More 4x5 KAP Updates

I think my 4x5 KAP camera is getting close to its final form. There are only a few tweaks left, and most of them are minor. Back in April I'd posted a tick-list of items to address. Here's how they stand:

• Test the lens against a USAF resolution target: Done. f/16-f/22 is the sweet spot.
• Chrono the shutter: Done. I'm a full stop off at every setting. Lens needs a CLA.
• Replace eyebolts in the Picavet with pulleys: Done. I need to modify the pulley blocks, but the new Picavet works GREAT.
• Replace the Picavet with a Gent-X geometry: Done. But the wide arm is still too wide. Cut down the 12" x 4" cross to a 10" x 4" cross.
• Positive locking on all pivot axes: Mostly done. I don't like the thumb screws on the tilt axis, but they work.
• Add new holes to allow for plan rotation: NOT DONE.
• Light trap for the exposed edge of the film holder: Done. Works like a champ.

So really the only thing left is the extra set of mounting holes to allow for plan rotation. This is a must, and has not even been started. Meanwhile, here's how things look now:

The light trap covers the exposed edge of the film holder, and keeps stray light from entering through the dark slide trap. Most of my film holders are ok, but at least one has a slight leak. No biggie on the ground, but in the air where the sun's shining on the back of the camera all day, it's an issue. No more!

The vertical sight guide makes placing the horizon in the shot very straightforward. There are lines for 1/3 points in the frame, as well as a line for the center and outer edges of the frame. In tests it looks like a well-balanced Picavet can hit the horizon to within a few degrees.

The horizontal sight guide works similarly, and lets you place the scene on the frame. There's a second one on the bottom of the camera, so with the kite line tethered you can walk out and double-check the camera is pointing the right way.

For the moment the success of this is a little hit-and-miss. The camera likes to weathervane in the wind, and in my test flights it would tick-tock between pointing where the line wanted to point it (line tension high) to where the wind wanted to blow the kite (line tension low). This is exacerbated by the wind here, which changes compass heading depending on altitude. The kite and the camera rarely want to point in the same direction. I need to fix this with some sort of vane system like a KAPFeather or something similar.


Unfortunately the biggest change of all really can't be seen in a photograph. I changed films. Up until now I've been using Kodak 100TMX, the ISO 100 TMax film. I switched to 400TMY-2, the reformulated ISO 400 TMax film. This bought two stops of light, and the film has almost the same sharpness and resolution as 100TMX. Since I use this camera under Sunny-16 conditions, this meant I got to shoot at 1/250, f/22, right in the lens's sweet spot. The results speak for themselves:

But the results also point out another change I need to make to the camera:

I need a filter holder! A fellow KAPer from France pointed out that I could get a lot more differentiation between the water and the land if I'd put a blue filter in front of the lens. I can't really do that since my B&W filters are all Wratten gels, and the wind would wreak havoc on them. But an internal filter holder for Wratten gels is entirely doable, and wouldn't present any more surface area for the wind.


All in all I'm still very very pleased. My list of things to do isn't empty, but it's a lot shorter. And the new things I'm coming up with are niceties, not show-stoppers. The camera itself is ready for regular use now. Next time I go out to do KAP, it's coming with me.

So what's next? Two new cameras are starting to take shape in the design department. The first is a 35mm spin panorama camera. The second? A medium format multi-shot film camera designed specifically for KAP.

Tom

A Really Nice Break

I took a vacation. Strange, but true! We threw our stuff in the car, rented a cabin at Volcanoes National Park, and moved in for six days. No cell phone, no email, no computer, no nuthin'.

It was GREAT!

I packed my KAP bag, but except for using my camera, the rest of the gear went almost entirely unused. Volcanoes National Park doesn't allow kite flying inside its borders, so I never got to do KAP while we were there. We drove down to Kapoho to swim in one of the hot pools there, but I didn't fly there, either. Because of space constraints I also couldn't bring my Bender 4x5 camera, either. Photographically it was an odd trip. I wound up using my A650 almost exclusively. A far cry from my normal monorail-toting, KAP-flying, gear-heavy self. At one point I even figured this out, and quit carrying the KAP gear with me. I stuffed a little camera in my jacket pocket, grabbed my tripod, and went a' walkin'.

