Slider Molliets

One magic morning

I headed to the beach a little early. 

I was hoping to get some nice waves before the crowds and the wind kicked in. We was only going to spend two weeks in France this summer, so I was going to make the most of it. The waves were a bit too small for the fish that I brought that day and the walk back would take to long, this time however it turned out I wouldn't mind too much.. 

It was only a short while that I had sat there contemplating I should always bring a longboard with me, when a young man and woman entered the water. They slid past me on their longboards to a spot a bit further out than where I was. At first I was bummed because I knew that even when a somewhat bigger ripple would come through, the chance just turned very slim that I would be surfing it. But before black clouds could start packing above me, the magic started.

I don't think I have ever before seen surfing that looked so right. They both were in the right spot all the time, it seemed as they were not riding on the wave, but in conjunction with the wave. Cross-stepping and dropknee-turning and perfect trim all over the place.

I decided to go get my camera out of my bag to catch some of it, but it doesn't really do justice to how they danced.

I didn't get to speak to them so I don't know if they were a couple, but even besides that I feel a bit weird that I was there taking pictures cause for some reason surfing like that, whith nobody else out, seemed kinda intimate. 

It stopped snowing.

And started raining.

Still my blood is starting to pump with the idea that spring and summer are nearing. 

I am already looking forward to some of those early summersessions like in this shot of last summer. Hope the whole crew will be able to make it to France this summer. They are the ones who make these trips so good. 

Two Takayama Eggs

Two Taka eggs. One belonging to myself, one belonging to my friend Pat.

This is one of my favourite shots of last summer. Shot it in Zarautz with my Holga. 

First Nikonos roll

So last Sunday I shot the first roll of film in my Nikonos I. As you can see from my face, I was struggling. It was a though day, the North Sea was angry, and I had a pretty tough session. Took plenty a beating.
Not much surfing was done, but still a great opportunity to get wet, and to test my new camera. Good news, it's watertight!
Here are some shots.

Not blown away by the results. I think I'll have to use a colour filter in the future, cause the sky and the sea have the same shade of grey in a lot of the images. Had to adjust a lot when scanning to get somewhat viewable results.

Whats better than a vintage watercamera?

Two vintage watercameras!!!

I have been looking for a Nikonos water-camera for a while now.

The reason is, that although I am really happy with the Healthways Mako Shark, the camera is limiting. It has a dodgy (yet characteristic) lens, and with just one aperture and one shutter-speed there is not much room for adjustments. And even worse, the only shutter-speed the camera has (1/30th of a second) has proven to be a bit slow for action shots,  or when trying to shoot and keep yourself afloat at the same time :-)

When searching for info on other types of analogue water-cameras with a bit more quality and features,  I learned about the 35mm Nikonos cameras.. They are well built, sturdy, and completely mechanical cameras. Just the way I like them! Besides that, they offer some nice quality interchangeable lenses and you can fumble around with aperture and shutter-speeds (up to 1/500th of a second).

However, these cameras are scarce and so they don't sell cheaply. I already had relinquished to the thought I would only be dreaming about them, but this weekend I got lucky and found an affordable example on the net.

It's a Nikonos I from around 1963. It was developed in a joint venture between Jacques Cousteau's company La Spirotechnique and Nikon. It was first produced under the name Calypso, which was later changed to the name Nikonos. The Nikonos series of cameras continued to be a hugely successful line of underwater-cameras, but my interest  goes out to the first three 'all mechanical' models mainly. I bought mine in a pretty good condition and it came complete with a 35mm lens and the original bag. It will not replace the Mako Machine, but I just want to experiment more with pictures that are actually in focus.

I'm incredibly happy with this find and I hope to get it into the water this weekend. Hopefully I will be able to post the first results after the weekend. But first I will have to figure out how the thing is opened :-)

ps: Like the pics of the cameras? Yeah I completely suck at productphotography.

New years day pics

Got the film back from processing. These are some shots.
Although I'm a fiend for black and white images, I dig the colour of these slides a lot. It reflects the positive feel of the day better than the black and whites.

