The Neighbourhood: flowers and memory.

Ever get that feeling you can't remember colours?......Recently I strolled around the neighbourhood experimenting with my old Pentax SLR and colour negative film.

The negatives were scanned into digital format, and I played around with brightness, colour balance, etc. One picture was of a red-leaved variegated shrub, adjacent to a large cycad.

When I came to adjust the photo, I just couldn't get the red leaves right: were they like this?....



No, that looks almost purple! What about this:




Still not right. Eventually I came down to something like it:




Should be OK? This afternoon it was overcast and drizzly, and I walked past the same spot -- thinking again, did I really get it right?!

Camera Workshop.

In mid-February, usually our hottest, most humid month, it's been pouring all day, the temperature at 20°C. This morning I dressed as usual for summer, in T-shirt and shorts: I've been out to the shops, and had to get out a waterproof jacket, it's warmer inside than out there! Most unseasonal. My logo of Old Sol will have to be changed for -- what? --an umbrella maybe. Sunny South Africa indeed!

Having to be indoors for a day prompted me to get down to fixing some old cameras. This apartment is small, so I set up the workshop in the bedroom:



The cameras on the table are two Pentax MX's and the old Spotmatic. A friend has offered to give me one of the MX's, but the one I want had lost its foam seals and mirror buffer. I was at first flummoxed by this, I couldn't even start looking for these materials here; however a search of the web turned up an enthusiast in Dallas, USA, who actually sells a repair kit for these old SLR models for only $10! A week later the envelope arrived -- strips of all the rightfoam materials for seals, plus detailed instructions about doing the job. Over the years the foam material -- rubber? -- has turned into a sticky tar-like substance, jamming the mirror and leaving the film door unprotected. Removing the sticky stuff was a mission: I've never done this before, and the tarry mess has been extremely difficult to scrape out. I was naturally a bit cautious about working on these cameras, but eventually I just dug the stuff out with toothpicks, screwdriver and tweezers, after trying to soften it with benzine and chemical cleaner. Fortunately those instruments were very solidly built, but the film door seals are recessed in a groove less than 1mm wide. I also had to take the focussing screen out (gingerly) as the stuff had stuck to it. I now have even greater respect for Japanese camera makers -- these models date back to the 1960's; the Spotmatic was one of the first TTL meter cameras.

Here I'm being careful, before things got really tough!

At this stage I've cleaned out most of the gunge, and next have to start the precise work -- cutting the new material and sticking it in place. This is not a job to be done in haste!

In the meantime, just for interest, I lined up all of the various equipment that I have in the apartment. From left to right they are;

two Pentax MX's with a couple of lenses;
Pentax Spotmatic with its standard lens;
Fuji S3500 (my first digital camera), on a mini-tripod;
a vintage Canon FT, with some telephoto and wide angle lenses,
and a couple of spacers and adaptors.

Next, two of my three: the Spotmatic, and the blunt-snouted Nikon D40 on a Sony tripod, new acquisitions. It's interesting to compare the old and new: the Nikon is bulky but quite light, as much of it is plastic. The old Pentax is heavier, but it is very solidly built, and a pleasure to use. It's a hassle, of course to get film processed and scanned into digital format, but I've found it rewarding to go back and experiment with that medium. And by the by, I wondered if that Nikon will still be operating in 40 years' time!




The old Canon is also in good working order, it's been left with me by a friend, for safe-keeping. It also has an early TTL metering system.

The Neighbourhood: Campus.

I live about a block away from the local University campus. Now called the University of KwaZulu-Natal, or "UKZN", the institution is spread over four campuses: Pietermaritzburg, Durban-Westville, Edgewood College of Education and the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine (Durban).

The University was established in about 1922 as the Natal University College, with degrees awarded by the University of South Africa. Later the University became an independent entity, the University of Natal, awarding its own degrees. The buildings were spread over campuses in Pietermaritzburg and Durban. The School of Medicine (now re-named after Nelson Mandela) was attached to the Durban campus, but located on a different site.

I often go along there and stroll around the campus, to escape the traffic noise and congestion. Sometimes I visit the library; as a graduate I'm able to read reference material, but not to borrow. Recently I've taken my old Pentax camera along to try it out: the following photos are just some of the buildings on the older part of the campus.

The Old Main Building (1922).
I attended lectures and tutorials here in 1959.

View from the Old Main Building, across the city to the hills beyond.

The womens' residences

The Science Lecture Theatre.