The view of the eruption in Halema`uma`u was outstanding. The only other time I'd gone to the park to see it, the wind was iffy and the gases were collecting at the crater. It made for muddy pictures and burning eyes. Not this time! The weather was unbelievable.

Some of the trails were closed, like the trail across Kilauea Crater, which I've done with the kids numerous times. Still, Kilauea Iki was open and we spent several hours down there doing photography. My older daughter inherited my old KAP camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5600. She's developing a good eye, and in time is going to become a really good photographer. My son's camera really isn't made for this kind of thing, so my wife and I gave him our Coolpix 950, our first digital camera. It's dinky by modern standards, but it was built early on in the age of the digital camera when people thought they should be built like tanks. Perfect! We had a blast, and while they were busy doing their thing I was able to re-visit shots I'd attempted before. The fern shot is one I'd attempted, and failed at, a number of times. This time it worked.

We went on a new trail this time, Kipuka Puaulu. It was beautiful. Kipukas are forested cinder cones that get cut off by a subsequent lava flow. This isolates the flora on the cinder cone, making for a really neat natural biological laboratory. Kipuka forests tend to be interesting places to visit because they essentially become self-sufficient environments. Animals and insects can move in and out, but the plants tend to be stuck at that point. Kipuka Puaulu has a nice mix of koa, ohia, and other trees, along with tree ferns, flowers, and all sorts of other stuff. Great place to go if you're in the park.

It was my first time playing with IR in the park. The Canon A650 IS isn't the best camera for IR, but it's workable if the wind isn't blowing too hard and the vegetation is mostly sitting still. Because of the contrast between vegetation and fresh lava, it made for some interesting views. In the end it helped make the fern shot work because the vegetation tends to blend in with the rock when shot in visible light. In the IR it worked.

We came back bruised, cut, a little beat up, and utterly exhausted. Just the way a vacation should be! Can't wait for the next one.

Tom

Light at the End of the Tunnel

One more weekend without even pulling out a camera: a photographic dry well. I did get my kite up at Mahukona, but the offshore wind was so shifty, it wasn't worth risking total loss of my gear. So the kite came right back down, the KAP bag went right back in my Jeep, and we went right on our merry way.

Earlier that day I stopped at a place I've heard described as "Whistling Canyon". In reality it's a gulch, eroded out by water flowing off of Kohala. But the shape is closer to a box canyon, so the naming makes sense. The canyon faces 90 degrees to the Tradewinds, and it really does whistle. The disconcerting part was the edge, which is completely vertical. I've grown used to tall cliffs, but usually they have some sort of slope on them, often with trees. If you fall it'll hurt, and it'll hurt bad, but there's at least a 1% chance of survival. At Whistling Canyon, the cliff face is vertical rock. There's nothing to stop you for several hundred feet. I was more cautious than usual. It was a great view, but in the end I couldn't work out any good angles, but I plan to go back when the water's flowing to see if there's a way to get in front of the waterfall. That would be pretty.

Toward the end of the weekend I remembered I had four sheets of TMX from a previous shoot. DOH! I didn't get around to developing them, but I hope to get those done tonight. In the meanwhile I found some stuff in town to photograph, so I'm planning to spend my lunch hour walking around with my 4x5 and my last sheets of TMX. With any luck I'll have at least six sheets to develop tonight, and some empty film holders to load up.

Next week I'll be spending a fair bit of time on the other side of the island, doing photography among other things. Since the 4x5 KAP camera clearly needed something faster than TMX which is an ISO 100 film, I ordered a box of improved TMY. It's an ISO 400 film with better grain structure than the older TMY formula, and only slightly less sharpness than TMX. Perfect for aerial 4x5, and it can't hurt on the ground, either. Since I can't image the grain on my TMX negatives with the scanner I'm using, I'm not taking much of a hit in order to get two stops improvement in speed.

