Month: February 2021 (Page 1 of 3)

–Got fruit/veggies at the light rail farmers market.

–Re-unboxed the Leica M 262. Put a voltmeter on the charger (and another charger); it certainly appears that the charger is putting out 0 volts, as the other one appeared to be putting out 8 or so. Rigged up one of my battery chargers to the Leica battery with some wires; doesn’t seem to be doing anything. If the (coming) Nitecore charger works on this battery, I may well keep the camera. Though it does look like a gray market unit (no warranty), given that the serial number appears to have been obscured with a sharpie under the plastic cover on the base. Very weird.

–Played around some more with the pool sweep. Given that it still turns circles after re-aiming the rear jet 5 times, I’m thinking the only cure will be slowing it down with a restrictor or bypass valve adjustment.

–Dropped tax docs off at Finton & Finton.

–A second set of hearing aid wax guards came in from same eBay seller as the first set. First ones were too large and didn’t fit. These were in a different color dispenser (same brand, though) and did fit. No idea why they sent two sets.

–Camellias (red, white and pink) are looking fabulous.

–Casio EX-ZS35 came in. 20 megapixels, 6x zoom, and just a stunning tiny luxurious-feeling case. Hard to believe what they put in a package that small. Going to be very hard to choose between that and the Leica C, which does raw and is also small and great in-hand.

–Played with the pool sweep some more. Turns out it’s running at 41 RPM (should be 28-30). Dropping both pumps way low had no effect. I need to work on it via restrictor and bypass valve–when the water warms up.

–Horribly enough, the Summicron 50 Dual Range that wouldn’t work on the M9 works great on the Sony A7R (with adapter, of course). Problem is, the Sony/Zeiss 55mm lens, with autofocus, blows the Summicron out of the water, at least at f2. I’ll be tossing the Summicron and Fujinons, and (maybe) calling it quits on old lenses. Exceptions would be Helios, Jupiter, etc. I can’t imagine how an old lens would stand up to the Sony/Zeiss, except for bokeh. That’s what I’ve been reading on the web for years, and chose to ignore in my quest for vintage coolness.

–Took a shower. The 1905 Gillette double ring is a nice shaver; the 1905 Gillette blade I tried was like shaving with a carpet knife.

–Pool sweep works. Runs too fast, but I believe that’s correctable.

–Leica M9 (Typ 242) came in. Battery and/or charger don’t work. Seems to be a fairly common problem. Contacted Amazon, who said item is not returnable but they will contact seller on my behalf and seller will get back to me within 48 hours. Meanwhile, I ordered a nice Nitecore charger. Turns out the Summicron 50 lens I bought ($1,500) is a “dual range” model, one of 3-4 nominal M lenses that don’t work on this camera. Hoping I didn’t hurt anything when I applied a little force to get the lens to focus at infinity, which it won’t. So that’s two dead Leicas in two weeks. Crap.

–Made pizza for dinner. For some reason (frozen dough?) it didn’t rise much and came out hyper-crispy. This could be hard to adjust, since the same dough (used fresh, not frozen) worked great a few days ago. I guess I cold cut the recipe in half…

–Took the Polaris apart again and eventually found a clog in the last possible place: a small right-angle tube that sends a jet of water to turn the paddlewheel. (1) The clog shouldn’t have gotten that far, what with all the filters. (2) It was several small bits of redwood debris. Still, I would have thought that the final huge filter would trap anything bigger than a few microns. (3) The tube should have had a smooth curve, not an abrupt right angle. Anyway, after a futile attempt to get it running right, I put the bottom back on, which holds the idler wheel (d’oh!) and found a website that went step-by-step in showing how to properly install and adjust the wheels. It will run right tomorrow, guaranteed.

–Checked the C-Lux on center-weighted, multi-area and spot metering. Multi wins out, at least for side-yard pictures in the sun.

–Gillette double ring from 1905 came in. Pretty cool.

–Watched an episode of Dr. Blake with subtitles. Much better.

–Organized batteries in the utility room.

–Pool sweep tail went crazy, stopped after I cleared a small obstruction from the back jet. Problem: even though back jet was spouting 20 feet, the wheels weren’t turning. We’ll see tomorrow.

–Leica Summicron lens came in. Looks super. Just need a camera now…

–Made my third pan pizza. This one finally got it all right. Cooked for 30 minutes at 450; crust was wonderful.

–Roasted caf beans. Figured out (maybe) how to eliminate chaff and smoke/scorching problems: use only 200g of beans, set max temp to 440 or so.

–UPS (Leica C-Lux) delayed again, until Monday.

–Took a shower. As feared, the Blackland Blackbird Jet is too aggressive for me. Now I have 17 Blackland Blackbirds to sell…

–Set up a charging station in the utility room.

–Waited in vain for UPS to deliver Leica C-Lux.