What I've been up to lately

[melek]

Sorry to all for being out of touch.

Don't worry. No bad news. I've just been busy with work. Plus, I think that we'll be moving again, which is my 21st move overall and the fourth since 2011.

In the meantime, I was out shooting with this. It's my Yashica Electro 35 GT. It has a rubber push-on Yashica lens shade. I also added a soft release, because the shutter release travel is l-o-n-g.

Aside from that, I've been shoveling snow these past two days.

I also built a mini-computer, which is a gaming and Netflix box.



This uses AMD's new APU, which combines the CPU and video on a single chip. Prices for video cards are out of sight because of cryptocurrency miners.

What's everyone else been doing lately?

[Philip]

I retired from real work six months ago. But, being an academic, my office was stuffed (ahem: is stuffed) to the rafters with books and other paper. So they've let me keep my office for a while (until June) and I've been clewing up things in there. Most weeks I've been at the office three or four days. (My former co-workers laugh at me when they see me: "Hey. Still retired?" they ask.)

I'm making deliveries every couple of days to a second-hand-book store that one of my ex-students owns; he would like to take all my books, but there's no way.

I've been scanning old negatives. I'm substantially along. I'm doing it chronologically and behind me right now some June 1990 negatives are being done.

I'm taking more pictures with digital these days, primarily my Fuji X100T and my Olympus OM-D EM-1 (to which is usually attached a zoom nearly permanently at the 150 mm end for shooting birds out my back window). Right now, I have film in three different cameras but haven't been taking many film shots recently. (I have 35mm Ferrania P30 in my Lomo Belair 6x12 camera; out-dated Maco 127 in my Sawyer's 4x4 tlr; some Kodak Portra 120 in my Chinese Hongmei HM-1.)

And I'm still posting a couple of times a week to Flickr. I know -- I should be posting here, too! So here, randomly, is the last shot on the roll that was just scanning. It's Konica SR-G 100 film, shot in my Minolta X370 at sunset one day in June 1990. Thirty years ago, I never knew how bad was my main lens (the 50mm f/2.8 MD lens that Minolta offered as the kit lens back then). I have looked at thousands of now-scanned negatives I exposed with it. I can see that the faults I thought back then were my poor technique were actually often a poor lens! Everything from that Miinolta lens is softer than what I got some years later with cameras like that Yashica Electro, which had a beautifully sharp and contrasty lens. Ahh, sigh.

[Brazile]

Congratulations on your retirement, Philip. Cleaning out must seem like a daunting task, but it took years to fill up that office, so it's not surprising that it will take a few weeks to reverse the process.

Shame about the late discovery regarding the lens. I've tended to have the reverse experience: "wow. that lens was sharp, why can't I seem to repeat such now" that I suspect is mostly because of aging eyes.

Still, the memories you're finding must be a moving experience; I know that's how I've felt about some of the older stuff I've found as I try to archive the family's photographs.

Like you I should post more photos here. Ridiculous travel schedule this year has provided some interesting opportunities to shoot, but little time to process or organize. Perhaps when things settle down...

Robert

[Philip]

Thanks, Robert. And you are right about the wonderful discoveries going through old negatives. I'm taking my time at it partly because I am indexing each roll as I go. I do that in Picasa. Picasa is a kind of horse-drawn carriage, no longer distributed or supported by its developer (Google). But nothing has replaced it for me yet as an organiser and indexer. So I keep using it.

Recently, by the way, I finally let Picasa identify faces in my pictures. I had held off for years because I found that idea creepy. But now I have done it and I have -- as of this minute -- 1797 people identified! Picasa tells me there are 33,405 face unidentified in my pictures, too. They are almost all people in backgrounds; I never knew who they were, so I'm not likely ever to reduce that number by much. It's become a bit of fun, and a way to exercise my memory, every couple of days to look through the pictures Picasa wants me to say Yes or No to its question of whether it really is so-and-so. And on birthdays or, sadly, deaths, I very quickly find a lot of the pictures I have of someone.

[Julio1fer]

Philip, I empathize with your situation because I will be there in a few years. Your post was a reminder that it is high time for me to start pruning.

Mike, glad to see your new box. Impressive!

[PFMcFarland]

I wouldn't mind building my own computer, but these days the software end of the deal is what throws me for a loop. I've just switched from an XP Pro system to Win 10, and I can't say as I like the layouts. Nothing seems logical anymore.

