Category: Random

Well, that was a day shot to fucking hell

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Tried to log into the blogsite yesterday morning to post some further stuff, and couldn’t get in at all – this was disconcerting since I’d been logged in for the previous post less than 6 hours earlier. My efforts produced nothing, and since I couldn’t log in I couldn’t update anything on the program end, and so spent waaaayyyy too much time with the hosting service’s AI troubleshooter, pretty much just making things worse. I’m trying to be objective here and not jump to conclusions, but objectively, when I finally got a real human on the line, they corrected most of what the AI fucked up within minutes.

I still can’t log in properly, but I can now get in through the backend and post a little, and do some routine maintenance stuff. We’ll see how long it takes to get things back in order.

So if you came here and got, well, anything but a proper website, I apologize – I have no idea what failed, and if I did anything, it was completely without trying or even knowledge. Which is to say, I doubt I did anything.

Right now I’m rebuilding the three posts that got wiped out when I restored from a backup that had taken place before they posted, so bear with me. I even did the Latest Images updates, and they got wiped too. Insert a plethora of the choicest cuss words in here, and make up a few while you’re at it, because I certainly did.

Not dead? Then it’s working

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Once again, we find ourselves (that’s the royal “we,” not [necessarily] including you) on Darwin Day, without anything prepared to show for it. I have long maintained that we should be celebrating the scientist on some other day than his birthday, since the dead of winter is a hard time to find topical content. The fictional readers that I insist are real shoot back that I’m being too narrow-minded on how to interpret Darwin’s contributions and am, instead, just shitty at planning ahead.

Aha! say I in return, in this inner monologue that would never take place in real life, Natural selection hasn’t anything to do with planning, but with pinning down the singular trait that just barely squeaks by. And so a tailor-made post is actually counter to the entire concept, a lot more like that nonsensical and self-indulgent ‘religion’ that, despite the plethora of evidence that species are not very well designed at all, still gets bandied around, probably because of the traits that wiggled us as humans through the selection process. Thus, to celebrate this day properly, what we need is something that allows this post to survive, if only by millimeters. And since the selection process for all content is, solely and entirely, “me,” well…

In the days running up to (and including) Darwin Day, came several demonstrations of how natural selection actually works. Really. Stay with me, here.

Back in January, I snagged this image of a camellia blossom right alongside the front door.

camellia Theaceae blossom being pollinated by European honeybee Apis mellifera in January
The camellia (Theaceae) bushes bloom quite early, generally while it’s still winter, and this one in particular shows a distinct difference in color between the cold season and the warmer months when we expect to see flowers – you can see a hint of the variegation that they display now, but they will go solid pink in spring. And as the temperature climbed into the “only chilly” territory, it nonetheless attracted a European honeybee (Apis mellifera) to pollinate it, making it the first of the year in my personal observation, which might have been more notable had I actually posted it back on January 9th when it was taken.

Despite this response in the winter months, however, camellia blossoms don’t actually tolerate sub-freezing temperatures, and the heavy snow and persistent cold temperatures that we received recently changed the appearance of the flowers drastically, so they looked like this yesterday:

camellia Theaceae blossom after undergoing sub-freezing temperatures for several days
camellia Theaceae bud approaching opening after sub-freezing temperaturesThe question remains, can the reproductive process that the flowers facilitate survive the temperatures if the pollination occurs before such temperatures arrive? And I cannot answer that, because I thought of the question specifically for Darwin Day and not back in January when I could have marked that particular branch to see what happened. Yet, while all of the opened flowers were affected in the same way, some of the later buds (like the one at right, also taken yesterday) are beginning to emerge, showing no signs of damage from freezing, so we have to surmise that the enclosing leaves are better proof against the cold temperatures. This suggests that camellias found a niche of being the first to attract pollinators, with virtually no competition, as soon as the weather is warm enough, but still capable of handling the variable nature of, well, nature, specifically temperatures toying chronically with freezing.

