I recently wrote a post about Widgery Cross on the summit of Brat/Bray Tor. You may just make it out in the background, top left. This image was made from the top of Brent Tor, 5.38 miles away as the crow flies. The interesting point of the photo for me though is the gravestones in the foreground.
Standing on top of Brent Tor is St Michael’s Church. I’ll write a post and show a few more images about that soon. The first photo is taken from the south side of the church looking east. I set up the tripod, framed the photo, but just as I was about the click the shutter I noticed another stone poking out from behind the large one and distracting my eye.
From the spot I actually made the photo, if I’d moved 3 or 4 inches to the right I lost the other unwanted grave stone, but the two stones pictured merged together. If I moved 3 or 4 inches left, the distracting stone appeared between the two. I found the perfect spot! I very much suspect that had I been using any other camera than the Hasselblad on the tripod, that slowed me down I would have never noticed this tiny detail. I obviously hadn’t been the only creature to notice this alignment. The centre column of the tripod hovered exactly over a dog poo. X marks the spot!
Chatter: Hasselblad 501CM 80mm lens, Ilford Pan-F, developed in D23.
S.H.O.U.T. 
Hi Andy,
I haven’t commented for a while – but I still follow your posts with enthusiasm. I have missed a few, but I am sitting on a train to Glasgow (with onboard wi-fi which is working surprisingly well 👍) and I’m catching up.
We are off to the outer Hebrides – travelling via train and plane rather than the usual car/ferry as an experiment. Consequently we just have a small (and very over stuffed) rucksack each. Nevertheless- inspired by your black and white pics – I was determined to take a film camera! I decided on the diminutive Minox 35mm GL – but on testing it found the shutter had stopped working. A ‘feature’ of the Minox! I have a Russian copy by Kiev and this seemed to be working fine. There is a moral there, somewhere… The Kiev is a very basic model, though, no exposure compensation or self timer and they have a reputation for light leaks, even if the shutter is more reliable than the German original. Instead, I have decided to take a Zeiss Ikon Nettax 6×6 which I have serviced myself and a selection of HP5+ and FP4+ rollfilms.
I am not lucky enough to have a Hasselblad – I do have an Arax (a rebuilt Kiev 6×6 SLR) and a Pentacon 6 – but no way could I justify putting them in the rucksack! 🧱
I have “another hobby” which, cuckoo like, seems to absorb all my time and I haven’t managed to fit in much photography – but every time your blog pops up in my inbox I think to myself – I really must get back into photography again. So, thank you for that. Next week – I have the camera, the film and the time – so no excuses!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hello! Hope your journey was enjoyable and that you are, by now, settled in! Nice to hear from you again – it always amazed me that a 35mm film fitted in those Minox cameras, but sorry to hear that it’s not co-operating. I seem to remember the shutter is electronic in those? – I assume you’ve cleaned the old contacts and tried a new batt? By very strange coincidence I took out my Zeiss Nettar 6×6 just this last Thursday, having not used it for a year! All was well, this time I got 11 out of 12!! So a working Zeiss Nettar right at either end of the country!! Good luck/weather and I hope you get some great shots! – Cheers Andy
LikeLike
Hi Andy – I own a Minox EL which was always unreliable. The really annoying thing about the Minox 35s is that when you press the button you always get a reassuring ‘click’ – but it isn’t the shutter, it is just the release of the film advance lock. There is no way to know if the electronic shutter has fired or not. On a good day it would fire about 80% of the time and after being stored unused even for a short while maybe only 50%.
After developing a 36 exposure roll which was almost blank apart I retired it and bought the GL – a much more expensive model where this fault was *supposed* to be fixed. It was definitely better – but seems not to have survived long term storage (I haven’t used it for 2 years). New battery, cleaned contacts, warmed up, cooled down, vibrated, shook, banged – nothing will unstick the shutter. I stripped one down once (a broken EL I got off eBay). I have never seen something so small have so many parts or be so complicated!!! No… I never did get it back together, but it proved a strip down just isn’t viable (for my level of skill, anyway).
Thanks for the comments, I put a film through the Nettax yesterday (a NettaX with an X is a Nettar with a built in light meter- otherwise the same thing) – Unlike the Minox, the old Nettax is working perfectly 👍
It is only me that is a bit rusty!
LikeLike