In order to make the aerial 4x5 work I also need to rebuild the shutter on my 150mm lens. I've got some good instructions on how to do this, but it'll be my first time. All the symptoms point toward a dirty clockwork mechanism. This makes sense considering that shutter had its flash sync socket ripped out at some point in the past, so dust and other contaminants can get inside. I'll be fixing the hole in the side of the shutter as part of the repair, so hopefully this won't happen again.

Lots to prepare before I can go, but I'm looking forward to the trip. There hasn't been this much photographic possibility in front of me in ages. It's the light at the end of the tunnel.

Tom

A Flickr Group Search

A few days ago I was chatting with someone online, and they kept going idle. I finally asked what they were up to. "I'm doing a Flickr group search," they said. Which of course begged the question, "What's the search?" But like any online search, the answer is always too nebulous to describe. One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to... well... that's interesting!

For some reason today I got to thinking about Lowell Handler's book, Twitch and Shout. I read it ages ago, right after being diagnosed with TS, myself. I won't go into my feelings about Mr. Handler or his writing, but one thing that did strike me is that he was able to capture, in still photographs, the dynamic nature of TS through a series of self-portraits.

Hey! TS photography!

The next logical step, of course, was to do a Flickr group search of my own. I tried "Tourette", "TS", and a whole host of others. No dice. The closest I came were discussions where people used the term, typically not in a very representative way. (Typical.) So I broadened the search and found a number of groups with an OCD bent.

Two, in particular, caught my eye. The first, OCD, is for photographs that express OCD, or were taken as part of an OCD compulsion. Fascinating! A number of the pictures really resonated with me. Some I couldn't look at because they were too close to intrusive thoughts I've had in the past. Some were just downright disturbing. But I'm not one to judge. I'd hate to see some of my intrusive thoughts in photographic form, posted on the web for all to see. And I'm guessing that's what some of the images were: externalization of intrusive thoughts.

The second group illustrated a problem that one of the discussions in the first group touched on: Just as TS is often brutally mis-portrayed, so is OCD. The second group, Organized OCD Style, opens its description with:

"Are you OCD or a wanabe OCD? Are you super organized and super clean?"

Setting aside my feelings about the first sentence, the second sentence is just plain wrong. Being super organized and super clean is more of an indicator for obsessive personality disorder than it is for obsessive compulsive disorder. One could argue for colloquial use of the term, but in reality all it's doing is spreading misconception about what OCD actually is. I wish people would do a little reading before using a term like that in an off-hand, and consequently incorrect fashion.

But I digress...

In the end I wound up shelving my searches and asking myself this question instead: Does having TS or OCD really have any affect my photography? I have to think the answer is no.

I don't think I go through any compulsive rituals when I do photography. Oh, there are the usual suspects like level horizons and gear checks, but that's to be expected. I don't know many photographers who don't sweat horizon lines at one point or another, and it's only natural to check your gear before heading off on an all-day hike, much less putting a camera up in the air.

As far as embracing either as a source of inspiration for photography, I really haven't. Years ago I tried to do something similar to Lowell Handler's self-portraits, but I have far fewer facial tics and the results were pretty lackluster. And I have no interest whatsoever in externalizing the intrusive thoughts I have. They're disturbing enough when left inside!

No, for the most part I do landscapes. Aerials, infrareds, panoramas, black and white, color, film, digital, I really don't discriminate. I just like to do landscapes.

So what Flickr group should I search for that would be just right for me?

"We found 27,111 groups about 'landscape'."

Oh dear...

Maybe I should just stick with the groups I'm already in. Better yet, I should turn off my computer, grab my camera, and head out the door.

Tom

Repacking and New Gear

Since replacing my KAP backpack with a new one, and after a few long-distance hikes, I've decided it's time for a new winder that fits better in the pack and does a better job of what I want.





This winder design is based off of one that's apparently heavily used in Germany and most of Europe. I got my basic design from Erick, a fellow KAPer. This is my fourth or fifth revision of his design.

I want to be able to carry 500' of #200 and #100 Dacron line. Right now I carry two separate spools of 1000' of each. Since I never let out more than 500', I'm carrying unnecessary weight. Also, only one winder fits in my pack. I typically carry the other one in my hand (awkward, to say the least!) This lets me carry two weights of line in less space.