You think I’m reaching, don’t you? Psscchhfftt. This is selection at work. And speaking of pollinators…

trio of winter speedwell Veronica persica blossoms
The winter speedwell (Veronica persica) blossoms always arrive about this time, though they’re so tiny and occur in such small patches that they’re easy to overlook. These obviously aim for certain pollinators too, though I doubt it’s honeybees, given the size – they’re about the same diameter as a bee, so I’m not even sure they could support the weight of one. I really should’ve staked these out to see what does visit them, while the weather was warmer, but yesterday when I shot this it wasn’t Darwin Day, so it didn’t occur to me. I could do it today, but then I’d probably never get this post done, and thus it would defeat the purpose ironically.

Close by, a sudden movement on the liriope attracted my attention, and only a moment’s examination netted this guy:

half-size Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on liriope in period of warm temperatures
Whatever does pollinate the winter speedwell stands a chance of being preyed upon by the Carolina anoles, since they don’t waste any time getting active as soon as it’s warm enough, either. I can’t say that this is the first I’ve seen this year, since several days in January got warm enough (generally, sunny and above 12-14°c) to bring them out in search of the early-appearing insects. It’s a cutthroat world out there.

Still speaking of pollination…

pair of Canada geese Branta canadensis setting on two separate small islands in backyard pond
Looking out at the pond this morning, we saw these two Canada geese (Branta canadensis) hanging out on separate little islands in the pond – the one on the left definitely seems to be settled in, and was snoozing when we first spotted them. You can also see that the beavers have been working these islands over too, which as yet remain nameless, but this may not be for very long.

Canada goose Branta canadensis appearing to be roosting on small island in backyard pond.
Given that this one was asleep while the other was standing and watching, I’m guessing this is the female, and she certainly seemed to be settled in. We’ve had plenty of geese visiting, several distinctive regulars, but to date no one has shown any indication of wanting to build a nest, though we’re hoping this is a good sign, and it’s an ideal spot for one: decently subtle, but completely isolated from predators, and of course very handy to the food. I considered it still a little early for mating season, but not by much.

Did you catch the past tense in there?

A little after this when I looked out the downstairs bathroom window, which has a good view of the north end of the pond that sits well to the left of this spot, I saw two geese side-by-side, head to tail, dipping their heads in the water almost in unison, and I wondered if this wasn’t courtship behavior. In only seconds, this was confirmed as they mated, and so this is a very good sign, especially since a little later on we found them both back in the same spots. We’ll be monitoring this development closely.

So there, see? Selective pressures produced a post that suffices and survives, possessing the traits necessary to maintain. Not at all an excuse to just throw up some recent pics, but topical and demonstrative. Isn’t nature wonderful?

Procrastinating

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

backlit hot mug of tea steaming on snow-covered surface
Last year, following the one freezing rain storm that we’d received, I went out and did the above shot because the conditions were right, and I suddenly thought, Hey – I should revisit that in these conditions, and so I took my mug out to the top of the same grill and did it again. Only, I was a bit later in the morning and the backlighting wasn’t as strong, and so it worked better as an animated gif (pronounced, “jwa-ka-MO-lay“.)

animated gif of steaming tea mug buried in snowS’okay, granted, we got a bit more snow this time, but that really is my tea mug in there – somewhere. The faint breeze wasn’t allowing for a nice vertical vapor trail and I was timing it for when it swirls became visible against the darker background trees. I also hadn’t planned on doing an animation so the camera wasn’t remaining in exact position, and thus the background dances a little (mostly because I aligned the snowpack together for the four frames.) Should have thought of it earlier when the sun was lower, but here we are, feeling the enormous regrets of life. And reheating my tea…

After coming in, I noticed a lone icicle melting away in that same sun, most visible through a window (plus it was warmer to remain indoors,) and so endeavored to capture the regular drops that fell. I shot a lot of frames, changing a few settings as I did so, and you might be surprised at how hard it is to time something like this even when it’s periodic, but a lot of frames either captured the drop before it detached, or after it had exited the frame. The first turned out to be the best.

icicle shedding melt drop with tiny interval drop between
Still a smidgen of motion blur in there, but it shows the background trees within the drop halfway decently, and the secondary drop too. Still has a little elongation from the separation – the shape will bounce back and forth, well, fluidly, as it’s falling, but somewhere in there it will be quite round again, though I’m not going to waste that much time trying to capture it.

