Live While Alive

New cars and flea-bay bargains

2012-02-13T16:33:00.006-05:00

Age 34 caught up with me while I was in Paris. I had planned to spend an entire afternoon walking the Seine and updating my portfolio with a new round of photos, but the sub-zero temperatures kept me indoors the entire trip.

I did snap one obligatory photo of the Eiffel Tower during the dinner cruise we took the first night.

As my interest in car racing had waned a couple years ago, I had decided one of my resolutions for 2012 was to sell the Porsche and get something both more economical and more conducive to carrying sailing and photography gear -- but I wasn't trying very hard at it. I was caught offguard that I had an offer on the car almost as soon as I got home, and I hadn't done any shopping for a replacement vehicle.

I spent Monday night doing some intensive research and by Tuesday night when they came to haul away my car to its new home in California, I had this in the driveway.

I'll always have a place in my heart for the 911, but I won't lie, I'm really enjoying the quiet ride and plethora of cupholders. The SYNC system and satellite radio are pretty great too. I really wish SYNC and Siri could get married and have a baby in my dashboard. Right now I just have SYNC switch over to Bluetooth Audio and then let Siri run the show from there, but it would be nice if Siri responded to the buttons in the car and could give SYNC more control to call up artists and whatnot. It's kind of like having two selfish robotic girlfriends that won't give up their control of each part of your life but are forced to share you while you're in the car.

So along with a new vehicle to carry all my camera gear, I finally hit one of those jackpot bargains on eBay. Somebody was selling a "junk box" of Leica accessories. $40 ended up scoring me a working Leica Meter MC, a Leica Meter MR, a complete mint condition Chico flash unit, and a leather M3 case.

I think I'm going to flip everything except the Leica Meter MR as that completes my ultimate film setup consisting of the M3 and the Summicron DR. I dropped the Leica Meter MR at professional camera repair this afternoon for a tune-up and cleaning. I've got two rolls of Kodak Portra 100 just waiting for a subject.

One more bit of good news -- I finally have a propeller ordered for the Starwind. I never did find a used one, but I tracked a new one down through CatalinaDirect.com. I think I'm going to order new cabin lights from them as well. All of the original lights that I put new switches in two years ago are starting to die on me.

February is proving to be an exciting month. Next weekend, after six years, my little brother is moving out of my house. Our 2.5 men phase is over. I'll finally have my garage back, and I might even have space in the house to set the recording studio back up. So much room for activities!

A doggone tricky photo shoot

2012-01-23T14:02:00.002-05:00

My friend Jessyca is quite the entrepreneur. She runs Jess & Co Canine Couture, a luxury clothing maker for small dogs.

She's quite the photographer herself and has worked with a lot of great people, so I jumped at the chance to do some shots with her and her pomeranian, Tokyo.

Friday morning had been very overcast and rainy, so when we settled on 1:15 p.m. for the portrait session, I wasn't too worried about the light. Little did I know that by the time I made it downtown, the clouds would part and the sun would appear in full force. The thermometer in my car was showing 85 degrees when I got there.

The harsh sunlight made things rough, but then to add to the challenge, the wind decided to start gusting at around 15 knots. Oh yeah, and then there's the dog ...

I grabbed the Leica M8 and the Leica M3, and we worked our way around Eleanor Tinsley Park. Did I mention the park turned out to be undergoing major construction? Everything seemed stacked against us that day.

I call this one the Wizard of Oz shot because Jessyca looks like she's about to blow away.

But Jess and Tokyo started working those matching outfits.

Eleanor Tinsley Park is a great place to pick up the Houston skyline in the background of your photos.

And we finally got the shot I was waiting for.

But, of course, Tokyo still had to have her close-up.

I was relieved when I pulled the Ilford 100 out of the developing tank that the recent shutter repair on the M3 was succesful. I think next shoot I'm going to try some Kodak Portra 160. Here was an attempt with the Alien Skin Exposure 3 plug-in to see if I could get the look from digital.

Have you done any jousting lately?

