Texas | Stephen Hazelton

[nelsonfoto]

Stephen has finished his leg and forwarded out humble box-camera on to Raid in Pensacola, Fl.  We wait patiently for Stephen's reults to arrive!

[Stephen Hazelton]

It's gotten into an involved story.

First off, I'm not sure how to get the photos posted here.  They're in my photo.net porfolio, one batch as "Shur-Flash- TX" and one batch as "Shur-Flash- OK".

http://www.photo.net/photodb/member-photos?user_id=608974

I started off with 5 rolls of Plus X and one roll of Verichrome Pan, took all the pictures, then mailed off the camera.  Developed first roll, negs looked sorta thin, but figured they were under exposed a bit.  Finally dawned on me on about the 5th roll that my fresh D76 was going bad in a hurry- negatives were getting progressively thinner from roll to roll!.  Did the last roll in Tmax, came out great.  So the net result is, I've got some negs that are okay, some that are marginal, and some that are just plain lost.

On the printing end of it, I picked up a Beseler 23CII in good shape off Ebay for $20.  The catch is I don't have a 105mm lens yet.  I can print up to around a 5x7 with my 75mm lens, but you'll notice I'm running into lack of coverage on a number of these shots (IE, white corners, reverse vignetting).  With the small prints, and thin negs, printing times run 2-4 seconds in a lot of cases, so I can't dodge/burn anything.  Anyway, photos I've got posted are the best I've come up with so far.  Proper lens and proper negative holder will improve some of the results.

On the offer to scan the negs- if there's any serious use planned for these, that would be fine.  If they're just posted on the internet here, I'll hang on to the negs, as I'm not done with them yet.

I do have some additional negs that I haven't printed yet, and am working on getting the equipment side set up better, which would let me redo some of these.  I noticed in scanning and in printing, I've got some dust that I should have cleaned up better- it sort of leaps out at me from the screen, but isn't very visible on the prints.


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Ok, Craig here... editing your post, Steve...

I removed all the related convo about problems posting images, etc. Here go the first scans from Hazelton's leg of the trip. I am adding them to his original post so that he can add captions or storyline to them as he sees fit.

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[Glenn Thoreson]

I don't see nuttin'.

[nelsonfoto]

I dont know where the extra / keeps coming from... at any rate... corrected now.

[Glenn Thoreson]

Now I sees 'em! Nice evenly exposed shots. Good eye for the light you have, Stephen.

[Raid Amin]

Yes, the photos are nicely exposed. Good work. It looks as if Sure-Flash is a nice camera, regardless of the simplicity. This also tells us something about using a format larger than 35mm. A lot of detail gets recorded on film with such a medium camera.

[ImageMaker]

Amen to that, Raid.  A 6x9 cm box camera will compete with a low-end 35 mm, and ought to cost about 1/4 as much to make.  Of course, it's a bit more expensive to feed these days, but everything changes with time.  When I had my first box camera, you'd commonly get back contact prints, and they looked GREAT if the photographer had a clue (which I generally didn't, at 9 or so years of age -- didn't help, I'm sure, to get one or two rolls of film a year).

Now, you get 4x6 prints from 35 mm, in an hour (instead of waiting a week), but the camera has to be good enough to make a 4x enlargement without the aberrations eating the detail -- and *still* they can turn 'em out cheaply enough to sell with a roll of film loaded for $10, including the flash!

[Stephen Hazelton]

Descriptions for the above:
#1- Confederate Memorial in downtown Dallas, near the convention center.  The lower 4 statues are confederate big shots (Jefferson Davis, Lee, and others), the high statue is a typical soldier.  This memorial is tucked safely out of the way back behind a cemetery where it gets little attention.  My brother brought it to my attention when reading up on Texas sculptors of years gone by.
#2- Jesus in the Clouds- while coming back down Hwy 121 from Bonham, I passed a small cemetery and noticed the sun shining on this one statue.  Think I used a red filter for this one.  Had a nice chat with the current cemetery owner as well, who was impressed at the Shur-Flash.  Evidently, I'm not the first to photograph that statue!
#3- Bridge picture- that's in OK, not TX- see the Okie pictures.
#4- Moving a crane into the yard at my work.
#5- Roadside crosses on Hwy 35 up around Gainesville.
#6- Fishing at Red River, Texas on the near shore, Oklahoma on the far shore.  I understand the river itself is actually Oklahoma territory, the line is the near side of the river.
#7- Sign on Hwy 78 coming into Texas