Two successive frames were amazingly similar, so much so that I had to overlay them together into another gif (pronounced, “JLOCK-en-speel“):

two-frame animation of successive drops almost perfectly timedBear in mind that this is not just two successive frames, but two successive drops, captured after falling almost the exact same distance – we’re talking just a couple of millimeters difference. But keep staring at it, because those background trees will start your eyes twitching.

It would actually be slick if I could capture two frames in such rapid succession that a falling drop had only moved that far, but we’re talking high-speed video cameras for such a brief time gap; I could calculate what it would take but I’m not going to. [Actually, looking at the motion blur of some frames where I’d stopped the aperture down to create starbursts and instead produced distinct motion blur from the drop, I’d say we’re talking better than 200 frames-per-second to capture such minimal movement between frames.] But no, this is only a cool (a ha ha) coincidence.

Okay, back to video editing…

Guten tag

Al Denelsbeck

I like this title, because if you try to pronounce it correctly, you’re mispronouncing it. Which is because it’s time (finally!) for the annual tag roundup! Tags are those little reference words at the bottom of the post to help you know what the content is and save you the trouble of actually reading the post, unless you have a poster of a certain nature, in which case they are also snotty commentary on the content, or highly questionable humor, or some obscure reference that only thirteen people in the world (none of them readers of course) would recognize. And each year, we choose a small selection of the tags that have only appeared once and recognize why they have only appeared once. It’s also a subtle (not really) way of drawing people back into older posts. With that warning being all that’s required by law, let’s plunge ahead, shall we?

probably get hit by a meteorite – The law of averages needs better enforcement, I’m thinking.

it’s not just a phase mom – The family photos that soon get hidden away.

Spanish moss? How dated! – Some redecorating did indeed take place, and we’re fine with that.

right on prom night – Seriously, don’t pick at them.

fussy fussy fussy – along with, “need more spiders,” and, “or maybe slugs.” Perhaps a little forewarning is in order. And a slick watermark.

really really questionable definition of humor – Along with, “samson was a fat fuck.” I blame my parents…

hopped up on corn dust – Some have to ham it up for the camera. Not me, of course…

yes that was on purpose – Okay, probably not subtle at all.

licking her will get you nowhere – Also, “or Out of Africa.” I’ve nothing to add here.

the water was cold – Excuses, excuses.

awwww – It says quite a bit, I think, that such a tag has only appeared once, but I’ll try to remedy that.

Hey Sailor – Also, “booty call.” Worse than trying to study in college with a ‘popular’ roommate…

I just don’t choose to – I mean, give me a real challenge…

puppy dog eyes – You should know by now this is a setup.

do you recognize this skin? – As well as, “you silly man.” Listen, you’re not going to get better warnings than these.

just the one taking the pictures – It’s journalism…

chili I could see – I mean, sure, even if we’re only talking about what provoked it…

but the brow’s about right – I’m not that limp-wristed, though. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Unimportus bloggeri – Or perhaps, Daguerrotypus creeperi. I don’t know, have at it…

Now, we take a look at the ‘special’ holidays that we all celebrated this year (right?)

Lock Teasers Day, January 9th
If It Goes Another Day You’re A Worthless Excuse For An Amateur Naturalist, February 18th
Make Noticeable Progress on a Project Day, March 29th
Overcome Absurd Obstacles Day, April 24th
Dumfroot Spaglokkit, the inventor of shutter lag, May 25th
Is that…? No… Is It? Day, June 18th
Create Meaningless Content Day, July 29th
Now You Know It Could Be Worse Day, September 24th
International Enough is Enough Day, October 27th
Harvest The First Of The Citrus From The Greenhouse Day, November 16th (you should know that we still haven’t picked the last yet.)
Question The Value Of One’s Own Judgment Day, December 29th

