Blog: Powerlines

A bike ride with the Olympus 35 SP

2021-01-30 by Jim

I just got a new camera and was eager to try it out, so what better way than to get on my bike and ride Hwy 1A. Except that it snowed last night. The going was slow and slippery, even with studded tires, and it made me appreciate the effort that goes into plowing roads, even when there's only an inch of snow on the road. I got to the location where I had noted some decommissioned power lines and got off my bike and headed down the hillside toward the tracks. It was steep and I almost turned back, but found some animal tracks, so followed them down safely. I walked along the tracks until I got to the first decrepit power pole and got out my new camera. It's a rangefinder with a leaf shutter and operates very differently than an SLR. After focusing, and figuring out the exposure, I snapped the photo. It was not a very authoritative "click." It made me wonder whether a photo was taken, and whether the camera worked at all. So I decided to do manual exposures and that gave me a little more confidence that I was actually taking pictures.

Later on, I noticed a train approaching slowly. By the time it was heading by, I realized it was a some sort of maintenance train. It was short, had a small engine, and had a few cars that were cooking up something awful--maybe tar or some other substance to keep the railway ties in good order. It smelled bad and looked worse. By the time I could get my camera out, it had gone by, followed by 3 pickup trucks riding the rails. I generally don't think about rail maintenance, but it needs to happen. The railway is one of those things that used to be civilian friendly as it was the primary means of getting places afar. But these days, it's just a means for hauling cargo, and the public tolerates it. Less understood is how important it is to our current economy. Without it, Alberta wouldn't be able to sell all its grain, oil, potash, and coal.

But it does come with a cost--including whatever toxic substance that maintenance train was spewing out.

A bike ride with the Brownie

2021-01-27 by Jim

My Kodak Brownie camera was feeling neglected, so I took it with me on a bike ride around Tunnel mountain. But before that, I stopped at the Cascade power plant and snapped a couple of pictures, then took a couple of double exposures mirroring the road. The trail was icy and fast, and the ride was fun as always. I got to the place where the powerlines crossed the highway from the power plant and composed and shot the power poles with the surge tower in the distance. The camera itself is unassuming, has a soft "click" when taking photos, and has no exposure controls, relying instead on the latitude of the film to make up for any errors in exposure.

Using the Brownie has its challenges. The 120 film roll has to be modified to fit into 220 format, or rolled onto a 220 roll to fit into the Brownie. Then, the wide film is difficult to roll onto developing reels without kinking. It took around 10 minutes to feed this roll onto the reel. Developing takes twice the amount of developer, and the negatives need to be scanned individually because the variation in the exposures.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, because this is a Brownie camera after all, with a single plastic lens, which has distortion, flare, and only the center of the photo is somewhat sharp. I learned a new commandment after seeing the photos: "Thou shalt not take pictures of vertical lines near the edges with a Brownie." And I remembered an old one: "Thou shalt only view these pictures in Brownie format," which is on photo paper, 3" square, with a 1/4" white border. Anything more and the imperfections of the camera are magnified, and subject to scrutiny. So I'm not sure what I'll do with these photos. I'll print them on paper for sure, 3" square. And they may end up on this site.