Charlotte

Throughout many of the posts here Charlotte is mentioned. So perhaps Chralotte needs some explaining and positioning. Charlotte provides the ground legs of pretty much everything but international trips from here at Club 2223 and the photo wagon extraordinare. She is the second in a line and monetarily speaking hopefully the last in a line of MB wagons dating back to the fall of 1984.  Her predecessor was know simply as "The Wagon". It brought Ted home from the hospital and all five kids learned to drive in it, diesel death rattle notwithstanding. "The Wagon" suffered plenty of indignities that Charlotte will never have to endure, dents, crashes with Xandy, seven figures worth of stickers and I am sure plenty of hastily removed rowlf and other detritus that I never saw. On one ocassion gas instead of diesel. Somehow "The Wagon" endured all of that for several decades and all the way to 330,000 miles.  

So this time, no brats, no Jackie Stewart impersonators (as hillarious as that might seem) and for sure no stickers. Given my white glove treatment, I am expecting to eke at least 330k miles out of Charlotte. Ted took the shot below at Antietam over Christmas — he professes to like Charlotte and has no qualms about borrowing her on vists. Is he sending some sort of message about his real feelings?

If you are slow to respond to blog post announcements you probably need to checkout the posting right below from earlier today as well, as it was the driver for the notice.

Charlotte under Fire on Mumma Lane

A day at the Labs

The Edison Labs, West Orange, NJ — hard by the Star Tavern, viewable from my 8th grade classroom. Close by to Nash domicles of 20+ years.

Mostly of the main building and really just two floors of that as the top floor is mostly museum-like and glass enclosed.  But the lower floors and the light!  I am guessing it it the windows, embedded wire, and frosted that creates the spectacular light. Handheld only but the NPS has "fences" that are about 3 feet high and have a square tube as the top member, perfect for a tripod substitute. I had the NEX-7 and the flat top surface of the "fence" worked really well with the flip-out LCD on the NEX. I made two passes, the first from bottom to top with the Ziess 24mm f/1.8 (35mm equivelent) mounted with the Carl Ziess Sioftar II filter in front. Then I back-tracked from top to bottom after changing to the Sony 35mm f/1.8 (50mm equivelent). I left the filter off for the second pass.

It was pretty dark so I had to settle for shallower DOFs than I might have prefered to get non-shaky shots even with the image stabilzed 35mm.

Here is one of the snaps, there is a pretty large number, especially since each is in color and B&W (faux platinum), so they are on SmugMug.  Click here or on the snap below to check out the SmugMug gallery.

Heavy Machine Shop