What, no August? No, no holiday for August last year, strange as that may seem. Perhaps there will be two this year…

Meanwhile, if you want to check out the previous tag roundups, well, they’d be found here:

2015: Tagged
2016: Tagged again
2017: Papa’s got a brand new tag
2018: So what did 2017 hold?
2019: Do not read tag under penalty of law
2020: Tagginses! We hates it forever!
2021: Tag ’em and bag ’em
2022: I don’t mean to tag, but…
2023: Tag me with a spoon
2024: You’re a Grand Ol’ Tag
2025: Something tagged this way comes

Man, I’m glad I can just copy and paste most of that from the previous year…

site statistics for 2025We brought the site stats up much, much better in 2025, with a post count of 260 (coming in third behind 2021 and 2022,) and a word count of 172,384, about average, bringing the total for the life of the blog up to 2,573,954.

But the image count was a new record at 1,123, beating out 2021’s total by 86 images, and I can confidently say the credit for this is due to Walkabout Estates Plus itself, brimming with photo subjects as it is. We did no special trips last year at all, being too busy with both selling the previous Walkabout Manor and doing work on the current one, so the vast majority of those images was within walking distance of the door. May had a total of 171 images uploaded by itself, though this still didn’t beat October 2020’s record for a month at 192.

Also worthy of noting was video uploads, coming in at 35 for last year alone, thanks to mostly the wood ducks and the nutrias. It was never my intention to branch out into videography seriously, because it’s more of an investment in time and equipment and so on – I just want to be able to capture behavior when it seems appropriate, but the opportunities have abounded this year, so here we are.

2025 was also a year of remarkable progress, especially when I look at posts from the beginning of the year. Then, I was speculating about whether I’d have to build a blind to even see the wood ducks from a distance, and whether or not they’d have the faintest interest in the nest box we constructed, as well as how much effort it would take to get better shots or video of the beavers, the first of which I’d captured in February. The year closed with not just evidence of the nest box in use, but multiple broods of wood ducks coming up into the yard, and beavers coming virtually right to my feet – as well as the discovery of nutrias visiting, then expanding to a brood of five young (and two adults) making themselves at home with inordinate boldness. Not to mention a snake battle to the death literally, actually, at my feet…

mother wood duck Aix sponsa on Turtle Island with at least nine of her brood of ducklings
It is safe to say, I am in my element, and I’m incredibly lucky to have The Girlfriend, who shares in (most of) my enthusiasm for all the critters to be found – as well as making the move to the new Walkabout Estates even possible, it must be said. 2026 is also off to a fierce start – I have umpteen video clips to edit together into a coherent whole, and keep adding to them, so those will be along eventually.

All in all, I can’t complain, and can’t feel like I’ve been slack. As always, we’ll see what the future holds.

At least I’m good at it

Al Denelsbeck

semipalmated plover Charadrius semipalmatus crossing tidal flat in silhouette
Why is it the holidays all come bunching up together? Isn’t someone smart enough to pick parts of the month or year lacking holidays, and fill in the gaps?

But I’m as much a slave to it as any other nature & wildlife, critical-thinking, 80s music blogger, and so we take the time to recognize that it’s Question The Value Of One’s Own Judgment Day, not to be confused with Question The Value of Judgment Day Day, which is an enormously brief holiday since there is absolutely none at all – it’s unfortunate that far too few people ever celebrate that one, or indeed, question a lot of things that they really should. We have plenty of posts on those topics, however.

Meanwhile, I have chosen to celebrate this one by trying to determine which three images of mine are going to be entered in a local contest next month, which fits the bill marvelously. I mean, I know what I like, but how far afield are my own tastes? Am I properly considering the fartistic aspects of those in the lineup? Are the judges leaning more towards ‘classical’ compositional traits, or more viscerally ‘pleasing,’ or what, really? Actually, I recall that it’s a ‘People’s Choice’ situation so I can probably forget about trying to hew to particularly recognized art styles, but then I can stew over what sorts of people will be doing the voting instead. Classic art prints (boats on the water at sunset)? Bold color accents? Cute animals (I’m kind of limited on those, unless we can count lizards as cute)? Abstracts? Slug sex? All right, I’m comfortable with ruling out that last one…

And then, the prints will also be for sale during the exhibition, so there’s the matter of pricing. This is ever-so-slightly a tourist town, but it’s off-season, so chances are we’re only talking local buyers.