The Cecil Renaud Library, recently modernised.

I trust you have enjoyed this brief tour of a small part of my home town. Everything is nice and green now, as it's summer down here, and there has been a generous fall of rain!

The Neighbourhood: Pride of India.

Before the recent wet spell, I went out on a sunny day to capture these Pride of Indias lining two of the streets in this neighbourhood. They made a fine show of colour. The rain brought down some of the flowers. And here is a small Hibiscus, just for fun!

The pictures were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic film camera, as a trial; I have not used film for ten years. The negs were diditized using a Canon 4200F scanner & Picture Window Pro.

Welcome, Old Sol.

The sun came out after two solid days of rain: time to get some laundry out to dry.

On a more pleasant note, many of the streets around this neighbourhood are lined with flowering trees. Before the rain, the Pride of India came into full bloom, a lovely pattern of pink-mauve-purple flowers. I took the above with the old Pentax film camera. The gardens and grass are all green, and all's right with the little world near here, before that summer sun gets REALLY hot again! No time for more, I am behind-hand with a lot of things -- who said retired folk were lazy.................?

Trapped

A second day of pouring rain! A wet weather system has lingered over the country for days, and heavy rain and flooding are reported; warnings about using certain roads have been broadcast. In an average January, the sun would be blazing, temperature about 35+°, and maybe a short, sharp thunderstorm by evening. Ho-hum, Ive got lots of things to catch up on without going out in it!
A couple of weeks ago an article in the local paper described how a lady's pet ridgeback had been caught in a wire snare, and survived for ten days; the injury to the leg resulted in gangrene, and the leg had to be amputated, but the dog is fine. Pet dogs and cats do remarkably well on three legs. The story brought to mind a similar incident that happened long ago while on holiday on the Natal coast, and I've copied here a letter to the newspaper, which they were kind enough to publish last week:

The Editor, The Witness:

Dear Sir,

The moving story about C____ P____’s pet (The Witness 16 January ) struck a chord with me. In the early 1950’s my family, with pets, spent the Christmas holidays at a cottage near the beach at Umzumbe*. At that time the dune forest was still extensive and dense. One day our little black Dachshund disappeared, and after some searching we heard his faint yelps from somewhere in the bush. My father, my sister and I began to search. Barefoot, dressed in T-sirts and shorts, we were scratched to ribbons, the bush was incredibly thick and overgrown. I just couldn’t home in on the yelping, but after much searching I found the dachsie, his foot caught in a vicious toothed jaw-trap. With some difficulty (I was only a teenager) I managed to depress the strong spring sufficiently to release the foot, and our pet was carried back to the cottage and we then trekked to the Port Shepstone vet. By some miracle, the toothed jaws had closed between the fine bones of the foot, and the little chap was only badly bruised.

We up-rooted the stake to which the trap was fixed, and took it to the Umtentweni Police Station, where they assured us it would be kept for a statutory period and then destroyed. It was not the first they had seen. Those traps were set to catch the tiny Upiti and Blue Duikers, which in those days were still plentiful in the coast bush: we saw many around the cottage all the years we went there.

Regards,

Ian Buchan.

30 years later, about 1982, we returned to the cottage for a holiday: this was the view from the porch towards the beach. In the 1950's much of the area of lawn was covered with dune forest, which greww much closer to the porch, leaving just a narrow path to the beach.

The cottage as we found it in 1982. In the early days we often slept on the proch, the susurration of the Indian Ocean surf lulling us to sleep. Before 5:00am the sun would rise over the ocean, tempting us for a dawn bathe.

* For those unfamiliar with South African place-names, these are the original Zulu names; just pronounce them phonetically -- it's difficult to explain! The U- sound is 'oo' as in 'room'. The Zulu names for most of the rivers draining to the Indian Ocean were adopted by the settlers, and were often onomatopoeic or commemorated some legendary event. Port Shepstone is the exception - Sir Theophilus Shepstone was a notable, if controversial, figure in Natal colonial history.

Thought on a rainy day.

On cold, rainy day in January -- when it's normally 30+° and dangerous UV rays -- I'm busy with things I feel should be done, but I've just remembered this little line from something read in the past (goodness, I am getting idle, can't even think up an original phrase!):

"....the pen is mightier than the sword, otherwise we'd all be taking fencing lessons....."

I did however. take the time to look up the original; with apologies to Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, I trust he wouldn't mind this momentary lapse of good sense.