Unearthing old and/or presumed lost cameras, a lens and rolls of color film

The last two posts here were dedicated to the digitization of color film prints I'd had made of pictures taken to Texas and Cooperstown, N.Y., in the 1990s. I'd found the pictures -- which I hadn't set eyes on in probably 15-20 years -- in heretofore unopened boxes packed for our move from Indianapolis to Raleigh three years ago.

I also found some other sentimental photography stuff, such as four rolls of unused color 35mm film, packed securely in the plastic containers they came in. I must have bought a bunch at one time when they were on sale back in the late 1990s, when I was still using a film camera.

Three of the rolls are Kodak GOLD 200 ASA 24 exposure rolls; the fourth is Scotch ASA 200 24 exposures. The Scotch and one of the Kodak rolls are pictured at right. Not sure where or why I picked up the Scotch; I don't really remember ever using Scotch film before (or even remember that Scotch made camera film), but there it was.

The film reminded me that in some other unopened box from the 2017 move I should find some forgotten camera gear, such as the film camera I last used when I returned to my photography hobby in the late 1990s. After searching for a bit more in the detached garage, I found the Canon Rebel G. But that wasn't all.

I also found two digital compact cameras -- a Canon PowerShot G12 (lead-off photo and photos above and right) and Pentax Optio Z10 (below) -- as well as a Canon FS10 digital video camera, and, wonder of wonders, the long-lost Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD crop-factor lens that I'd acquired for my Canon 7D camera body, which has an APS-C sensor of 1.6. It was a lens I thought I had lost a good five or six years ago or so. But, since I've used my Canon 6D camera body almost exclusively since acquiring it in 2013, I hadn't had an urgent need to find or get my hands on that 18-280mm crop factor lens. Besides, I'd bought at Tamron 28-300 f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens for the 6D, and it can be used on the 7D as well. 

I spent the next day and a half cleaning dust and smudges off the compact cameras and video camera, inventorying the accessories with each of the cameras, then taking steps to replace key missing pieces. For example, I found no CR123 batteries for the Rebel G, no battery charging dock for the G12, no charger and cord for the Optio Z10 and no charging cord for the FS10 digital video camera. I didn't worry too much about the FS10, but I spent about a half-hour hunting around on the Internet looking for the missing parts for the other cameras, found and bought them all eventually and sent for them. Of course, no sooner had they all arrived when I actually did find the charging dock for the G12, but ... it doesn't hurt to have a backup, I guess.

After getting the G12 battery recharged, I actually went out and did a shoot on the property with it one day last week. It worked just fine, and I'll present some pictures from it in the next post. It had been so long since I used it, I could not immediately find the zoom control on the built-in lens. It wasn't that important, though; for the first shoot, I just moved forward or backward to compose.

I will say this much, though; the camera in my iPhone 11 is more versatile, lighter, and delivers more pop in the pictures. Additionally, I can quickly edit photos in the iPhone 11 and upload them to my SmugMug galleries in short order. With the G12 (or most other cameras), I have to upload the pictures to my PC and edit them in Photoshop Elements before preparing them for gallery uploading. Sadly, I think the G12 is a dinosaur among today's technology. It's video is still decent quality, but then ... so is the iPhone's. The Opti Z10 and Rebel G are obsolete as well, but I'm still going to try and tinker with each at some point in the weeks ahead.

And hey, with the Rebel G, I have all that film to use. I hope there is a place somewhere in Raleigh that still processes film, though.

Above is the Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens I thought I had lost. The first three photos below are different views of the Canon FS10 digital video camera I haven't used at least since I got my first iPhone in 2012. 

Above and below are shots of the Canon Rebel G film camera. 

First visit to Brown County State Park

On Oct. 14, I posted some pictures from a visit to charming Nashville, Ind. The excursion stuck on my mind so positively, I returned to Nashville the following weekend not only to tour more of the shops there, but more importantly, to brave the stampede headed to one of Indiana's most popular autumn tourist attractions, Brown County State Park.

It was my first visit to the park; I'd been to Nashville and its shops at least eight or so times, but I'd never ventured to the park, which is on the town's southern fringe.

This is an expansive park, as the map will show if you follow the link (scroll down to the bottom). So I knew I wouldn't get to see much of it. I brought along my circular polarizing filter to use on my Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di PZD VD lens and Canon 7D. So I decided to find an area near water and concentrate on that.