Does everyone who exhibits their work go through these kinds of questions? I imagine it’s fairly common, but I’d like to meet the ones who have their answers pretty quickly and confidently. Meanwhile, just writing this is telling me I’m likely overthinking it; just pick a few representative pieces and be done with it – there will be other opportunities, and maybe this one will provide some guidance. I plan to be at the reception, so I can perhaps gain a little feedback there.

Shit – now I gotta figure out what to wear…

Ticking away

Al Denelsbeck

I’m sitting here reflecting on perspectives, somehow believing that something profound will be produced by it and yet not really finding anything that isn’t trite, and the reason for this is, this marks the end of the seventeenth year of the old blogoblob. Reaching the age of seventeen, personally I mean, seemed interminable, and now I’ve been posting for that period of time. Weird.

I looked for some trivia related to seventeen, and only pulled up some South Korean boy band, and the US magazine of course (never actually read by seventeen-year-old girls, but always much younger than that – by seventeen they’d switched to Cosmopolitan in the belief that it was more worldly.) Neither of those was something I wanted to even attempt working with, so I let it go.

What I can say is that this marks the 3,233rd post, with at least nine of those being interesting. I could have put a list of some notable (to me, anyway) ones up here, but that would take a lot more time and it’s been taken up with far too many other things lately, but perhaps I’ll slip it in for the year-end retrospective or something. This year also set a record for images uploaded, and for a short while I was mentally fretting over too many of them not being my own, but that is no longer a concern; the previous record was 1,037 in 2020, while with this post we have 1,116, and a few more will sneak in before the end of the year.

This has also been the year of video, with 34 being uploaded specifically related to wildlife photography and/or this blog, plus a few others here and there; thirteen of those were Estate Finds as well. Most pleasing was capturing the wood duck broods (multiple times,) the epic snake battle, a yellow-bellied slider in the act of laying eggs, the hyperactive juvenile nutria, and of course, the saga of the mallard ducklings we raised. Refinements in the equipment, techniques, and editing are still being made.

[I have to note that, after knowing there were at least four distinct turtle nests in various places of the yard, not one of them seemed to produce any young – I was checking routinely. Two of them might have been raided by predators, based on faint evidence, and I’d found other examples of this, but two remained pristine. Just have to keep trying…]

So now we have a few photos that didn’t get into posts earlier.

dusky Canada goose Branta canadensis occidentalis barely visible behind thicket of yellow cow lilies Nuphar lutea shrouding the pond surface
The dusky Canada goose (Branta canadensis occidentalis) that was a regular visitor for a few weeks can be seen peeking out from behind the thick forest of yellow cow lilies (Nuphar lutea) that almost completely covered the pond surface in the height of the season. Not too long after this image, the beavers began harvesting those lilies and they nearly disappeared, then rallied and bounced back, then got harvested again. Somewhere in there, the dusky stopped visiting and never returned; while we have numerous geese now raiding the corn we throw down, none of them are the dusky subspecies.

numerous feeding pits of ant lion Myrmeleontidae larvae in sandy soil
These are the feeding pits of ant lions, which are the larvae of several species of lacewings (Myrmeleontidae) that are highly predatory at this age; I had a huge colony of these under the overhang alongside the outside door to walkabout Studios. The larvae sit at the bottom of these steep-sided pits that they construct themselves, waiting for insects (primarily ants, surprise surprise) to wander in and find that the sides are quite unstable and slippery, whereupon the ant starts to slide towards the waiting larva; their death slide is often assisted by sand flung by the larva. I had intended to do a detailed post and/or video, but never got around to it, and so this solitary image languished in the folder.