2012-01-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

One of my friends gave me a call Friday afternoon and said, hey, if you're not doing anything tomorrow, they're jousting out at the barns.

Now, I'd seen jousting at the Texas Renaissance Festival in years past, so obviously the jousters have to learn and practice somewhere. However, these jousters are a bit more serious than the "theatrical" jousters at RenFest and Medievil Times. This was a big deal sport to them, and they were all getting ready for the Lyst of the Lakes Tournament in Austin.

http://www.texasjoust.com/tournaments.php

It was a bit strange to see cowboys riding around spearing things.

But eventually they suited up to practice riding in armor.

And by the time the sun was going down, they were facing off for practice runs.

It was an interesting shoot, and I only came close to being trampled like a serf one time.

You can see all the shots on my site www.fredfacker.com.

The Duaflexperiment

2012-01-09T23:04:00.001-05:00

On my last trip to visit my parents, I came home with my great grandfather's Kodak Duaflex IV twin lens reflex camera. It's a very simple medium format camera that uses 620 film.

There just so happened to be one roll of Verichrome Pan 620 in the box that had expired in 1981. I loaded it up in the camera and headed out for the weekend.

About halfway through the roll I could tell something funky was going on with the shutter, so my expectations weren't too high when I mixed up some Caffenol-C to see what I'd captured.

This was the best of the bunch.

The exposures got worse from there as everything got blurrier and blurrier as the shutter apparently stuck longer and longer.

I think I'll keep my eyes open for another medium format camera, and the little Kodak will remain decor on the bookshelf.

What I've learned about sailboat propellers

2012-01-09T22:37:00.001-05:00

After warning me that my propeller needed to be replaced while scraping the coral reef from the bottom of the Starwind, our diver returned Saturday morning with more tools to pull the prop.

The prop was much smaller than I expected. It was a 12" diameter with a 10" pitch and a 1" shaft. It also turns right-handed. I learned this is all stamped on propellers and usually denoted with something like RH 12 x 10.

Obviously the diver was correct. The prop needed to be serviced. It's already missing chunks. But how could he know (aside from feeling that hole) in the murky water with almost zero visibility?

Apparently the quick and easy way to tell if a propeller is still good is to tap it with a wrench or something metal. If it rings like a bell, you have good metal. If it makes a dull "tink" sound, the metal has become porous and full of fractures.

My original plan was to get the diver to pull the prop, hand it off to me while I found something comparable at the Kemah resale shop down the street, and then have him put the replacement on as soon as I got back. I'd only have to pay for one dive and a smoke break. Unfortunately, the closest thing I could find was a RH 13 x 14. That's a 13" diameter with a 14" pitch. It was not only a larger propeller, but it also pushed a great deal more water.

The diver got it seated, and I fired up the Kubota. It really vibrated at idle, so I throttled up to see what would happen ... but the engine speed never went up. Instead, my exhaust turned black.

I was over-propped.

My diver suited back up and pulled the RH 13 x 14 back off, so I could go return it. I think he was secretly happy that I'd have to pay him to come out for yet a third weekend once I found a correct replacement, but he hid it well.

I did find a RH 12 x 10 on eBay, which I procured for only $101 including shipping -- not a bad deal. Now there's nothing to do but wait for it to arrive and hope it does the trick.

Trying to save Kodak

2012-01-04T15:53:00.000-05:00

Kodak hasn't done so hot the past few years. They sold off their sensor business last year and now their gelatine business. Looks like they'll be filing chapter 11 in the near future.

If you notice in my last post, my lovely girlfriend is holding an old Kodak Duaflex. That camera actually belonged to my great grandfather and came along with a half-exposed roll of 120 film loaded in it.

The other roll of film that was in the box with it had an expiration date of 1982 on the package, so we're guessing the film in the camera could have shots from as far back as the 1970s on it.

At lunch today I ran by Houston Camera Co-op and picked up a metal spool for developing 120 film. My goal for the week (aside from finding a new prop for the boat) is to finish shooting that roll of film, find out how to actually take it out of the camera, and to develop it.

