Les:  I, too, prefer the first one.  With any cropping, you'd want to leave the pedestal  intact, no?  It would be nice to get rid of all that white sky, but that severe a crop would slice the pedestal.  Guess you'll just have to visit it again :cool:.

James

Better late than never.  I just got my scans back.

These were taken on Plus-X Pan that's been frozen for about 30 years.  Developed in HC-110 Dil. H, for 10 minutes IIRC.  I'd done a test roll and based on that shot these at EI50.  That may have been a bit low, as the negs were a little dense.  I'll have to look at the test roll again.

The camera was a Super Ricohflex.

This was taken at <a href="http://www.rideau-info.com/canal/history/locks/h09-10-hartwells.html">Hartwell Locks</a> on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa.  Currently there is a sailboat parked there and being worked on.  These locks are very busy in the summer - where lots of pleasure craft are travelling through the Rideau River system up to the Ottawa River.  It is one of three sets of locks on this section of the canal - the seven or so miles between Hog's Back Falls (remember the old <a href="http://web.ncf.ca/dv404/images/hogs_back_150dpi009.jpg"> Betty</a> pic) to downtown Ottawa.  Hog's back is where the river and the canal diverge.  It's a nice thing to sit and watch in the summer; the boats going through the locks.

Taken from the east side of the canal, facing approximately south-west.


and of course what you have to love about big negs (ok, you LF guys stop snickering).  And that's with my poor eyes and a 50 year old camera with a grabby focus ring.  I love it!


All of the lock mechanisms are still operated by hand.  They hire summer students to do this.  I'll have to take some shots of the lock keepers in action one of these days.


I don't know what's up with the light bit at the bottom of the frame.  The adjacent frame - of the same setup - has the same thing, but it doesn't show up in other shots (so I'm not thinking "light leak").  Weird flare?  I'll have to take a closer look at the neg itself.  This one's for Larry :-)


I'll have to revisit this one and do a better job.  The wood is so wonderfully worn, and in the right light the texture is beautiful.  I shot these at about 6:30am; the sun had just cleared the trees and was raking quite nicely.  It was a weekday and this particular lock is a popular crossing spot - so I kept getting interrupted as I tred to set up the shot (I had the camera on a tripod) - and with a 75mm lens that close up I was trying to get the focus correct to buy enough dof.  I'll go back early on a weekend morning.



And speaking of cyclists.  Ottawa is BIG cycling city.  The number of people who commute by bicycle (including myself) is enormous.  There are a series of <a href="http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/bins/ncc_web_content_page.asp?cid=16297-16299-9970&lang=1&bhcp=1">bike paths</a> running throughout the city. 

Also, the parkways - one of which runs along this stretch of the Rideau Canal - are closed to vehicular traffic for a while each sunday; bicycles, rollerblades, etc. only (more info at link above).  It's fun.



And speaking of bikes.  The TLR, my F90 (for metering), and a tripod (Manfrotto 190SH) add enough weight - combined with all the crap that I usually carry!  This one was hand held - so it's a little off.  This was adjacent the canal, but downtown (see the parliamtent buildings in the background) - close to the largest locks at the Ottawa River (4 ... umm.. 'bays' or segments or lifts or whatever you call them); they'll provide some good photo ops.  At about this spot today I smelled smoke.  I looked over and saw two funny little old boats on the canal.  They were little steam powered boats.  I took a shot with the XA2 that I keep in the Rack Pack; I'll post it when I get it developed/scanned.  Curious little boats.  Another cyclist had stopped too; said that they "made his day".



Please let me know if any of these posts are too image heavy.  That is, if we should just post a couple and link to the rest.

cheers!
Bill

Thanks Kalle!

Happy Friday!!  (er - if it's Friday on the other side of the world...)
cheers!
Bill

Nice shots Bill. That walkway with the worn wood and metal rails is quite something.

Thanks Wayne and Julio.

Yes, that worn walkway begs for a less hurried photo session.

Regarding the ice skating; this set of locks is just upstream of a man-made lake (Dow's Lake).  It all freezes in the winter, of course, but that lake and all of the canal downstream - I'd say about 8 km's worth; all the way to downtown - are cleared of snow and flooded to form a nice skating surface.  It had been billed as the world's longest skating rink, but I'm pretty sure that that upstart Winnipeg is scrapping for the title now ;-)

There are some races of some sort held on the lake - pretty sure they had BED races as part of the annual february winter carnival "Winterlude" - but there are none that I'm aware of that take place on the canal proper.  On a nice weekend day during Winterlude you'll have many thousands out skating.  Some folks commute on skates in the winter.

Web search on "Rideau Canal Skateway" and you'll find plenty of pics.

Btw, they lower the water levels in the canal before it freezes - so once they have the required 12-14" or so of ice, the water under the ice really isn't very deep at all; a couple feet at most.

cheers!
Bill

Thanks Nancy.

Yes - some winters are just weird.  We'll have a brutally cold january, and then just in time for Winterlude (early february - when it's supposed to be coldest) it'll start to warm up a bit.

Bill