unidentified orbweaver Araneidae with wrapped captured firefly Lampyridae in web, still flashing
Here we have an unidentified orbweaver (Araneidae) with a captured firefly species (Lampyridae) that was still flashing regularly within its bonds; I was out without a tripod so I couldn’t do any longer exposures to capture this display. Even I look at this image and think the spider is facing away from the camera, but no, you can see the eyes when you look close. Soon after this, I read an article that described how some spiders would keep fireflies alive in the web because it attracted other fireflies to be captured, the arachnid equivalent of Uber Eats. I was thinking of doing a post on this, but never got any further pics or video and thus this one also sat there in the folders.

flower spike on recovering butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
When we moved here a year ago September, we brought three butterfly bushes (Buddleja davidii) from the old Walkabout Estates, one of which did okay, one thrived so fiercely we don’t walk too close in case it grabs us, and one struggled. So when that one finally produced its first flower cluster following the move, in July, I took note of it. It still didn’t get a firm foothold, but in late October it popped out a measly three blossoms while everything else was entering the autumn dormancy:

trio of singular blossoms on rallying butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
While I definitely like and want to feature some images, they go unused because I’ve been featuring too much of the same subjects and try to maintain a variety, so we have ones like this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) fast asleep while clutching its teddy twig:

juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping vertically on Japanese maple, clutching twig
To be honest, I could still be featuring the anoles routinely; not only are several living it up in the greenhouse, the weather got warm enough today that a few are scampering around the yard, while some turtles are basking on their own island.

And we close with another ‘avoided for the sake of variety’ images, a wood duck (Aix sponsa) portrait when the light and the pose was right, which is a challenge for such a wary, spooky species. One of these days I’ll find a way to be closer and not have to crop so tightly, but for now, this is what we have. And thus we enter in year eighteen with plenty more challenges to tackle and species to capture. Once again, thanks for coming by!

adult male wood duck Aix sponsa perched in tree on Duck Island in late afternoon golden light

Over to others

Al Denelsbeck

I’ve been busy as all-git-out recently, no time for much of anything else, especially blog-related, so I’m doing a quick hand-off to a couple of videos that fit well.

First off we have George Hrab, he of The Geologic Podcast over there on the sidebar or indeed right here, with, “I Don’t Believe in christmas,” a song of his from many years ago and quite pleasant, belying the impression you might have gotten from the title. But we have a conundrum as we do so, because his original video from 1990 (?!) features the full musical accompaniment, making it much richer in my ears, but the video quality is less than stellar, shall we say? Bank surveillance footage of the suspect, is the right impression. He redid the video in 2022 with about a 7,000% increase in quality, but this time around, he was doing it live with unaccompanied folk guitar, which I’ve never been terribly fond of. So, both are below: choose whichever you like, or listen to both and tell me I’m full of shit, or don’t listen to either of them and tell me I’m full of shit anyway because, hey, it’s the webbernets and exactly the place for that.

Next up we have Tim Minchin, who’s been featured here once before, and I really should have more of his stuff, but somehow his appearances and videos thereof never seem to cross my path, and I have to go looking for them instead. His song, taken from a live performance in Australia, is, “White Wine in the Sun,” and please note: Each year, proceeds from the sales of this song at this time of year go to benefit those on the autism spectrum, so please feel free to download it from the service of your choice.

[There are several versions of this out there too, but this one appeared to have no intrusive horseshit YouTube ads – now you know why I host my own stuff on Vimeo.]

That’s all for now, so I’ll leave you with a heartfelt Happy Holidays, for whatever holiday you choose to celebrate or indeed if you celebrate none at all and can thus consider that a holiday thereby creating all sorts of logical issues. I’m glad you’re here to read this, and I’ll provide something more soon. Ish.

Pro tip 1

Al Denelsbeck

Is this going to be an ongoing thing? Don’t know yet. And bear in mind, when I say, “Pro,” I’m referring to myself here, who is decidedly not a professional, is not making any kind of scratch with this, and should not be referred to as an authority on anything…

That out of the way, here’s the tip:

If you’re planning on recording audio in your basement studio, do not wait for the early morning hours when the temperature has dropped precipitously and the heat pumps that sit right outside your window are kicking on every few minutes to produce unwanted background noise on your audio track.

