Tag Archives: Sam Smith

Stereo Staycation!

by Steven Lederman

Due to the pandemic, my road trips to the States have been curtailed and limited to shorter journeys within my home province of Ontario. With all of the beautiful Saskatchewan vistas and the spectacular travel photos that were featured in the recent go ’round of the folio, I felt that Ontario should also have a chance to show off some of its breath-taking scenery.

“SLIDE AND THE FAMILY STONED”

Who needs to travel to Kingston, Jamaica when you can easily drive to Kingston, Ontario?  On the way to Kingston, why not stop in Napanee?  Napanee is so named for the unusual practice of its residents, who kneel while sleeping, which incidentally is not the same as sleeping while kneeling.  Napanee is full of pastoral views, such as this parking lot amusement park, seen here via an EHO stereo box camera.  The Altissa-EHO Stereo box camera was manufactured in the ’30s and has no provision for focusing.  It has a choice of two Waterhouse f stops – f11 and f22.  This image was shot using the EHO’s original single shutter speed of (I believe) 1/30th of a second.  The camera has visited a technician in the interim and has had its spring tensioned so that now it is capable of firing its shutter somewhere between 1/60th – 1/100th of a second!!  Captured on expired Velvia 50 and home-processed with a CPP2 Jobo unit.

 

“THEIR SNOW BUSINESS”

Meet Lorrie and Ray Dillard.  They reside in Barrie, Ontario, which is very far North of anything and above the permafrost line.  Lorrie and Ray run a successful snow-harvesting business, selling their surplus snow to countries around the world that won’t or are unable to grow their own snow.  The snow is shipped out via husky-powered sled in small individual manila bubble pack envelopes twice daily.  Lorrie and Ray hired Ethel Merman to sing their social media jingle; “Their Snow Business! Like ‘Snow Business’!”  This image is from a test roll I shot to determine if Rollei Superpan 200 could be reverse-processed in the sometimes-available Foma reversal processing kit.  Captured with Sam Smith’s conjoined AGFA Isolettes (the “Samulette”) on the aforementioned Rollei Superpan 200, and home-processed with a CPP2 Jobo unit.

 

“THAT’S IT (IN SPANISH)”

People not your thing? How about taking a road trip to Cooper’s Falls, Ontario?  This here gas pump is one of the most photographed entities in an almost-ghost town with not that many entities in it.  Approximately 14 houses in the area are still inhabited, and the waterfall after which this semi-ghost town is named cannot really be seen (or photographed) without trespassing, as it is situated on private property.  The title of this image is of the crossword puzzle question type, and by request, I am not supplying the crossword puzzle answer here.  Captured with an as-fine-tuned-as-is-possible-with-a-Soviet-camera Sputnik cobbled together of donated parts, on expired Provia 100F and home processed with a CPP2 Jobo unit.

 

“SCREAMING HEADS OF MIDLOTHIAN”

Every year, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day falls on the last Sunday in April. It is an excuse for my daughter and I to spend a day together photographing various locations in Ontario using pinhole cameras. I will usually pack a “lensed” camera in addition to my pinhole camera(s). On WPPD 2019 we visited artist Peter Camani’s residence which hosts his grand scale outdoor art exhibition. There are various shapes of cast concrete screaming heads situated throughout his 310-acre property near Burk’s Falls, Ontario, each sculpture being in the 15-20 foot tall range. On this occasion I had packed my Hasselblad SWC, and I can’t remember if I was consciously trying to capture a stereo cha-cha image or not. In any case, I found an uncut roll of film with three pairs of images that looked like they might work as stereo pairs. Despite some anomalies between the left and right chips, my brain can fuse these images into a stereo image. As John Thurston likes to say, “your mileage may vary”. Hasselblad SWC, yellow or orange drop-in filter, expired Kodak Aerochrome film, home processed with a Jobo CPP2 unit.

“Tanks A Lot”

by Steven Lederman

This is my brother-in-law, Gordon, and yes ladies, he’s single!  This is another shot from last year’s beer run.  Gordon plays an international online tank game, so we stopped on our way to the beer store in Vermont to shoot an avatar image for him.  I captured a few shots with a Fuji W3, and then I bracketed some exposures with the Stereo Samulette.

I have another version of this shot that I like slightly better, as the background is sharper and there’s an American flag present, but the setting sun washed out some of Gordon’s features and his pose was more rigid, so you get to see this one instead.

I realize there’s a scratch or some sort of anomaly on the left film chip.

This was handheld, shot on HP5 processed by dr5 – I think the f-stop was 16, 1/100th of a second handheld, and the distance and hyperfocal estimation was guesswork (there’s no through-the-lens focusing on this camera).

“General Store”

by Steven Lederman

My brother-in-law Gordon is a bière connoisseur.  He makes regular pilgrimages to Vermont to frequent a specialty store there that stocks micro-brews from around the globe.

Last year I decided I’d accompany him on one of his beer runs to Vermont via the quaint Quebec countryside so that I’d have an opportunity to shoot with my folding medium format camera.  If I did all the driving, I’d have control over where we stopped for a photo op.   I am pleased with how the camera performed.  I enjoy the vintage feel of this shot, marred only by the snout of the more modern vehicle peering out from the rear of the truck bed.

This scene reminds me of the subject matter that my late friend Earl Bennett was attracted to when he painted.  He studied with Thomas Hart Benton in the 1930s and for the most part painted works that dealt with small town, mid-Western life.

This image was shot on HP5, processed by dr5. I wish I could say the shutter speed was 5 and the f-stop was 5, but no such luck.  The f-stop was 32, handheld at 1/100th.

The camera was created by Sam Smith, fusing together two 1950s-era AGFA Isolette II folders.  It has AGFA’s intermediate-level f4.5 Apotar lenses on S-Prontor shutters.  When folded shut, it fits into a jacket pocket.  It’s resplendent in faux ostrich skin.  I wanted to name it “The AGFA Stereo Smith-O-lette”, but Sam liked the sound of “Sam-O-lette” better.   For some reason, when I say “Sam-O-lette” I think of Frank Zappa’s “Camarillo Brillo” and the lyrics; “She had a snake for a pet, and an amulet…”, so since Sam told me to name this camera “whatever sounds good”, I’ve named it “The Samulette”.