The center handle is an inline skate wheel. I took one from my scrap bin. With my fist wrapped around it, my entire hand-size is just over 5.5" in diameter. That's a 6.5" diameter ID on the side plates, so my hand should fit fine.

My earlier designs had winding handles on both sides, an idea Erick, among others, didn't much approve of. Since using an extension cord winder as my kite line winder for over a year now, I have to agree. As long as the center handle is placed pretty close to the mid-point of the winder's thickness so the forces all line up, you only really need a winding handle on one side.

In this drawing the winding handle is a second inline skate wheel (though it's hard to see, tucked on the bottom as it is.) In the final build I'm more likely to make a 1.5" diameter Delrin knob, and press the bearings in. It'll be more compact that way. The winding knob will be removable so the whole winder sits flat for packing into my backpack.

I already use the center of my current winder for storing my two 3m lengths of fuzzy tail. This cavity is actually larger, despite the handle in the middle, so it should still be able to fit the two lengths of tail, and might be able to hold my ground strap as well.

The side plates, as designed, are 1/4" and 1/2" plywood. If the outer 1/4" plywood is not sufficiently strong, I can swap it out for a 1/2" plate. Either that or reinforce it with fiberglass cloth. (I'd rather not go that route.) In any case the wood will be painted and sanded before assembly.

The spacing between the plates will be tuned by changing the lengths of the spacers on the twelve bolts. I only want 500' of each kind of line, so I can tune the length of the spacers to make things fit juuuust right. Right now my winders are 3.75" tall. I'm hoping to get this to be slightly flatter, but I won't know for sure until I wind on the line.

The holes around the periphery of the plates is so that the line can be clipped off at a given length using a carabiner. This is the technique I use on my current winder, and it works great. The holes also cut down on weight, though the amount is negligible, when you get right down to it.

The twelve bolts that hold the whole thing together are drawn as button head cap screws. I'll probably swap those out for flat head screws in the final build so the two side plates will be completely flat. I'm accident prone enough as it is. Anything that could be described as a "knuckle buster" will probably be closer to "finger remover" for me. Safety first!

I'm also going through my backpack to remove as much weight as I possibly can. One change I need to make, given that I'm doing more KAP hiking these days, is to get all my chargers and store them in a separate bag I can leave in the car. It really makes no sense to carry around a bunch of charging gear when the nearest source of power is back in my Jeep! There's a lot of room for improvements in this area. I can probably shave several pounds without much effort.

It'll be a good change. And cleaning out my pack will make hiking a lot easier.

Tom

Dry Spell

It's not for lack of trying, but I hit a bit of a dry spell.

Friday I went out with a bunch of friends, and we went down Mana Road, a dirt road that runs from Mauna Kea back into Waimea, across the Mana Plain. It's beautiful, it's photogenic, it even goes through a koa forest. Despite doing enough photography to get a sun burn, and having my Chicken Little antenna ball eaten off by horses, I came home with almost no shots to show for it. I even managed to drop my radio and bend my antenna. I have a new one on order.





(Though I do still have one I need to work on. It might be the one real keeper from the weekend...)

The next day my son and I set out to go through a big lava tube near Kona, but we got sidetracked by Kiholo Bay and Wainanali`i Pond. It was gorgeous, and I did get several pictures of my son, but the wind was dismal. Despite flying a kite all the way back to the car, I only hooked my camera up once and almost crash-landed it. By the time we got back to the car my son was dehydrated and overheating. We passed on the lava tube and ate lunch somewhere with air conditioning and cold drinks. And salty food. And comfortable seats. Egads we were both messed up. (We went back to the lava tube in the afternoon.)

The winds died down and the house is socked in with volcanic gases again. It's about as photogenic as an exhaust pipe. The winds tomorrow look about as dismal, with VOG blowing in to town through two separate pathways. Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide and do photography.

During the Mana Road trip, I got to talking with one of my friends who's a fellow photographer. Getting a good weekend of shooting is like getting a fix, he said. Having material to play with for the rest of the week is wonderful. Coming up dry? Nothing worse.

I have one shot I need to work on, and no prospects of getting more tomorrow. I'm sunburned, frustrated, and stuck in a dry spell.

Tom