Q: What smells like a wet dog that has rolled in a dead gopher?

A: Instant coffee and washing soda, that's what.

But its worth it!

I've been shooting digital almost exclusively for the better part of two years now, but I still enjoy the process of shooting and developing film. I think it's the smell. Well, it 'can' smell good. However, if you decide you want to make your own developer the smell goes from pleasant to "Chaz, what are you making... oh my god that reeks!"

The recipe I used is called Caffenol-C and it is a home made film developer. And it smells really, really bad! The large amounts of carbon in the washing soda must react, a la decaying animal, with the instant coffee. The vitamin C speeds up the reaction of the caffeine with the film, so its not an essential ingredient, it only affects the developing time.

I had a half finished roll of Kodak BW400CN that I wanted to develop, and I wanted to know how a 'color' black and white film would do in black and white chemistry. The results are really good. The tonal range and grain is very pleasing for a 400 speed film.

Here's the recipe for the developer:
4 500mg tablets of crushed vitamin C tablets*
1 tablespoon of washing soda (sodium carbonate, not baking soda- sodium bicarbonate)
4 tablespoons of instant coffee crystals
12 oz. of water at ~75 deg F.

* after pouring the developer into the tank, I noticed a white, solid precipitate at the bottom of the mixing glass and suspected it was the vitamin C fallen out of solution or just mutated.

I used a vinegar solution for the stop bath and a dish soap solution for the final wash. For the fixer, I had to purchase it from a local photography store as it can't be easily MacGyver'd.
The Vitamin C is supposed to accelerate the developing time, but I suspected that some of the vitamin C had fallen out of suspension. I used slightly warmer water to keep the developing time unchanged.

I scanned the film and the picture above is straight out of the scanner. As you can see the tones smooth, not bunched up and the grain pleasing, though that might not show at this size.

I'm still debating developing more film this way, or admitting olfactory defeat and going with commercial developer.

The '$' signs are from the scanning software I was testing/using, the free version watermarks images with dollar signs. I suspect that's to let viewers know the picture is worth lots of money. :+)

New York Skyline from City Island

When we lived on City Island back in 2012, our little house was at the end of the street and we could see part of the Manhattan skyline from the porch, across Eastchester Bay. The skyline was actually pretty small, since City Island is about 12 miles away as the crow flies. I took this shot from the street out front, with a 300mm lens racked all the way out on a tripod.

City Island is a pretty cool place, it is part of the Bronx but feels very much like a small town. There is a single 2 lane bridge that connects it to the mainland and at one time had a monorail on and off the island. The main drag, City Island Avenue, hosts a number of small shops, 2 grocery stores and a bevy of Seafood restaurants. I don't use the word 'bevy' that often, but it's a good one. On summer weekends and especially holidays, the little 2 lane bridge is bumper-to-bumper traffic of people trying to get onto the island to eat at the Crab Shanty, or one of the many Sammy's restaurants. The sailing around the island is good, and you can reach Port Washington across the mouth of sound in about an hour or less.

We considered moving there permanently too. It was very family friendly and very neighborhoody. Anyway, so I was taking the photo as there was a James Beard Foundation event going on and the Empire State Building was going to be lit up in honor of that. At least that's what my memory is telling me. At the time, my company had just finished a relaunch of the JBF website... Ok, yeah, I think the website had just relaunched, and they were having their annual awards ceremony.

Even neater than City Island is the small mile-long island that sits just a half mile to the east, Hart or Heart Island. It has been the home of a civil war prison, missile command center, and potters field. It was also featured as part of a Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode. Law and Order, and Law and Order: CI, are the only good ones.

I like the cut of your jib!

Winter maintenance on the Lady Mayland: 
Halfway through unbending the jib on this cold December morning, I suddenly couldn't find my coffee mug. I wandered the deck, and then the dock.. and then I finally found it.

