A short sail North places our adventurer in Dundee Scotland. Founded in the 11th Century, it is currently Scotland’s 4th largest city. A big industrial port at the time, Dundee FC (Football) competed in division 1 and finished 9th!
Most of the above shots are Tayport from the River Tay. That may be the McManus in the final image – makes sense as near the Tay. Once a church (perhaps obviously), it was rebuilt into a museum/art gallery.
Looks like our adventurer had friends or family in the area. the elderly couple is Mr & Mrs Stott. The first image is our traveller(?) and Val. The last is Janice. The other guy is Elex Stott (Not a typo – thats how its written on the slides) – the one on the hillside, him on the Sidlaw Hills.
Check out that countryside. Beautiful.
A little more of the city, we see the Tay Bridge – about 80 years old at the time of the photo being taken – 3265m long. The other images, looking North from Law Hill.
The wind up set, part of the same series from my opening photo is ~Dundee Centre. Packed streets with people walking up the cobble/brick roads.
I’ll finish with another from the countryside. It just looks so calm and peaceful.
Today we dig into a new series of slides from our unknown traveler – The United Kingdom – or more precisely this episode , Edinburgh Scotland.
Dated 1965,. Edinburgh was going through a massive infrastructure change around this time – steam locomotive transitioning to diesel, sections of the M8 motorway opening, the ending of capital punishment and transition to life sentences.
The opening shot is the view of the city from the castle battlement.
A few more shots of the city before turning around for a view of the castle. Situated on Castle Rock, people have inhabited the site since the Bronze Age! The castle itself started in one version of another in the 11th century – with royals living there until 1633. Its seen a few battles over these years!
That canon above is called Mons Meg – its a big canon with a barrel diameter of 20 inches. The barrel broke in 1680, but its since been restored. I like that phone box just sitting inside a castle walkway.
The above series help remind us the benefits of modern digital (and auto focusing) technology. Multiple shots, perhaps slow shutter speeds or something – just a bit of missed focus all around. Still, everyone would have been recognisable and look to be having fun. The lady in red is marked as being called ‘Betty’ – she is the closing one of today:
Weekend been featured ‘Tram Day’ at our local technology museum Motat. What better a subject to take out a roll of my vintage (60’s) 6ASA Ilford Micro-Neg Pan Type B film. Armed with the Canon EOS 10 (one of the few SLR’s which can shoot sprocket-less) and a nifty fifty set to 1.8 for the vast majority of the shots.
As with my opening image above, there is something cool about the feel of this combination. Wide open adds a touch of vintage softness in look and feel, the film itself is high contrast and old…add a few trams from a golden age – what a combo.
It was a pretty challenging day light wise really – bright sun in the most part combined with the naturally high contrast film made a few scenes difficult (like that one of a train in the distance above). Overall I was pretty pleased with the result. As you might recall in another post about this film, I went part’s with a mate in purchasing it. He’s not had much luck With what he shot. Don’t know if its roll of a dice or different developing techniques – Im not getting the same issue with what we think is emulsion lifting. Different part of the roll – I have more film left, so may yet experience it.
It was great to see all these old trains and trams out in live action. I loved the steam tram – I had not seen that one before. I was also amazed how many working trams they have in action also. A lot of the conductors and drivers (in full uniform) are the engineers who work on restoring them and there is no shortage of volunteers of all ages – great to see younger people (I’ll admit Im not young anymore) getting into historical transport from a age long gone.
[Digital] Developing wise, I just reversed the negatives and added a boarder. I didn’t apply a full monochrome selector as I love the slightly sepia that came from the film. Again – adding to the age.
The fourth shot in the above was inside the train. ‘Usually’ on F1.8 and say a 400ASA film you can get away with indoor shots. Not sure where I had a mind blank about being on 6ASA, but it was about a 15 second shot…’this won’t work’ I said – I was right, but Its still an interesting shot (to me).
Old army trucks – another good theme for this film. But I ran out. I had gone a little bit snappy on the trams and before I knew it the film was out. Not to worry – a fun outing, a successful few images from a film long past its time.