Of course, I'm running on the assumption that it has black and white film inside. If it turns out to be color, I'll have to send it off.

Just to help Kodak I also picked up a fresh roll of 120 T-Max 100 and a couple rolls of 35mm Portra 160.

Sure, it's not going to save the company, but at least it makes me feel like I'm helping.

Oh film, I love you but I hate you.

2012-01-03T12:33:00.000-05:00

I ran through two rolls of black and white film in December. I'm so used to the instant gratification of digital that it's hard to wait for the results. Then again, it's part of the fun -- unless the results are bad. Then it's no fun at all.

Every single photo I took on the roll of Ilford had these burned spots right in the middle. Apparently while I was hiking through the woods shooting my first roll, the sun was burning a hole in the cloth shutter of my M3.

I had heard that if you left your camera sitting out on a table or something the sun could damage the shutter, but I didn't realize it could happen while hanging around your neck. I guess in the future I've either got to keep the lens cap on all the time or stop down the aperture between shots.

But not everything was ruined. I found a couple photos from before the Christmas party that I forgot I'd taken when I was testing the self-timer.

And a few shots from the hike through the woods turned out.

But, I thought I'd rewound the roll of T-Max and popped the bottom plate off the camera, only to find it hadn't rewound at all. That ruined over half the first roll.

So yes, in two rolls of film, 48 shots, I got four good photos.

This is why film drives me crazy. Of course, by the time the M3 shutter gets repaired, I'll be dying to shoot some more.

Lack of zinc and copper paint

2012-01-03T11:03:00.000-05:00

November and December were busy months, so the Starwind got a bit neglected. She had quite the moldy aroma when I slid open the companionway for the first time in over a month.

I still haven't made the trip to FastenAll to pick up the all-thread I need to put the last bolt into the heat exchanger after it's third and most-recent repair, but the engine was still running fine if you don't mind the odor from the small exhaust leak. (At least it covers the mold smell.)

We were hoping to start the year with a sail, but it was far too gusty in Kemah Sunday. Instead we started the year with a bottom scrubbing.

Our diver chiseled an estimated 200-300 pounds of these cranky crustaceans off the hull. Actually, he only made it around 3/4 of the hull and then his scraper broke. He's coming back to finish the last section later this week.

Accumulating this many barnacles in a year is not a good thing. We obviously have no bottom paint left at all, so a haul-out is imminent.

The other problem is that since there has been no rain this year, the marina has been extra salty. That sped up electrolysis, and we had no zinc whatsoever left on the prop shaft. The prop was already pink and getting a little soft when we had it checked at the last bottom cleaning. Now it's completely porous and falling apart.

I wasn't really wanting to buy a new propeller first thing in 2012, but it looks like I've got to find one this week if we want to do any sailing soon.

I guess it's time to get back to work and finish my wiring projects as well.

Braving the cold

2012-01-03T10:23:00.000-05:00

Christmas took me to a little farmhouse in the tri-cities area of Illinois. There was plenty of cold, but no snow. I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad about the lack of snow. I've never really shot any photos in the snow. Then again, I'm pretty happy with what I got.

The abandoned farmhouse down the road looked nice in the morning sun.

The resident donkey was always looking for a hand out.

It was warm enough during the day that the creek hadn't frozen over yet.

But there was a little ice.

We hiked the old train tracks until we found the end of the line.

And although the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, the skies in Illinois give Texas a run for its money.

It's Back!

2011-12-20T18:01:00.000-05:00

After mailing off my Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f1.1 on November 10, it has returned today repaired and re-focused from DAG Camera.

Apparently it had a loose lens element, which was tightened. Then the focus was re-adjusted.

Exactly a 40-day turnaround and the total cost was $158.

I can't wait to test it out tonight. I'm ecstatic that I'll have it for Christmas and my trip to Illinois next week.

The cheap way to the moon.

2011-12-12T16:47:00.000-05:00

While my favorite Leica lens is beign repaired, I've been getting back into my Canon AE-1 gear. Canon FD gear has gotten so cheap that I recently picked up a lot of five 2x teleconverters for under $10 on eBay.

