Pre-Stage Gathering with the Lynx

I picked up a really neat little rangefinder for $50 shipped, and the first place I brought it to was an informal vintage car show. 

Said rangefinder is a Yashica Lynx-1000, dating to the mid-1960s. While they were not high end cameras by any stretch, they weren't bottom of the barrel cheap ones either. Featuring a bright lens and shutter speeds as fast as 1/1000 sec., they were rather advanced for the time. Plus the selenium light meter still functions just fine and provides perfect metering every time. 

Is it wrong that I enjoy using this camera more than my dad's Canon QL19? Probably. Read more about this "brilliant rangefinder" here. And pick one up, I recommend it!

On to the car show photos:

I think I ran Kodak Ultramax thru the camera to get these results. 

Excitebike 2024 via the Lynx

So my buddies Don, Joe and I put on little mountain bike picnics/outings in a southwestern suburban Chicago forest preserve (Palos for those in the know) some 30+ years ago. Just a bunch of goofballs riding trails, grilling burgers and drinking beer. We called it the Chimichanga Fat Tire Festival, a take on the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival that's been going on for decades in Wisconsin's North Woods. Good times. 

Fast-forward to the present and Don and I both live in the Bay Area, but at opposite ends (North Bay for me, Silicon Valley for Don), and Don got the bug to rent Camp Loma, in the shadows of the Demo Forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains and have a little MTB campout with friends over a weekend in May. Instead of rehashing the former name (new event, new location, new format), it was rebranded as EXCITEBIKE after the classic Nintendo video game. Anyway, here are some shots captured with the Yaschica Lynx-1000.

Obligatory #firstoftheroll of the redwoods:

Funmaster Don:

Nice creek running thru the campground, and plenty of places to park vans, truck, or to just pitch tents. 

Getting ready to roll out. I didn't bring the Lynx out on the trails as I really didn't want to risk damaging it and film is too expensive for me to get back blurry shots as my panning skills are not top-notch. 

Just as we did at Chimichanga, a beater bike was procured for the Huffy Toss. Nothing of value was lost when it met its eventual demise. 

Post-ride pix.

Don met some of the attendees at Burning Man, and one guy brought a DJ setup. Once the sun set there was an impressive laser light show projected onto the redwoods, paired with some chill tunes. Quite fun. 

And a little air pistol target shooting. That's all. 

Again, loving this affordable and simple rangefinder. Go get one!

$50 Nikonos V Tested

As someone who really enjoys using one of Nikon's quirky, cool and bombproof Nikonos II cameras, I had to pounce on a Facebook Marketplace Nikonos V find in Santa Rosa for all of $50 right before Xmas. 

The Nikonos V was the last in the series of rangefinder dive cameras, superseded by the Nikonos RS underwater SLR. They're funky and fun to use, and use a range focusing method. So yeah, some of the shots were not as sharp as I would have liked. But I don't think anyone is here for a history lesson. Anyway, it has the aesthetics of a kid's first camera - just needs a Fisher-Price logo on it. 

This particular camera had a slight ding in the outer lens flange, but the issue was merely cosmetic and didn't affect the images. Still, I managed to find a ding-free one on eBay pretty cheap, and that is what's shown here, along with a screw-on lens hood. The battery still had plenty of juice, so I threw a roll of Kodak Ultra 400 in it and put it this beast to the test. Here are the resulting images - 39 in total, not including the not-worth-posting first-of-the-roll. Pretty impressive to squeeze that many out of a 36 exposure roll. 

Lots of overly-warm tones from Bodega Head in late afternoon sun. Maybe the fierce winds had something to do with it. Probably not. 

And Bodega Harbor.

Since I am on this Bodega kick, some from Bodega proper:

First-generation Mazda RX-7 and a Chrysler Imperial in San Rafael, snapped when I made a trip to Seawood Photo: 

And some frames captured while out on a Saturday spin:

Petaluma skyline:

And the last of the roll, waiting at a light on the drive home one rainy evening:

But it seems that the winder was cracked, so the handle broke off, necessitating a slightly laborious process to get the film back into the canister. Still worth it, seeing that similar condition cameras sell for 4-5x what I paid for this one. 

Already looking forward to the next roll.