This is it for our current journey people and Africa – my last box of slides on this continent I think. It’s a bit of a mixed lot – numbers of the slides overall match, but I think it’s from a selection cobbled together. We start off with the above ‘Lourenço Marques Portuguese East Africa’ – now Maputo the capital city of Mozambique. I chose it as my opening photo as its got a bit of a street photography vibe – Im not so sure our traveller would have appreciated the man walking into frame in all reality!
Sticking to the city front, roughly moving left to right top to bottom, our traveller explore more of Durban during the day and dusk. The city centre, for its time would have been reasonably high rise – less so by modern standards. With the red motorcycle parked out front, we see the city hall of London (now called a more culturally fitting KuGompo City), before jumping back to arriving at Durban again (yep, mixed slides). Our second to last slide in that set is the Durban city centre… all pretty classical colonial look buildings. The final slide there is the foot of the table mountains Cape Province. OK, lets move onto some ‘wildlife’
Not all blockbuster animal shots. Tricky lighting, fixed lens (just a nifty 50?). Im including these to not exclude any of the historic records here. We start with two ‘exotic birds’ at the snake pit in Port Elizabeth before moving over to the ‘Game Farm’ in ‘East London’ (KuGompo) where we see the Ostrich, the “Giant Kudu” and the “Wily Fox”. Big Kudu’s approach near 300kg, so they are certainly not a small beast. We then see a purpose at the Oceanarium in Port Elizabeth. Now called BayWorld, they are current closed and deconstructing the oceanarium section of the venue – I only have one very old photo to go by, but if that was part of the current setup being removed, its probably not a bad thing. None of the animals shown here would have had great homes in the 1960’s if ‘most’ zoos of that era are anything to go by! We finish back at Port Elizabeth Snake Pit… with a snake! Look at those gloves!
Bit of another random mix here above. A few familiar faces from the prior post. Passengers from the Table Mountain boat trip, our traveller himself in slightly blurry dusk at Durban. A view of Cape Province from Rhodes Memorial. Closing with another dusk at Durban and Snake Pit Tree.
We are getting near the end now. A beautiful image from the slopes of Table Mountain before a short snap back at KuGompo with some sailing boats. Dusk over Maputo and Durban Port. But lets land back in Durban just for a moment to relax on the beach:
The sunbather probably knows the shooter – but the slide gives no clue. Nice clean sand!
And that is it, that is our travel back in time with our traveller in Africa. I’ll finish up with another shot I like, the City Square of Durban.
The ‘Toy Camera’ is something I seem to drop in and out of over the years. A recent rummage in one of my local quirky second hand stores revealed a vintage Debonair Super-lens No.809. A replica of the original Diana 120 film plastic cameras. the Debonair (depending where you read) is probably the best clone of the bunch.
Dusty, dirty and not entirely 100% it looked more like a vintage display piece than a still working toy camera – but I saw some hope for it. It was complete!
The shutter was working fine in bulb mode, but sticking a little in normal. I gave the unit a clean over with a damp cloth and buds (dont use chemicals on plastic lenses!) and gave a single drop of machine oil on the shutter – that brought it back to life operating like new! yay!
Unlike the more modern Holga, the Debonair/Diana has three proper aperture options (depending on your modern Holga, you have 2 or 1 (even if the switch says 2). Handy for a camera with a single shutter speed. Focus was a little harder to make out, so I made a new focus sticker to save me squinting as I twist to zone focus.
For a first outing I confirmed that the camera all works as it should. Even at roughly 60 years old the camera had no light leaks of note and featured the familiar sharper centre than edge lens. Unlike the Holga, its square format is a little smaller at about 4cm X 4cm (Holga is 5.6 X2). This means smaller negatives, but more shots! – 16 in total.
I also rigged up a new home made scanning setup for it. Still needs some tweaking, but Im happy with the result. The Debonair has pulled me back to take some more Holga shots now. Im not sure which I like more – the vintage original or the ‘modern’ Holga.