I also found a Canon FD > Nikon converter, which I've mentioned before. I really hoped it would create a cheap way to expand my Nikon kit by allowing me to utilize a bunch of lenses I already own.

On one hand, the 50mm f1.8 and the 28mm f2.8 get usable results, but focusing is a bit tough without a prism in the viewfinder. However, I really wanted it for telephoto work since the Leica tops out at 135mm.

We had a great full moon and a clear sky last week -- a rare combination in Houston. It was also the night of the full eclipse, but unfortunately, it wasn't visible in the gulf coast region.

I went with two 2x converters, one 3x converter, and the Canon 200m f4. After the APS-C sensor crop factor, that gave me the equivalent of a 2100mm lens. Here's the result.

Good magnification, poor detail.

The lens in the Canon > Nikon converter really causes a lot of distortion and loss of detail. It's very disappointing.

Take a look at one of my friend's shots with a 400m f4 and a 1.4x converter.

Yes, he probably had a slight benefit not having to shoot through the pollution of the Houston skies, but you can tell his shot is much sharper than mine.

Now to ponder, would I get better detail and focus with a mirrorless camera that doesn't need glass in the adapter or are Canon FD lenses just not that great?

Maybe I should buy an NEX-7 to find out ...

Free iphone tethering ... sort of

2011-11-30T08:46:00.000-05:00

Free data tethering programs for the iPhone have been around since it was first jailbroken. I was using MyWi for a while, but due to corporate security issues, I had to lock my phone back down to test Good Messaging as a Lotus Notes app. Being grandfathered into AT&T's unlimited data plan, I've been hesitant to start paying an extra $15 a month for the 4GB data plan with tethering.

But just as I was about to give in to the data caps, iTether suddenly appears in the iTunes app store. Yes, Apple allowed a tethering program into the app store. For $17 (which is less than the cost of MyWi) you can tether your iPhone to a computer via a USB cable.

That's not quite as good as turning your phone into a mobile hotspot, but when you're in the field and have got to get photos from your camera to a computer to the Internet, it will work.

I tested it last night and had no issues with installation or setup.

Sadly, iTether has already disappeared from the app store this morning.

Leica nature

2011-11-29T09:39:00.003-05:00

I spent the week of Thanksgiving visiting my parents in Kansas. There's not much excitement in Kansas, but the rural nature of Independence gave me the chance to practice something I seldom get to practice in Houston -- nature photography.

The Leica M isn't particularly known for nature photography, probably because the longest lens that works with the rangefinder is 135mm. I had an Elmarit 135mm f2.8 with goggles on my M8. The 1.33x crop of the M8 APS-H sensor gives you the equivalent of a 179mm lens. That's still not a very long lens. It's similar to a 6x zoom on a point-and-shoot camera. The upside to the lens is that it's fast, so you can catch those early morning low-light shots. (Of course, the fact that the M8's highest usable ISO is only 640 kind of negates the gains of the fast lens, but what can you do?)

The goggles on the Elmarit are both a blessing and curse. On one hand, the lens pulls up the 90mm focus lines and the goggles magnify the focus area. Those are good things. The M8 doesn't even have 135mm focus lines, so those two factors make framing and focusing much easier. On the downside, the M8 mount protrudes slightly from the camera while film M mounts sit flush with the body. This moves the goggles away from the rangefinder windows, which creates just the slightest bit of backfocus. It's easy to compensate once you realize it's there, but it would be nice if these vintage goggled lenses worked better on the M8 and M9 -- especially the 50mm Summicron Dual-Range, which sadly, doesn't work at all on the digital Ms.

I spent three very cold mornings waiting on wildlife to show. It was a bit frustrating since the deer seemed to enjoy early morning grazing around 6 a.m., but it wasn't light enough to shoot anything until 7 a.m. I managed a few shots, though.

Then there was the not-so-wildlife that I caught with my 28mm Ultron ...

And then there was the highlight of Dixie Belle's trip -- the field mouse she proudly caught and refused to spit out.