The task shown in this photo is the unbending (removal) of the jib, which is partially held on by tarred nylon cords tied around metal rings (hanks) that are strung onto the jib stay. The cord is looped though metal grommets on the luff (leading edge) of the sail and then through the metal hanks. To unbend the jib, you just cut away the cord and unfastened the shackles on the head, tack, and clew and try not to let it fall in the water.


After the fall sailing season, the boats are docked over in Fells Point by the main campus for winter maintenance. This involves inspecting, repairing, and stowing the running rigging and sails. There's also scraping, sanding, and painting of anything that needs it. Blocks (pulleys) are disassembled, inspected, and replaced or rebuilt. The engines, two 85hp 4-cyl Cummins diesels, are overhauled and winterized. Did I mention the scraping, sanding, painting? Brightwork (varnish) is touched up, or sometimes redone completely. All standing rigging is inspected, shackles are re-moused, and stays are treated. The list is long and so are the work days. The maintenance period is about three months long and there never seems to enough time to get everything done

Pictured above are some single and double reeved blocks from the Sigsbee, a reconstructed skipjack built with salvaged parts from her namesake. These blocks have had their straps, sheaves, pins, keepers, and beckets removed and tagged. The shells, the wooden housings, are scraped and sanded and are hungry here for painting. The pins and sheaves are cleaned and regreased before reassembly in the shells.

S/V Lady Maryland

The Lady Maryland is a replica Chesapeake Bay pungy schooner. A shallow draft allowed these vessels to carry cargo up and down the bay, which has an average depth of just 21ft. She's painted pink and green, like a watermelon and serves as the flagship for the Living Classrooms' small fleet of educational sailing vessels in the Baltimore Inner Harbor.

Shown here, she is in Chestertown, Maryland in the fall of 2005.

Hiking the Hudson Valley

Took a hike last weekend on the Sugarloaf Hill and Osborn Loop Trail in the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve, one of 180 smaller parks that make up the New York State Park system. It was a little chilly but very pleasant. In the above photo, you can see Highland Falls and the West Point Military Academy in the distance, across the Hudson River.

S/V Sigsbee

Late fall, Sigsbee is prepared for haul-out as John Jay is lowered from its blocks on the strongback davits.

This is Bea

Named after Bea Arthur, Bea does Bea things. She is what some would call flighty and perhaps a little slow. We, however, assume she is running about doing Bea things, taking care business and generally being cute. As this is a full time job for her, we let her be.

I love the shallow DoF (Depth of Field) this 35mm f/2 lens gives me. Fully open at about 1 foot from her face, it gives a focal plane of about 1 inch, which for this was perfect. For a human person it might be a little to shallow. Their, eyes may be sharp, but their ears and nose might be out of focus.

For a given lens at a given focal length, 35mm in this case, there is a plane of focus in which subjects will appear to be 'in focus' or acceptably so. Imagine looking down a long hallway and focusing your camera at an object midway down the hall. That object and anything else in the frame that is in the same plane (parallel to the film plan and perpendicular to the lens axis) will be in focus. Objects behind and in front of that point will fall out of focus. Now imagine taking a group shot of people standing in front of you and all at the same distance from the camera. If you focused on the person in the middle, the people on the left and right should also be in focus for the most part. If however, there were to two rows of people, one behind the other, you may find that by focusing on the person in the middle of the first row will keep the first row in focus, but the back row will be out of focus.

There are two ways to handle this (oversimplified) scenario. The first is to stop the lens down, that is, to put your camera in A(perture Priority) mode and raise the F number. The second is to change the focal length of the lens if it is a zoom lens. Changing the F stop will decrease the amount of light being let into the camera, but will increase the depth of the plane of focus.

For Bea, this would have brought her nose and ears in focus. If you zoomed in your lens, you are changing its focal length which has a similar effect. By controlling the aperture and focal length of your lens you can create images that reflect what you saw in your mind and made you pick up your camera to begin with.

This post was originally written 4 years ago, Bear has since passed, to our great sadness. She was affectionate, and gentle, and weach  miss her very much.