Hydramatic Drive

 

Fuji X-E1 on 800 ISO b+w mode

My grandmother often spoke of “la purga de San Benito,” or Saint Benedict’s purge. This was a magical potion that instantly cured all and any diseases.

Today I listened to two elderly local photographers with sophisticated digital cameras swinging around their necks talking about cameras with numbers and letters that once would have made me think they were talking of the latest Jaguar from England, a sort of Mark 3.8. One of the photographers mentioned how one of their colleagues had sent an almost one year old Canon for servicing to the Canon works. They (the Canon works) called the photographer to complain of the fact that the camera being serviced had taken over 900,000 exposures. It seems, I later found out, that an application can be downloaded from the net that will inform the curious photographer of such relevant facts as how many shutter pressings have happened. A soon to be announced app-mark 2 will inform you if the camera was in horizontal or vertical mode and even indicate how many times the camera’s shutter has been set to bulb or self-timer. I can almost imagine that app-mark 3 will know what you had for breakfast.

Leica IIIF Kodak T-Max pushed to 800 IS0

 I was positively struck by the chatter and banter between the two photographers and a third man, the camera expert/associate. One of the photographers then showed us how his camera could take on the spot moving panoramas. Since his camera was a Mark2 improvement over my Mark1 I knew that somehow I could also perform this hitherto impossible operation. But then another of the photographer asked if this operation could be performed in a vertical sweep. We quickly found out that it was the case. And not only that but the sweep could be from left to right, right to left, up to down and down to up.

Driving home I attempted to figure how any human could have taken over 900,000 pictures in less than a year.

I felt over-the-top obsolete -an old man who should hang his cameras behind the door permanently. Trying to feel a bit in an “I-can-show-you-something-that-will-amaze-you-mode” I produced a picture in which my reflection in the mirror might surprise these two of their ignorance. This was not to be, “That’s a Leica IIIF” one said with complete assurance.

Driving home I felt humbled by two old men much younger than this one who had gone from one system to another without a murmur of complaint. In fact when I got home I went up to the bedroom and shot a panorama with Rosemary in bed and told her, “Look what this camera can do.” She was impressed.

But I am still trying to get and idea of what, symbolically I might describe as figuring how the bicycle will do what the tricycle cannot.

I am not sure that in my time there was as much emphasis on the equipment and its variations and capabilities as now without going beyond the description of the sharpness of the image or the veracity of colour.

Fuji X-E1 on 800 ISO colour negative mode

 I have yet to listen to someone tell me that the image that they are showing me is an image free of equipment background clatter.

It seems that these new cameras, superseded in mere months, are an eternal chain of purgas de San Benito.

Last night as Rosemary was watching Downton Abbey with Plata the cat nestled in her lap and I was removing the decorations from the Christmas tree I spotted my opportunity. It is one that heretofore I would have kept in the realm of my mental sensor (I am not sure of its measurement in megapixels). I might at one time come out with my Nikon, or the Pentax and looked for an exposure meter. By the time I was ready the cat would have been long gone.

I picked up my Fuji X-E1 and took three exposures on automatic while bracketing to make sure I had shadow detail.

So the Fuji X-E1 is convenient and there when you need it. The biggest fish is the one that got away, but the best picture is the one that didn’t. And yet I have yet to find out what it is that the camera can do that the other many cameras I own cannot.

I am not talking of mechanical capabilities but of compositional capabilities. As an example a Hasselblad (and I have never owned one for that reason) forces the photographer to think in a square. A camera with single focal length lenses force the photographer to adapt to 35mm or 28 mm or 50 or 85. The moment you have a zoom lens you might find excellence at 31.7. That to me feels odd. Which is why I never owned a zoom lens?

Nikon FM-2 Fuji Superia 800

 One of the photographers shoots sports with extremely heavy Nikons and huge lenses. He told me that he recently had gone to San Francisco with his wife and he did not want to go with all that equipment. He gave me a long list of it and I am sure he would have driven to San Francisco with that load. So he went to San Francisco with his Fuji X-E2 and a couple of lenses including the very same zoom I, too own.

But no mention was made of any picture taken. It’s four on the floor with hydramatic and an overhead camshaft all the way.

It seems to me that this is a personal journey of mine to find out how my Fuji X-E1 will point me in a direction not taken before. It could be exciting. 

The pictures here of Bronwen are examples on how a digital camera and a film camera cope with in a situation with mixed hot lights and window lighting. I believe I could have set the Fuji X-E1 to a tungsten white balance and colour fidelity would have improved. I am a work in progress.

Fuji X-E1 800 ISO

Above image cropped