The park has two lakes -- Ogle and Strahl -- and each is surrounded by a pedestrian trail. Ogle is the larger lake and closer to the entrance, so that's where I ended up. Most of the images in this post were taken on that journey around the lake.

The trail's interesting stairs infrastructure was a subject of several of the images, you'll notice. As has been the case with most of my landscapes these days, I bracketed my shots for exposure to allow for treatment in high-dynamic range (HDR) software during post-processing. Most of these images are HDR renderings. A few -- virtually all of the ones with people in them -- are single frame shots.

The images are not presented in chronological order, although the last two shots were taken on the departure from the lake and park, including a pull-over to get that overlook shot into the park. One other note: I present two "looks" of a similar scene of a water reflection shot, one taken zoomed back, the other zoomed in. I couldn't decide which I liked better.

I revisited Nashville on the same trip and took more pictures there. I haven't begun to process those, so a post featuring those photos is a ways off.

As usual, to see a larger, more details version of an image, click on the picture. A gallery of the full shoot can be found at my SmugMug site.

Trip to North Carolina, Part VII: Cape Lookout National Seashore

The prospect of visiting Cape Lookout National Seashore, at the southern tip of the Outer Banks, was intriguing early on in the trip to North Carolina. Still, I knew it presented a possible conflict of logistic opportunities -- Cape Lookout or university landscapes at neighboring campuses, Durham (Duke) and North Carolina (Chapel Hill).

Cape Lookout is home to the only lighthouse in the state whose interior is accessible to the public. The only way to get to the cape is by ferry, and there are several ferry operations in the islands near the southern Outer Banks. If one were wanting to make a day of the visit, there is a ferry that takes a leisurely ride -- a tour, actually -- through several of the islands and peninsulas in the vicinity.

From Harker's Island, I took a relatively short ferry that cruised past Schackleford Banks, which is home to about 100 or so wild horses, before the boat landed at Cape Lookout. The ferry came about 200 yards or so from Shackleford Banks, and with the Tamron 70-200mm lens zoomed at full focal length on my Canon 7D, I was able to grab a few usable pictures of a handful of horses grazing near the shoreline.

The shoot on the cape itself offered some splendid vistas for high dynamic range (HDR) treatment and many opportunities for single frames of a lot of seagulls flying low, swooping in for food from the many visitors who decided to make a day of it and brought picnics to enjoy along the shore. I elected not to climb to the top of the lighthouse; the wait was almost 2 hours, and there are fees ranging from $4 to $8 depending on age.

I preferred to invest the time roaming the coast and grabbing pictures where I could. That's what you see here.

Leading off the post is one of the shots I took while spending time integrating the lighthouse with two buildings and fencing that were in the vicinity. I'll be devoting quite a bit of time below dissecting one such photo.

To view a full gallery of images from my trip to Cape Lookout National Seashore and Shackleford Banks, follow the link in this sentence.

Next: Pilot Mountain 

Above and below: Two of the frames I got of the wild horses on Shackelford Banks, which the ferry passed en route to Cape Lookout National Seashore. 

Above: Still on the ferry, I took this while approaching the cape. I was fortunate that the ferry had slowed and was still enough to enable my three bracketed shots to meld without including much blur when I took them into HDR software.

Above and next four below: My shots integrating the lighthouse with the nearby structures. All are HDR renderings except the fourth one below, which is a single frame that enabled me to freeze the action of the seagull's flight.

Above: This is the image I said in the text above that I'd be dissecting. Above is the original, full-frame HDR rendering of a shot of the two structures near the lighthouse. I took several shots, with slightly different composition crops. Note the people along the beach on the left, and the amount of sky above the interesting cloud cluster.

Above: In this first crop, I removed the beach, reduced the sky volume and took in some of the grass on the far right.

Above: A monochrome conversion of the above frame.

Above and next two below: Monochrome conversions -- and different treatments -- of shots taken with the seagull in different positions in the frame.

Above: An HDR rendering on a pond not far from the beach.

Above and next two below: Shots of visitors along the beach.

Above and next two below: Different views of thee same sailboat, the one above integrating a passing gull, the second below integrating a visitor approaching it along the beach.

Above and the remainder below: Shots of gulls and other fowl gracing the island during my visit. For the shots of the gulls in the air, I was using a shutter speed of about 1/1250.