Retro Rocket

I finally got around to taking a couple of snaps of my new house guest. It’s a Spartus Rocket camera which takes 127 film. This one has never ever been used which is interesting to me. It even came with an instruction sheet and a couple of Kodak film mailers.

I usually confine my camera shopping to thrift stores which is pretty hit and miss. This one came from an antique mall so it cost about double what I would have paid at the thrift store. I didn’t have to pay shipping like the times when I buy something online so when you figure the savings on shipping it is still a reasonable purchase. At least that’s what I tell myself. The fact is when you are in love with things you will pay just about any price or sleep out in the rain… Oh, that’s when a man loves a woman. It’s best not to love things too much or you will soon be disappointed. I’m trying hard not to become a collector of things because that is much too serious work for me, so I occasionally adopt a misfit or rescue a castaway from the junk store to bring it home and wash away the dust and polish the plastic as best as I can. We are flawed and scarred and live well together. I like listening to their old stories that no one else wants to hear anymore. It is all fine with me.

This one is simple and unpretentious. It has a shutter button and a film winding knob and that is about it. No bulb setting, no adjustable aperture, no shutter speeds, no timer, no tripod socket. On the other hand my digital camera came with an instruction manual that is around four hundred pages long.

One of my favorite things in life is going through the airport security line and having the TSA agent ask me to turn on my box cameras. It takes about five minutes to explain to them that there are no batteries. It usually requires a supervisor. To be honest that is about the only fun I have discovered about airport security lines or “security theatre” as I like to call it.

When I look at this little camera the thoughts begin to flow and I think of the fifties and sixties. Cars with fins, the race to space and traveling across country in the back of a blue Rambler station wagon. It has taken longer for the future to get here than I thought it would and it’s not entirely what I expected. For those who can afford the benefits of science and modern life, things are pretty cool but of course not everyone is so fortunate. Mostly people seem to want things and value them over each other. Too bad, that’s not the future we were hoping for.

Outside My Window

Fennville, MI. July 2009.

There is a knife outside on the windowsill
Placed there a long while ago
And it lays there still
And just inside on the table
Sits an empty jug of homemade wine
I fear it was the potent kind
The makes you nervous
And makes you loose your mind
When you are sitting alone in the wintertime
It’s best to leave the knife outside

I had not noticed the knife at the time I took this photo, other things were on my mind so the fact that it is lying there seems like a little bonus and gives me something to think about. Next time I am in Michigan, I should set out on a little day trip of my own so that I can stop whenever the scene dictates. It’s not so bad traveling with one other person but traveling in a group requires to much diplomacy to insist on stopping at every old barn or rusted out truck. If nothing else, traveling with others teaches you to work fast so as not to test the patience of your companions to the limit. Well at least not the extreme limit.

I took this photo at a slight angle to avoid my own reflection and then skewed it back to the proper perspective again in post processing. Sort of the poor man’s view camera but it works wonderfully to adjust the the angles if not the depth of field and you can do it after the fact when there is time to yourself to contemplate things like knives on widow ledges.

Champagne Velvet

More Michigan finds for the viewfinder. I like signs and painted metal. The person who designed this must have had a day job working for the highway department because to me it looks like a worked over road sign. Maybe that was the idea in order to get you to pay attention.

The beer with the million dollar flavor... I guess a million dollars probably doesn't buy as much beer as it used to when this sign was made. At least I still have my million dollar tastes if not the flavor (or the million).

There is some additional information about CV Beer at www.cvbeercollection.com that looked interesting if you want to take a look. If I collected things I would have been tempted to buy this sign but I collect photos instead which makes loading the car at the end of the vacation a lot more simple.

Lazy Saturdays

I'm playing around with www.blogger.com and WordPress this morning trying to figure out how to import videos. It has not been going too well, at least not over at the WordPress site. I can upload the video but I couldn't insert it in the post. I guess it's all a part of learning how things work.


My SD750 broke a day after recording this video. I had it for about eighteen months and it has seen a lot of hard use and hard knocks. I'm undecided about what to get next so James has loaned me an SD600 to use until then.


I was also working on some photos from my Michigan trip and posting those over at www.flickr.com Those should show up on the slideshow at the top of this page.

After I made this video (using iMovie) I decided it needed a music track so I added that before posting it over here on http://www.blogger.com/ I also cranked up the contrast a bit so I think it looks slightly better than the first version.