Nothing like a dog running around with a mouse in its mouth to keep all the ladies screaming.

Solar Fail

2011-11-17T16:43:00.000-05:00

I started my correspondence with Don from DAG Camera Repair in Wisconsin a couple weeks ago when I was searching for someone to repair the focus shift in my VC Nokton 50mm f1.1. After realizing I only had two options in the U.S. to get this lens fixed, I thought, maybe the world needs more skilled Leica and Voigtlander repair persons. I thought, maybe my passion lies in repairing these old cameras.

It doesn't.

Talk about a frustrating job -- I spent almost six hours last Friday with a repair manual, meticulously taking apart a Leicameter.

My goal was to bring the Leicameter back to life by replacing the dead selenium cell with a new silicon solar cell. It seemed like a straightforward, achievable task. Unfortunately the little wires on the galvanometer are so thin I can barely see them at all.

I finally got the circuit hooked up with the new cell ...

... only to find it still didn't work.

I'm going to give it one more shot using a couple photo cells to see if that works better than the solar cell, but I now see why nobody is bothering to fix these old things.

I tried to pick up both an old M2 and an old Leicaflex on eBay that needed repair to see if I could bring either one of those cameras back to life, but some idiots seem to think dead Leicas are still worth over $200. My experimentation and repair budget maxes out at $25.

I'm hoping my lens made it to DAG. I'm sad that I won't have it for Thanksgiving, but hopefully it will be back in time for Christmas.

Off to DAG

2011-11-10T09:31:00.000-05:00

I spent at least an hour Tuesday night and took nearly 200 photos just focusing, unfocusing, refocusing, testing, moving, retesting the Nokton 50mm f1.1. I wanted to be absolutely sure that it was the lens with the problem, not my usage of it or my M8.

Even at f2.8, there was noticeable backfocus while my 90mm Elmarit f2.8 was spot on. However, by the end of the evening, I was pretty adept at focusing and then unfocusing just enough to get a good photo.

The amount of backfocus changes gradually from 1m to infinity, so with near-focus objects I have to make quite the correction by turning the focus ring several degrees clockwise. It takes less and less correction as the objects get further away. Past 25 feet or so and I can just focus normally.

However, all the practice paid off yesterday because I managed to pull off most of the shots.

Today the lens gets shipped off to DAG in Wisconsin for adjustment. Let's hope they can make it as good as new.

Back focus frustration

2011-11-08T17:11:00.001-05:00

My Voigtlander Cosina 50mm f1.1 back focus problem continues.

The guy at Professional Camera Repair was very nice, but he couldn't find anything wrong with the lens after an outward inspection and didn't want to open the lens because while he is Leica certified, he is not Voigtlander certified. Despite the fact that I assured him the lens had worked fine for months before developing the back focus problem, he still thought it was a factory defect.

I contacted DAG and CameraQuest for info on repair costs. Don at DAG has been very communicative and friendly, but I haven't heard an estimate. Stephen at CameraQuest has been a bit curt and requested a check for $250 + $15 return shipping just to look at the lens with a disclaimer that it will probably be $400 to fix it. (He also threw in a threat of yet another $200 to "reset the helical focusing" if the lens was a "victim of an amateur repair attempt.")

$250+ to fix this lens when I've only owned it for 3.5 months is a real kick in the nuts. I paid $860 for it used even though it was less than a year old. If I had just paid the $1k for it new, I would be covered under warranty. So far my 28mm Voigtlander Ultron hasn't had any problems, but I'm glad I do have a warranty on it.

Most video lenses actually have a back focus adjustment. It's basically a section that screws in or out to move the lens elements closer/further to the mounting collar. A very similar solution could be easily fabricated by adding shims under the mounting collar of the Nokton, but I don't know if it would still focus correctly at infinity.

The most educated guess I've heard as to what went wrong with this lens was from one of the moderators at the Leica User Forum. He says Voigtlander lenses have shims for each lens element and that one of the interior shims must have slipped out of place.

