Minolta 70W Riva Zoom – Results

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Icy Roaring Brook

I described my experience using my February film camera in February film camera – Minolta 70W Riva Zoom. I now have the results back so how did it come out?

First I was right that the first six frames had been taken by the friend who have given me the camera. There was a nice picture of a young woman sitting in a pool of light, playing with some toys; a picture of my friend’s father; and a quite spectacular picture of my friend with a very colorful, almost psychedelic vignette. I don’t even know how you’d achieve this effect. It looks like lens flare or a light leak, but it extends around all of the edges of the frame. The final three pictures included another, less successful, picture of the woman in the pool of light and a couple of pictures attempting to capture fast moving kids.

On to the pictures I took. I mentioned in the earlier post that the film was old. My friends’ pictures confirmed this. However, I don’t think it was as old as I thought it was i.e. probably more like 15 years than 25 years. I think the age had caused some deterioration of the film itself with some of the negatives showing actual damage. There were also some strange colors. At first I thought this was also because of the age, but then I came across a frame that had been taken in bright sunlight and the colors were fine. I’m guessing that the very contrasty, snowy content of most of the pictures was too much for this camera. The bright snow probably caused the camera to badly underexpose and the combination of the likely budget film (Black’s Astral) and the attempt to recover the underexposure caused the poor colors/contrast. Anyway I wasn’t able to correct the colors, so I decided to convert the images to black and white. The results are below. Not the best I’ve ever seen, but not the worst either. I imagine that for the point and shoot audience for which it as intended i.e. taking snapshots outside in sunny weather it was probably adequate as long as you don’t take it out of its comfort zone.

Using it was a fun experiment, but I don’t see myself taking it out again.

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Rocks in the Cove

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Sign outside our neighbors house. Ironic because of my fondness for the beverage.

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Rocks in the snow

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Twigs in the snow

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Icy Stream

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The Cove

Snow over the lake

by Posted in Black & White, Landscapes, Tamron A18 AF 18-250mm f3.5-6.3 Leave a comment
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From the bright sunlight and the vivid colors of the preceding post: Temple, Yangon, Myannmar we return to the gloom of Winter in NY State.

Since this last snowfall we’ve had a few cold, windy, but essentially sunny days. Tomorrow will be in a similar vein. But then on Tuesday we have one of the infamous Nor’easters passing by. As of today (Sunday) we should expect, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA) at least 8 inches of snow; most likely 16 inches; and a potential 23 inches. This will be the largest snowfall of the season (at least so far) and we’re only about a week away from Spring. Crazy Weather!

Taken from our patio with a Sony Alpha 500 DSLR with Tamron A18 AF 18-250mm f3.5-6.3 LD Di II.

Snow patterns on our patio

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Our last snow fall came after a period of abnormally warm weather so the ground was quite warm. This meant that initially the snow stuck mostly on the grassy/mossy areas rather than on the paved areas. From this arose these interesting snow patterns. As the snow continued I imagine the paved areas cooled down and eventually the snow was sticking to them too and everything became white.

Happy Traum at the Tompkins Corners Cultural Center

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I’d never heard of Happy Traum, but the events at the Tompkins Corners Cultural Center (TCCC) (see also: Tompkins Corners Cultural Center; Latino music festival at Tompkins Corners Cultural Center; David Amram Quintet at Tompkins Corners Cultural Center) are usually worth going do so when my wife mentioned that this was taking place we decided to go. She also alerted our friends George and Gloria, which turned out to be a wise move as George has a particular connection with Happy Traum and had not known that the concert was taking place.

George is a real folk afficiando (he’s particularly fond of Bob Dylan) and has, as far as I can tell, a virtually encyclopedic knowledge of folk, blues and possibly other musical genres. Mr. Traum plays a particularly important role in George’s life as the featured performer in the first folk concert he attended.

So George was excited to go to the concert and told us that he would pick us up at 7:00pm for the 7:30 start. They arrived early and we chatted for a bit while my wife finished getting ready. Consequently, when we left I forgot to take a camera so we only had access to our iphones. My old iphone 5s didn’t do a great job in the gloom of the former church. My wife’s iphone 6 did better, but not as well as I could have done with one of my other cameras. Still it’s better than having no record at all.

I very much enjoyed the concert. The first part was Mr. Traum playing the guitar and singing. This was followed by a short intermission and then an entertaining audio-visual presentation by Mr. Traum on the Folk Music Revival of the 1950s and 1960s of which he was very much a part. I was surprised to learn that Mr. Traum, as a member of the New World Singers, was involved in the first recordings of Blowin’ in the Wind, and Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright. Bob Dylan also performed in the band, but because he was under contract to another label could not use his real name. So he appeared on these recordings as Blind Boy Grunt. John Cohen (see John Cohen at L. Parker Stephenson Photographs in New York), also an important figure in the Folk Music Revival was also at the concert (he lives close by and has been heavily involved in the creation and ongoing work of the TCCC). He introduced Mr. Traum and added the occasional insight during the presentation.

Here Mr. Traum sings a song involving ‘robber baron’ Jay Gould, whose mausoleum (see: Woodlawn Cemetery – Dr. Dunlop, his parrot and magic boots) we had recently bumped into in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and whose house (see: House of Dark Shadows) we had often visited in Tarrytown, NY.