Its starting to become a bit of a one man show with only pics of my buddy Tim surfing. I will try to shoot other surfers more in the future, but lately all the waves we didn't share between the two of us, looked like this:

Empty. 

That's the price you pay for surfing somewhere with nobody but yourself and one of your best friends. Its though ;-)

The occupation

Tim

This is my buddy Tim. We went for a surf last weeks Monday because it was his last day of freedom before definitively joining the occupation. The next day his contract at his first 'real' job started. Off-course such a day should be spent in style.

I woke up incredibly early to catch a train to the coast to be welcomed by Tim saying the forecasts changed a lot overnight. Instead of mellow surfing conditions, all of a sudden we were getting serious Dutch stormsurf.

I have a longboard stalled at Tim's house, but boy was I happy I dragged my fish with me that day. Longboards and Dutch stormsurf don't mix very well in my opinion. Too much board that can be dragged back to the beach by the many shifty peaks.

Anyways the forecast got us quite excited, so a quick cup of coffee and we took the tram to the beach. After a short walk through the dunes were welcomed by this view:

Hey, wait a second...  this doesnt look like stormsurf!

Some pretty decent lines seemed to be coming in, so we rushed the last bit to the beach.

In the water however the conditions turned out to be a bit more haggard than they looked. Strong currents, lots of close-outs, big foam walls and 2 guys in the water who both should surf more, made for a lot of paddling and not a lot of surfing getting done.

I did manage to get some waves, but had some issues adjusting to my fish which I hadn't surfed in a looong time.

Tim gearing up for the cold North Sea

Waves still looked decent from here

Fuzzy pic of me struggling on my fish by Tim

Not only did I struggle with surfing, I had quite a hard time photographing as well. The conditions made it impossible to shoot from my board and I wasn't feeling comfortable swimming out too far with the strong currents. I did try for a short while to get somewhat closer to the break, but there was quite a ferocious shorebreak. I had one of the worst wipe-outs in a long time... and it was without a board!
Standing in knee-deep water I got sent into some sort of summersault throwing my legs over my body, and digging my chin into the bottom in the process. When I surfaced my camera which was around my neck (and tied around my wrist as well!) was gone. Luckily it floats, so after a mad dash I retrieved it from the claws of the greedy North Sea.

From the safety of the beach I later did manage to get this one cool shot of Tim and a fishingtrawler passing by behind hem.

Even though I really struggled, I still enjoyed myself tremendously. I really start to saviour every day spent in the water more and more. A bad day in the water is still so much better than an average day spent doing random daily stuff.

When surfing the net later that week, I came across this drawing by monsterboardsorg.blogspot.com 's Eef:

 I really dig Eef's art (and his unconventional hand- and bellyboards as well). In this drawing he really caught the feeling I had last week (and have quite often when I'm in the sea on a grim cloudy day when there's some height to the waves). I can really get intimidated by her sometimes, although I know there no reason to be. Weird enough whenever it happens, as soon as the suns breaks through, it's gone. I guess its all in my head. Anyway, I like this drawing a lot. Eef rocks!

Finally Mako shots!

Result! I had the first roll of film I shot with the Mako machine developed and printed. I just couldn't bare to wait till I get a scanner to see what kinda results the Mako produces. I got to see the negatives last week, so I already knew were some images on there. Tonight after work I finally got to pick up the printed results.

And the machine works! There are some pretty decent shots on the roll. But off-course some have motion blur due to me trying not to sink and taking pictures at the same time. And I was a bit far from the subject a few times. Well it was the first time shooting with the camera, so all part of the learning curve.

I let the owner of my local photography shop convince me to use some weird Kodak c41 black and white film and I wasn't really feeling the look of the film. Its a black and white film which they develop as a colour film, it reduces the cost of developing and printing a bit in his shop, but the pictures come out in a sort of blue sepia-like tone-scale. Off-course me taking pics of the prints with my 300d under artificial light and then trying to fix that with my dodgy photoshop skills doesn't help :-D

I am so glad I decided to buy this camera. I can't wait to get back in the water with it!