I've got a big shoot tomorrow with the specific request for shallow depth of field, so I'm going to try to overcompensate for the back focus and get it done before I send the lens off Thursday.

Whether I go with DAG or CameraQuest, looks like the soonest I can expect to see the lens again is Christmas.

I really need to become a camera tech. There obviously are not enough good ones in the United States.

Still stuck in port

2011-11-07T11:12:00.001-05:00

A new raw water impeller arrived for the Starwind last week. I installed it Sunday morning with the hope it would solve our cooling problem. I was a bit annoyed that the new impeller didn't come with a paper gasket, but thankfully we had a couple sheets of construction paper left in the galley cabinets after the last gasket making incident.

The new impeller worked great. Everything seemed good. I had great waterflow. Running at full throttle in the slip, I couldn't get the boat over 175 degrees. We decided to take a test run, so I put the aft berth back together and secured everything.

As soon as we pulled out of the slip, the water flow in the exhaust completely disappeared. We were blowing white smoke/steam before we got out of the marina. I turned it around and put her back in the slip.

I checked the strainer and found a fish flopping around in the catch basket. It was a tiny fish, though, so that didn't explain the sudden loss of water flow.

I had to take a break to let the heat exchanger cool down and to ponder my next move.

After two weekends of troubleshooting, the only thing I hadn't checked was the heat exchanger tubes, which I'd just cleaned last February. I set about pulling it apart. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was still clean as a whistle. There was no solution found.

My latest theory is that there's some sort of a big flap of algae and barnacle growth over the raw water inlet. When I'm sitting at the dock, water flows fine. When I move, it flips the flap of algae up over the inlet and chokes off all my raw water flow.

I've got the heat exchanger at home for a scrubbing and reassembly and a diver stopping by to scrub the hull. Hopefully this will be resolved by next weekend.

Focus Calibration

2011-11-02T16:25:00.000-04:00

I'd been using my Leica M8 with a Voigtlander Cosina Nokton 50mm f1.1 for portraits and headshots for the past few months with great results. I'd shoot at f1.4, and it would really pull the subject away from the background.

Then last week, I snapped some new headshots of a COO, and when I flipped back through them, they were blurry. Instead of his eyes being sharp, his ears were sharp.

I thought maybe I screwed up the focus, so I just scheduled a re-shoot. Fuzzy again. I switched over to my Nikon D7000 with a sick feeling in my stomach.

I did a quick focus test in my office. Here's a crop of my results.

I was focusing on the center dart. The Nokton was suddenly giving me at least an inch of back focus at f1.

I ran the same test with my other lenses. The 28mm Ultron and the 90mm Elmarit checked out ok, but the 135mm Elmarit was also back focusing.

I only found one place in Houston that works on Leicas, Professional Camera Repair, located on Richmond Avenue.

I made a run over there at lunch, and the owner took a look at my lenses. He warned me that the Nokton was known for having a factory defect that caused back focusing. I assured him that it was working correctly just a week ago. He said that since my other lenses were focusing correctly, he didn't need the M8 and that he would check the 50mm and the 135mm and let me know what he found sometime next week.

I guess a week is better than three months in Solms.

Uninspired

2011-10-26T12:29:00.000-04:00

I feel like I haven't take a good photo in weeks. I've been doing some massive branding and integration projects at work and haven't had time to set up any shoots in the evenings. I also haven't come up with any good shoot ideas. I'm just feeling generally uninspired.

A couple weeks ago I decided to pull out the M3 and bring it to an Octoberfest celebration. The photos turned out horrible. I don't know if the iPhone meter was off, if the shutter speed on the M3 has started having problems, or if I just sucked. Anyway, the results of the few photos that actually came out were very depressing.

Blah. Depressing.

The raw water conundrum

2011-10-18T16:31:00.000-04:00

It was a beautiful weekend at the marina.

The intense heat of the Houston summer had finally abated, and we slept in the V-berth sans air-conditioner for the first time since April.

