than one gets from dilution-B.  It worked as expected, though better in some instances than others.  I'm thinking that for the next roll of TMAX I'll try going back to dilution-B with a developing time of six minutes at 20C rather than the seven I have been using lately.  The guides I always consult for this sort of thing are the HC-110 Developer Resource Page and the Massive Dev Chart.

PT exercises, hardware and meds didn't seem to be doing much for my recovery.  However, a few days after starting to ride my bike, I finally seem to be making some progress.  That's good news for my photography as it is mostly a byproduct of walking around and recording what I come across.


Yesterday, I took a long, slow walk along the river and finished off a roll of Kentmere 100 in the Kodak Signet 35.  I saw a coyote slinking through the shadows and soon afterward a pair of noisy young Cooper's Hawks.  They seemed like good omens.