Last Saturday Zoe and I went to a going away party for a friend. Derek was one of the first people I met when I moved to Whidbey Island in 1987. He was with me when I started TestingTesting, a streaming music show from my living room, in 1998 and was with it until I had to stop it a couple of years ago. He's a very good singer/songwriter. He's moving to Kuai. He's visited there a few times and has decided to move there. Maybe having a new love waiting for him had something to do with it. It will be good for him but it will leave a hole in the community. The celebration was at the American Legion. All the local musicians showed up and jammed. We couldn't stay too long but long enough to listen to some good music and start thinking about starting TestingTesting again.

I took pictures. I brought a variety of gear but it was pretty dark so I had to use the FlashMaster™.

You can take all your auto TTL flashes sitting on top of a focal place shutter and throw them away. I will take a Vivitar 283 and a leaf shutter any day. Leaf shutters are synched at all speeds. This gives you many more options. Expose for what you want and let the flash fill in. The Ricoh Diacord has a leaf shutter. I will be trying out some outdoor fill flash tomorrow. I'm using Kodak Portra 160NC which is great for flash. It's been awhile since I've used flash like this so it will be interesting to see how it works out.

The shutter on my 4x5 Polaroid project is synched for electronic flash so I will be able to use the Vivitar 283 with it. I will need to get a special connector but that's not hard. The 4x5 Polaroid project has been on hold with all that has been going on but it had just slowed down, not stopped. Part of it is that I'm taking a different direction for the 4x5 back part. Greyhoundman has put together a great Polaroid Automatic 250 conversion that I will base mine on. You can see his progress: Part 1- The lens, Part 2- The Back Plate, The Completed Back, Part 3- The RF Unit, Part 4- Final Additions. Here is a picture of it done:

32 ounces with film holder. Prettty neat! The key is the back design which is based on a 4x5 view camera he built. (If you want a nice cheap view camera, this is a very nice design.)

A very simple design. The spings that hold the film holder in place are bent from metal rake tines. I will back my back a little thicker to accomodate my Polaroid back and a future Grafmatic back. (Blaine — How thick is your Grafmatic?) Greyhoundman uses an old film holder to hold the ground glass. I took one of my Graflex film holders apart in preparation of putting in some ground glass.

The film holders are wooden but there is an alulminum piece riveted on that holds the light trap. I drilled out the rivets.

There are two metal septums that hold the sheet film. They slide out the end of the film holder.

Here it is ready for the ground glass. I need to order some. I want to be able to still put the dark slides back in to protect the ground glass. I finally got the shutter off the lens board. I ended up pretty much destroying it to find that the shutter was pinned to the lensboard which kept it from rotating. I finally took some needle nosed pliers and put them in the screw holes holding the collar on to get it to screw off the shutter. I still have a lot of filing to do on the Polaroid lens board. Onward!