Creepy stuff at the beach

When we got to the beach this weekend shock and horror awaited us.

During his warming up/stretching routine one of my friends stumbled upon what looked like a little childs leg in a plastic bag. Luckily it turned out to be just a puppetleg. Still kinda creepy to see that lying on the beach like that. We were however rewarded with this great surreal shot Pat got of the scene.

I've finally got to test the Mako camera this weekend. It held up great, the film was completely dry even though the camera was in the cold North Sea for a considerable time. I will have the film processed this week. I might get it scanned so I can post some shots. Otherwise these will have to be added to the ever growing list of shots that will follow once I get a scanner of my own.

In this post are some shots of my good friend Pat who was on cameraduty during this weekends little session. He braved the cold and windy beach like a man! Maybe in part due to last nights whisky still heating his system.

Timmysattva mid-stretch

Tim with a nice little Dutch wall

I really enjoyed the weekend. Good friends, Californication on tv, whiskey, photography and some nice little rides. Goodtimes!

Some single-use Kodak shots

These are some of the shots from one of the single-use Kodak waterproof cameras that joined us for a surftrip. Like I've said before I was quite surprided by the results from this cheap cameras.
I think this camera was in my travelbag for about 3 years before I found it again and shot the remaining frames. So the film was expired quite a bit, but I think that added to the feel of the shots.
The nice onboard shots were made by Tim a friend of mine aboard a ragged but nice old log.

You dont have any influence on the settings with these cameras, so unless the sun is behind you, the subjects tend to be underexposed (as is obvious in some of the shots). However that isn't always a bad thing. In the last shot it was getting dusk and I quite like how the underexposure turned out.

Offcourse you gotta watch out for waterdrops on the lens, unless you like blurr...

I found out the hard way that the Zarautz shorebreak mini-barrels are though (and quite painfull) to photograph.

There were even some shots on the roll from years ago when we went for a wintersession in Scheveningen, its from before I even moved there.

Looking back at these shots got me amped up even more to go test the Mako machine. I tested it for leaks in the sink today and it seems watertight. Got to get it into the sea soon.

Subaquatica!

Oh yes!

Doesnt it look just killer...

Finally an underwatercamera that I can reload and shoot another roll of film with.

Ever since me and some friends used some single-use Kodak underwatercameras and were quite pleased with results produced by said cameras, I have been digging underwatercameras more and more. So to own and use one has been on my cravelist for a while now. Not that I will be going under the water much, but when shooting surfing from up close and personal and in the water and such, the camera needs to be quite watertight as well.

I was eyeing this camera for a while now. As it was for sale at a cool little local photographyshop around here. But I didn't have the money to buy it sooner. Not because this little machine was expensive or overpriced, just I was broke, as usual.

The camera is a 'Mako shark' camera produced by a company called Healthways who do diving equipment. It was produced in the 1950's. The camrea is very simple with a fixed focus and one shutter speed*

The cool thing about this camera is that it basically is a plastic underwaterhousing with the inside of a Kodak brownie. So it uses the no longer existing 620 film format. Luckily you can use 120 rollfilm in this camera without a problem! I love 120, so thats what I really like about this thing. That and the 'Jacques Cousteau' look offcourse.

I could have easily opt for the option of a more modern, automatic, more sturdy 35mm format subaquatic camera like the Minolata Weathermatic or Canon Prima AS-1, and no doubt in the future I will pick one of those up as well, but for now I had to catch this gem before it ended up al unused in some collectors display cabinet.

I will post some images from this Mako machine as soon as possible. That is if the camera wont flood. I have heard some stories about them being prone to flooding behaviour. First have to go shoot a surfsession. Offcourse now there is even less money for a filmscanner, so no filmshots yet. Just digitals.

*I don't have a clue yet about the aperture of this little camera or about its shutterspeed (its quicker than I can count). If anyone does, please let me know.