It was a nice weekend. It did some raining so I got some photography projects worked on. First I picked up a lens hood on eBay for the Ricoh Diacord. A cute little Rollei lens hood. Got it for $22.50 which was a really good price. They usually go from between $35 to $40.

I finished up the second roll through the Diacord. I really like shooting with it. I carry it with me all the time. I sent the rolls off to a different lab. I've been sending my stuff off to Panda Lab in Seattle but they don't process C-41 sheet film. A requirement since I want to start shooting 4x5 and 5x7 color film. A comment over at APUG pointed me to one of their sponsors: Praus Photo Lab. Nice web site. The owner is actually a photographer. A good sign. And they do up to 5x7 C-41 and E-6 in addition to black and white. They're in Rochester, NY. Another good sign. I'm most interested in how this works out since I have a box of 10 sheets of 4x5 Kodak Portra 160NC and 5 rolls of the same in 120 on the way.

My Salut-S that I sent off to Arax is due back so I finally got it's back fixed and then put a new seal in the other back. Good timing because the Salut-S arrived today. Zoe had expressed interest in it so I gave it to her. A boyfriend she had too many years ago had a Hasselblad and she always like looking at the world through that big ground glass. Took her first picture with it. I couldn't find her Luna Pro and my Luna Pro has dead batteries and my Weston Master V died and needs rebulding so I estimated the exposure with my calibrated eyeballs. Later I remembered I did have one meter that worked — my Soligor spot meter. I went back and checked the exposure and I had guessed right. I did some shooting with the spot meter this afternoon. I really like using it. Too bad it's as big as my Zorki.

I did some more work on the 4x5 Polaroid. I went up to Blaine's and he helped me get the lens cells out of the shutter but we couldn't get the shutter off the lens board. Must be swollen wood. I thought I would take a look inside and see if there was something obvious as to why the slow speeds didn't work.

I looked. I fiddled. I quickly closed it up. Carol Miller will CLA it for $50. I took off the lens board on the Polaroid to start filing clearance for the lens.

I started a thread at APUG on the 4x5 Polaroid project. A responder pointed out that the original lens wasn't a 127mm lens that I thought but a 114mm lens and the rangefinder wouldn't work. After a night of despair I received an email from someone who did convert one like mine with a 127mm lens and gave me some advice and pointed me to a thread on photo.net that showed pictures. I'm encouraged. But it gets worse. One of the posts on that photo.net thread (scroll down to Daisuke Nakabayashi) mentioned a 4x5 pinhole camera he made with a 4x5 Graflex bag mag. And he linked to pictures.

Too cool! Another project! I even have a bag mag (scroll down). It holds 12 sheets of 4x5 sheet film. I even have a shutter I can use for the pinhole that I already have. It's a Compur shutter off a pre-Anniversary Speed Graphic that I haven't used in years. All speeds even work.

I took the Compur shutter off the board and on the back was scratched: FAV 10/11/37. A little birch plywood to hold the shutter with a .0181 inch dia. pinhole, and a 4.7 focal length, will give an angle of view equivalent to a 26mm lens (on 35mm.) Another project to add on that ever growing list.