Although I'd seen tiny, ethereal jellies from time to time, this was the first time I'd ever seen large cabbagehead jellyfish undulating along the bulkheads. I assume it's because the normally brackish water of Clear Lake has gotten saltier and saltier as the Texas drought has continued.

Due to various combinations of high winds, low tides and busy schedules, we hadn't been sailing in over a month, so I was excited to get out on the water Sunday morning. Unfortunately, as we started motoring out of the marina, the raw water flow disappeared and white steam started rising from the exhaust.

I watched the temperature rising past 180 degrees f as we made our way to the channel, so I turned the boat around and made it back to the dock just as it was passing 200.

The troubleshooting began with the raw water strainer. The basket did have an assortment of barnacles and other strange looking clams or whatnot inside, but not enough to be restricting water flow, so I dumped it and proceeded to check the impeller. The impeller, which is less than two years old, still looked like new. However, opening the pump housing did cause a 30-minute delay while I came up with some paper and a razor blade to cut a new paper gasket.

I blew back through the raw water line with no trouble and could hear the bubbles flowing out from under the boat. I ran a test, but there was no improvement.

Next I pulled the mixing elbow off the exhaust. It did have some carbon build-up but nothing extreme enough that I thought it would have hindered exhaust pressure or caused a hot spot that could be steaming the water. Even so, I spent another half an hour chipping and scrubbing out the carbon before putting it back together. No improvement.

The heat exchanger itself never cooled down enough for me to drain it, and I wasn't in the mood to wait around, so I left that for next weekend.

Either I have some very clogged tubing in the heat exchanger or as several people suggested on cruisersforum.com, the metal center of the impeller has become separated from the rubber, so under high RPMs, the metal is just spinning and the rubber is not.

Guess I'll continue my troubleshooting next weekend, but such is the life of a boat owner.

Frankenstein's Camera

2011-10-18T15:33:00.000-04:00

Call me a hoarder if you want, but I hate throwing things away. I've had my Canon AE-1 Program since I was about 13 years old. It saw heavy use through the 1990s, but has sat more or less untouched since I started shooting digital in 2001.

Talk of the new Sony NEX-7 and it's adaptability to be used with such a wide range of lenses got me thinking, if I invest in the Sony, I'd be able to carry one camera that could use my Leica, my Nikon, and my old Canon FD lenses. Of course, the Sony isn't available for at least another month, so I thought, hmmm, I wonder if there's a Canon FD to Nikon adapter mount available. Turns out, there is.

Turns out, Canon FD glass is also super cheap on eBay because Canon abandoned that mount for the EOS mount decades ago.

I decided to get a little crazy with the telephoto action.

My latest toy consists of a Canon FD 200m f4 ($70), a 3x teleconverter ($10), and a Canon FD to Nikon adapter ($15).

That's 3 x 200mm x 1.5 crop factor = 900mm f16 for under $100.

Extreme zoom but a bit undwieldy without a tripod.

I'm trying to decide if it's worth picking up a Canon FD 500mm mirror lens for another test.

Focusing on the Nikon is a bit touchy since there's no prism in the viewfinder. I think it would be easier on the Sony since they've implemented focus peaking.

Sadly, there is no FD to EOS adapter, so you still can't use these legacy Canon lenses on a digital Canon camera.

An engorged iPhone

2011-10-18T15:18:00.000-04:00

I upgraded to the iPhone 4 last spring, but I kept the 3GS around for use on my boat. The Navionics app stores all the charts in memory, so even if you have no wireless service connected to the phone, you still get a chart and GPS positioning. It worked great ... until it stopped holding charge.

I took it to the Apple store for repair and they said that due to the fact that the battery had inflated, there was no way to repair it or put a new battery in it. You could actually see stretch marks on the back of the engorged phone's casing that had appeared overnight while I was trying to charge it.

When I took the phone apart, here's what the battery actually looked like!

This is apparently a known problem with pouch batteries, but there is no definitive cause for the failure.

They call me the fireman

2011-09-26T17:35:00.002-04:00

Cooking devices don't get much simpler than the Origo non-pressurized alcohol stove. You pour the denatured alcohol into the cans and light it on fire. The fire is contained in a recessed metal pan with a grill on top. Seems safe enough, right?