Like Philip, I'm also going through many years of accumulation, though unfortunately it is all here in the apartment, not in a remote site like an office. So it's been a bit of a slog, finding things that may have been important to keep at one time, but have less and less significance as time passes. I've been "retired" for over 13 years now (another 1 1/2 to go till the official date), so you think I'd have figured out what to keep, and what to get rid of by now. I just find it hard to let go of useful stuff. But I went to an auction today, and watched as they sold off a collection of guns that had been owned by one man. It was over 150 items, and that was before they got to the parts, and ammo. And most of the guns were brand new, never shot. Kind of like some rabid Leica collectors I know. It made me think a lot about how I should get rid of my amassed photo gear (this will be the second time), but I have to do it in a way that will not impact my disability status. Unlike the last time I divested myself of a camera collection, this time around it's a whole different circumstance. But I'll figure it out.

Meanwhile, March is Nikon Rangefinder Month over on RFF (Rangefinder Forum), so I'm busy with the S2 and R2S every chance I get. Blooming weather though makes it hard to get that accomplished, though I'm glad I don't live further north this year. A wintry mix is coming the next three days. Yee-haw!

PF

[alexvaras]

Mike, Im computer engineering and I like more the Yashica XD, btw good job with the box, looks pretty cool.

You all talking about retirement makes me think Im the youngest (about 45), so retirement for my generation won't exist (at least for me) but I should start thinking in which country to get retired, not Russia I tell you, Mike, I heard HK is a good place for that, isn't it? Im pretty sure HK will be my next destination so be ready for me XD

Phil, keep going to your office every week, they will get use to your visits long way before they think why he keeps coming? Don't forget to bring them some sweet as 'bribes'

For myself, bad week indeed, everything I tried failed, Ikoflex front lens destroyed by dog, new bellows for Isolette with more holes than the original one, Autocord level ring broken (Yes James, sorry) due excess of tighten when screwing it back to helicoid (after cleaning and new artic grease for Moscow weather) and when I took back the 2,8cm tessar from service, I wanted to open and clean again the lenses I discovered it broken in one edge, the guy said he checked and everything was fine when it closed it.

So better I stop doing anything and I will wait something good happens and I will start over

So for Ikoflex I have already a front lens, bellows I will buy film change bag and I will do them myself, Autocord focus leveller I already measured it and I will go to a 3D company to make a metal version of them, lets see how much will it be. About the 2,8cm tessar, I need to shoot with it and see how big is the distortion whatever I will find out. But no fix on this. Lets see if March comes this way of it was just a bad week.

[Bennybee]

Congratulations with your retirement Philip. Try to enjoy it and then tell me how you do that.
I retired a year ago myself, but haven't adapted yet. At least I have now reached the point where I would not want to go back to the office, but only because things have changed there a lot for the worst. I still waste my time away staring at the wall and browsing on my tablet. I do some reading too. But basically I have no energy for any hobby like photography or picking up my guitar again. I think I forgot most of the chords by now. I could post a bit more here but I don't.... So hopefully you will find meaningful things to do, like emptying your office

[Philip]

Benny, good luck with it. It's a huge adjustment. And I'm not ready to say I've adjusted yet. I'll know better in a few months when I stop going to the office.

But a few months ago, at some function, I fell into conversation with two other guys who had retired. I had known both of them in our work lives and they were both retired for a long time now, one for six or eight years and the other for almost fifteen. They both said the most important thing in retirement for their mental health was having something creative to spend their time at. One had been a banjo player all his life and continued to do it, now nearly eighty years old and still gigging with a band. The other took up writing before he retired because he'd become critically ill with a rare disease, and he wrote a book about it; he discovered he could write enough to take an early retirement. When we were speaking, he'd just published his third book, this one being a novel.

No matter what we do while working, we are always creative -- producing things, solving things, and so on. And we're proud of our work. Finding the right thing in retirement to do and to be proud of, or happy with, seems to be the key.

Maybe photography or the guitar are not the right creative outlets for you. There are lots of ways to be creative anew. I have another friend who quit his high-paying government job in his late fifties, taking a retirement package, so that he could become a baker again at a small downtown bakery. Five or six years later, he's happier than he'd been since he was in his twenties (when he'd been a baker for a few months).

How about writing your memoirs? Or sitting with a young relative or friend for a couple of hours each week telling them your memoirs on tape?

But I like your photographs, so I'd hate to see you leave that behind! I am scanning all my old negatives and that is taking a long time. It feels completely fresh, looking at all these old negatives, the vast majority being pretty poor shots, but all of which I have a new view of now. It feels very creative.

Good luck!

Philip

[PFMcFarland]

I've got some ideas for you too, Benny. Volunteer! There are plenty of organizations that can use folks with lots of free time on their hands. And it just feels so good to do it. It kept me going through that rough period of feeling like I had no more usefulness to anyone. After six years of it though I finally was ready to sit back, and concentrate on what I really wanted to do...photography!

PF