I have two video projects that I’m trying to work on, and can’t do the audio for either of them since I’d have far too narrow a window to work with, so they’re going to wait for the warmer midday hours. I could simply shut down the two heating systems (upstairs and downstairs) for the duration of the recording, but I’m afraid that I’ll forget one or the other and we’ll discover this when the indoor temperature has become rather frigid. I can wait – and by extension, so can you it seems.

I suppose, when the windows are eventually replaced down here, that we could opt for something that deadens that noise – but then I won’t be able to hear what’s going on in the pond or yard, and I’ve counted on that in a few instances already. I’ll just have to time things between the run cycles…

Estate Find XLVIII (IIL)

Al Denelsbeck

Sure, fine, this isn’t really in the spirit of the Estate Find posts, it doesn’t count much as a ‘find’ if I actively searched for it, and certainly wasn’t found here (“Oh, look what I just found in the mailbox!”) but need I remind you that it’s my blog that only I read anyway? Okay then.

original case for Wittnauer Professional rangefinder camera
But yes, I finally obtained something that I have been after for quite some time now, purely for personal nonsense reasons: my first 35mm camera, which was purchased at a yard sale something like 36 years ago.

Wittnauer Professional rangefinder camera in excellent condition manufactured from 1957-1960
Well, it’s certainly not the same camera, and in point of fact, not even the same model – this is a Wittnauer Professional and I had a Wittnauer Challenger, which I cannot even find photos of. Yet it’s nearly identical: the Professional had/has an unlinked light meter, that larger lens up top with the honeycomb pattern, and the lens/shutter assembly was slightly different in format, but otherwise they were exactly the same. This one is in excellent condition (if you ignore the case,) considering that it’s older than I am, manufactured between 1957 and 1960 according to CameraWiki – I certainly don’t gleam as much.

Wittnauer is actually a watch company, and though they branched out into cameras for a few decades, all of them I believe were built instead by Braun and simply rebadged – some of them appeared as Braun models at the same time. There was nothing remarkable about this camera; not a bad lens, but a terrible rangefinder that made focusing tricky (not even a split-image microprism,) and of course no bells or whistles otherwise. Flash units had to be linked through a PC cord. Other lenses, motor drives, and anything else were simply unavailable. A tourist camera, nothing more.

Yet, a goddamn solid and precision-feeling body for all that, much more substantial than many cameras then or now, and I never had any issues with it, save for the very first use when I failed to ensure that the film leader was engaged properly and shot a whole lot of what would have been very cool photos, had I actually shot them – none of them would have been crap, I was that studious about photography even then. But the film stayed in the can the whole time, and so the goofing around with double-exposures with my cousins was never recorded for posterity.

Now, this was not my first camera – that was some old plastic no-control thing, again from a garage sale; I think it might actually have been an Imperial 127 Reflex, but bear in mind, this was a half-century ago when I obtained it, and I might have run two rolls through it, though I did indeed experiment with a double-exposure even then. While that linked site gave it a three star “Noteworthy” rating, they’re judging it on its Art Deco aesthetics, since the camera was indubitably a piece of shit.

Shortly after moving to North Carolina in 1990, I obtained a true SLR camera and thus began my journey into serious photography while the Wittnauer was packed away, to be lost in a storage unit perhaps a decade later. So this new purchase was strictly for nostalgic purposes, and I doubt I’ll run any film through it, but who knows? And while I know that nostalgia is a pretty wish-washy reason to do anything, I didn’t pay very much for this at all, well within my stingy budget for it, and I’m pleased to actually be handling it again. Even if it’s not actually “it” – I won’t tell if you won’t.

And yes, you can see examples of my tenure with it:

Odd memories, part 25

Visibly different, part 24

Visibly different, part 30

Tripod holes 24

Tripod holes 35

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