Night out

Photo of the wall of the restaurant where I had supper:

Havana Restaurant, on "The Drive"

And a favourite photo from that wall:

"Peeling pineapples"

The occasion was a family going-away party, including 4 little ones under 5 years old. Very excited little ones.

Then, a long drive home in thick fog.

I'm having trouble typing. I'm going to bed. Goodnight!

We are so spoiled!

We were discussing cameras, as we often do, and Laurie mentioned a Bilora Radix that he bought in the 1970s. He didn't use it long, because the film had to be removed and replaced in a darkroom, and it got expensive.

 "... it uses the Agfa Rapid (or Karat) system, in which 35mm film is loaded into a spool free cassette, and advanced by direct driving of the sprockets into another cassette." (Link)

"I still have it, though," Laurie said. He's a hoarder.

He dug it out for me. It's a little camera, 4 1/2 inches long, about the size of my little Nikon Coolpix, but much heavier. German-made, and solid. It takes a special film, producing 24 x 24 mm photos in a roll of 36. Laurie's was made in 1949 or '50; it was well used when he bought it. He shot in black and white. Colour rolls were expensive and had to be developed in a special lab.

Front view.

The lens (5.6/38, or 40mm) had very little play; turning it extended it barely 1/4 of an inch. The little round dial at the top shows the aperture, but is almost impossible to read.

There is a slider just under the lens, but not visible in this photo. I can't figure out what it does. By the time Laurie got the camera, the manual was long gone.

Top view

The toothed lever at the top right operates the shutter. It was a little sticky, after some 40 years stuck away in a drawer, but loosened up quickly. It advances the film nicely; the number of photos taken shows in the window below. 10, here, after a few trial clicks.

At the far right, on the side is a plug-in for a remote shutter cable, probably just a flexible wire operating a plunger. On the left there is another plug-in, this one probably for a flash attachment. The company added a flash shoe to the 1951 model.

The toothed lever on the lens closes or opens plates to regulate the amount of light.

The aperture setting regulates the light, as well as changing the depth of field.

Back view.

That lever at the top right advances the film. It only works once after each shot taken.

The wheel in the centre is the locking mechanism for the film cover. I took it off, and discovered a film in it, which means that I ruined about 3 frames by letting in light. I closed the back and advanced the film three spaces. Maybe, possibly, if we're lucky, we might be able to get 23 photos out of this.

That's assuming, of course that the film hasn't completely deteriorated. But another camera collector got a decent photo with 30-year-old film, so there's hope.

But then again, there's the shutter and lens:

Lens and shutter plates, badly corroded.

The blades work, but they feel gritty. And the inner lens is dusty. No wonder! 63 years; even bagged, in a dresser drawer, entropy happens.

It worked nicely, back in the 1970s, though; here's a sample.

Penny

She's Laurie's dog, taken at Ryder Lake, in the hills above Chilliwack. The photo was dusty and faded to sepia, so I cleaned it and restored it to black and white. Otherwise, it is as taken.

I have never been so grateful for my modern cameras with all their automatic settings, the instant adjustments, the load capacity (hundreds of photos without a break!); and the ability to process them all myself, and without a darkroom!

We are so spoiled!

Something completely different; Old Scarborough

We went antiquing last Saturday, to the annual Best of the West show in Abbotsford. Laurie picked up some nice pieces of Japanese porcelain, as usual; I bought a cardboard box.

It's just a book-sized box, nothing fancy, but the cover has a photograph glued under a sheet of glass. It's damaged, the glass is scratched  and stained, but I am fascinated by the photo.

Here's the box:

The vendor told us it was Scarborough, in the UK, but Laurie didn't recognize it. We came home and Googled it; I think I found the place. It's changed a bit in the meantime. The photo is probably from around the turn of the 19th century. Before cars, anyhow.

These old photos are amazing. With such limited technology, black and white film (now turned brown and whitish), heavy, awkward tripods and bellows, and exposure times and developing dependent on the skill of the individual photographer, they often produce a sharp, detailed image. In this photo, a 4x6, the average figure is barely 3/8 of an inch high, and yet I can distinguish expressions on some of the faces.

I have had these enlarged before, with good results. Scanning produces the clearest image, but I have no scanner, so I cleaned up the glass as well as I could and photographed the photograph.

It's a crowd scene; probably a special holiday in the summer. People are out in their best finery, walking down the Esplanade. And this is what the well-dressed holidayer was wearing:

Hats! For the women, even the little girls, great mounds of lace and ribbons and decorative geegaws. The men are wearing bowlers, boaters, cloth caps; one man here has a top hat.

Girls wore their hair down; young women pinned it up in an elaborate pile under the hat.

Even the babies wore big bonnets. And girl babies wore layers and layers of clothing, like their mothers. Note the perambulator, pushed by the father. His wife has a smaller hat, with a sharp brim and a pouf in front. My Mom had one very like it in the 1940s.

A couple of solitary young men. The one in front seems to be wearing a uniform hat. Many men and women carry umbrellas, using them as canes.

Detail of the row of houses. Today, the street has been widened to make a parking lot, and the front lawns are cut off at the bottom of the steps. And now the traffic is mostly cars.

Down by the waterside, there is a quay, fenced off from the water, with benches along it. The swimming beach is on the other side of the spit of land ahead; Scarborough Castle occupies the top of the spit.

Time travel, without the dials and gizmos.
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Nostalgia is Catching

In the last few days, I've seen several blog posts resurrecting vintage family photos. Baby pictures, ours or our adult kids', for example: see here, here and here.

It's catching. Now I've come down with the fever, forced to dig through old boxes and cabinets, looking for memories.

Here are some I found, in chronological order.

My aunt in first grade. Toronto, about 1910, 1911. She's the one on the front left (your left, not hers), holding her doll upright, by the feet. She never was the maternal type. Never married, lived at home with her widowed mother until Nana's death, a schoolteacher by profession and temperament. The quintessimal "maiden aunt" of old fiction.* We don't see many of those, these days.

*Except that she laughed a lot.

I see dolls like those in antique fairs. They cost a pretty penny today.

My father in shop class, fourth from the left. Toronto, early 1920s.

Most of the boys in button-down shirts and ties, suit jackets. Mostly with the apron; it's a shop class, after all.

Look closely; those are small work-benches, with bench clamps and rows of holes for wooden-handled chisels and files and a saw. There's a big plane and a measuring compass, a T-square on the wall. A well-equipped shop.

On the blackboard: acorns, some type of propeller, the words "tangent, tangential". A cross-section of a log, some kind of pattern. I wonder what it is they were going to be making?

Along the top, a variety of bird houses; previous creations by the boys?

My brother and I, 1945/6. Red Deer, Alberta. And our car.


Anyone know its make and year? I don't. I know it was black. Of course.