Camera Talk

With little else constructive to do during lockdown, I have been trawling through my old negative files, looking for interesting images that I may not yet have scanned. I found these: They were taken in 1963 during my wild, irresponsible youthful days, while we were on a road trip, and saw great clouds of black smoke not far from the road we were on. We stopped to investigate, and found that the fire was piles of cut fodder and some rubbish that had been set alight in a field. The camera, to the best of my remembrance, was a Rikoh 500 f2.8 and the film was Kodak Tri-X. The Rikoh 500 was also made with a f1.8 Rikenon lens. The negatives have not fared well and are badly scratched. I don't recall what happened to my original Ricoh 500 - it was probably part exchanged for my next camera, a Minolta SRT101, which was the predecessor to my Nikon F.






Rikoh 500 f2.8

Please, more! More!
I enjoyed the story and photos.

I saw those on Flickr and was reminded about how many times trains have set the right-of-way on fire either by throwing sparks out the stack, or from something dragging.

PF

You have probably hit the nail on the head, Phil. When these were taken, the line was mostly steam operated. Note the absence of overhead wires.

GrahamS wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 09, 2021 6:33 am

You have probably hit the nail on the head, Phil. When these were taken, the line was mostly steam operated. Note the absence of overhead wires.

Diesels do it too, Graham. We've had a few fires around here that were started by the trains during dry spells.

PF

One of the greatest objections to the use of the line that runs through the Kruger National Park in SA, by the luxury steam hauled Rovos Rail train is the risk to the habitat from fires started by the steam locomotives.

These days, you couldn't get within a half mile of a fire scene. These certainly speak to a different era.

Very impressive pictures. I like the composition in the third picture.

You got really close to the fire.