I only stay at the boat once a week, so the problem I have with my stove is that if I fill up the canisters with alcohol, it evaporates away before I get the chance to use it again. That loss of alcohol means it costs me $15 each time I want to use the stove UNLESS, I pour in JUST ENOUGH alcohol to get my meal cooked and my coffee boiled, so that none goes to waste.

Being a frugal sailor isn't always being a safe sailor. I slightly underestimated the amount of alcohol I needed Saturday morning, and the burner under my coffee quit just before it started percolating. I thought, "no biggie, the coffee will be a little late," and moved it over the other burner once I had finished flipping pancakes. However, after I moved it, that burner also started petering out.

I now had one supposedly dead canister and one barely lit canister. I thought, I'll just add a bit more alcohol to the dead one (because only a FOOL would pour more fuel into the lit one), and light it back up to finish the coffee.

I'd been pouring for a second or two when there was a sudden flash. There were flames all over the galley counters. I stepped back and realized there were flames shooting out of the alcohol container in my hand. I promptly threw it out of the hatch and heard a loud sizzle as it hit the water. The plastic dish rack was also aflame and melting quickly, so I grabbed it and tossed it overboard as well. I then doused the remaining flames burning on the surface of the countertop with water.

The worst of the damage was a dozen little burned spots on the new upholstery beside the galley and having the entire front half of my hair singed. The lessons learned were:
a) Don't be cheap with the alcohol when filling the stove.
b) If a burner goes out while making coffee, just deal with not having coffee and try again tomorrow.

Never ever pour denatured alcohol into a hot origo stove, and always have water or a fire extinguisher on-hand in the galley!

Tropical Storm Lee

2011-09-26T17:09:00.000-04:00

Hurricane season is almost over. We have one month left, but I think Tropical Storm Lee, which came through Saturday, Sept. 3, was the worst storm that the Texas Gulf Coast is going to get this year.

I was at the marina when Lee arrived with the strange red sky that only shows up with hurricane weather.

The live-aboards at the marina weren't worried. Most of those tough old sailors have ridden out far worse.

The rain started at dusk. Thankfully the horribly ugly fiberglass work I did on my air conditioner box proved to be waterproof. The wind shook me awake during the wee hours of the morning. The boat was shaking hard. I suddenly realized why I needed to replace the yacht braid I was using for dock lines with something that has more stretch.

Once I got used to the shaking and jerking, it was back to sleep. In the morning I found this.

The north wind had pushed all the water out into the bay and dropped the tide by over five feet during the night. We suddenly had a beach at the entrance of the marina. The crab traps in Clear Lake were sitting half exposed with their tethered white floats lying on top of them.

I pulled one up to find this guy. The storm didn't save him from somebody's boiling pot.

As I walked along the newly formed beach, so many things were exposed. There were chunks of a fiberglass hull and a few seat cushions buried in the sand. Of course, there was a ton of fishing line, hooks, lures and bobbers tangled among rocks and weeds.

I found another crab hunkered down in a half-buried bucket waiting for the tide to return.

I know that in some places the tides change more than this every day and leave boats that were floating sitting high and dry. However, here in Texas where I've never seen it change more than a foot or two, this was an interesting experience. I never realized the wind could have that much effect on the water depth.

RIP desktop

2011-09-13T10:46:00.004-04:00

I knew the time was growing near. That's the entire reason I bought the Dell XPS laptop a few months ago. However, this weekend my desktop finally gave up the ghost. I can revive it for an hour or so before it starts perpetually rebooting itself, but then it suddenly can't detect any hard drives. I finally migrated iTunes and all my working photo files to the notebook last night. I can't decide if I'm going to disassemble and part out the tower or if I should spend the time and money to Frankenstein it back to life again. Thankfully I was prepared for this scenario, so the only sad part about losing the machine is that I was using it as a media box and BD player in the bedroom. Guess I'll just have to watch Blu-Rays in the living room.