GAS

No, not that kind of gas!  In fact not any type of gas you may normally associate with the word GAS.. Gas in this case stands for.. wait for it..

Gear

Acquisition

Syndrome

Most comonly suffered by the male of the homo sapiens sapiens species, although the females have their own version (shop therapy, shoe acquisition syndrome etc).  Oh, and before my female readers get their knickers in a knot.. SATIRE ALERT!

GAS normally relates to technological items of a complicated and convoluted sort, something that takes us males ages to understand and make work properly, and once we've mastered how they work.. we turn to the next item on our G.A.S. list..  GAS items normally include cars, cameras and lenses, complicated pocket-knives, watches (normally of the expensive swiss kind) and, strangely, bags.  Something in common with our female folk.

 

If you have been bitten by GAS you will know exactly what I'm talking about.  If you haven't or are female then let me explain.  The male mind (and yes, generic gender generalizations will be the feature of this "article") revels in complicated dials and switches, mechanical movements made by the hands of "man" (in case you think me a misogynist, check out pictures of a Nikon factory in Japan.. mostly women!) for the hands of man to control.  However our minds are on a constant search for the perfect complication.  Be that the nice mechanical click sound the latest camera makes, to the imperceptible high-frequency beat of a mechanical watch that sounds like an old fire-engine on steroids, albeit very very far away.  If you've ever paused to LISTEN to your watch more than once, you my friend have GAS.

Now GAS can range from the relatively harmless to divorce level material, insofar as it interferes with one's ability to connect with one's better half (again generic gender stereotype, as how could one half be better than the other?!).  However it does allow man's desire for infidelity to find a relatively innocuous release, especially when viewed by our spouses.  Think for a moment which your wife or partner would prefer.. you going out with the latest model blond bombshell... or swapping the merc for a bmw?!

GAS also allows for the male mind's desire for total and complete control of something rather complicated.  Seeing as we are unable to manage to control our spouses in any discernable way, or indeed to understand them, we concentrate our attentions on an inanimate object that must follow the immutable laws of physics as well as the less clearly defined rules of logic.. depending on who's logic was used to create the item in question.  This has brought the western male mind into contact with ZEN thinking that is the basis of Japanese design, as well as the art of the needless complication as exemplified by Swiss watch manufacturers.

And how has GAS affected me?  Well I suffer from multiple manifestations of GAS driven in part by the fall of film camera prices, the almost instant availability via platforms like EBAY and the ability to dispose of some of my income indiscriminately.  My kids are still young so planning for university fees hasn't quite hit me yet. Or that's what I'll tell then when they come asking for money and I peer above my mountain of used cameras and lenses...

GAS can get out of control, and in this day and age of the internet where access is but a click away you can lose a lot of time window-shopping and selecting bid or buy.  Back in the day you'd have to search out your favourite camera store, the monthly nic-nack market, or wait for the weekly autotrader mag to see what vintage model soft-tops there were.. or whatever forum there was for your GAS item of desire...  But today the acceleration of GAS is given by the almost always on internet shopping possibilities, as well as being able to go to far-flung corners of the world to find stuff.  I mean I got a bit of camera stuff from LATVIA the other day.. posted to Australia.. and now on it's way to Mozambique.  The power of online shopping, fast shipping and willing mules has made my GAS explode exponentially.  But now my wife is starting to wonder if I am wed to her, or to a camera store.

My GAS takes other forms as well.. sadly of the even more expensive kind.. Watches.  Although here there is a practical aspect limiting my purchasing, and that is that I have only 2 arms on which to wear my watches. And because they are all mecchanical, it takes a lot of time every day to keep them all ticking along.  One could make the same argument about my cameras, i.e. only having two eyes, but I find that putting 2 cameras to my face slightly (note I said only slightly) ridiculous, and in fact the different cameas I have serve different purposes and indeed take different film formats which changes their characters completely.  At least that's what I tell myself.  My wife can't tell the difference between a photo taken with one camera or another...or with my smartphone for that matter.  And.. neither can most photographers.

With lenses the equation changes substantially.  There I can go wild.  I'm told the average photographer owns 2.2 lenses.  The poor bugger with the .2 of a lens must be really be pissed off! However the reality is that most people buy an SLR with one consumer zoom lens and live happily ever after.  Then there are the GAS guys (invariably guys!) who have to absolutely cover every focal length from here to infinity and struggle with bags of 8 or 9 lenses.  I make sure the average stays up!

And where will this take us, this GAS?  Well, have you ever heard of an estate sale?!  Rarely does one's offspring take as much care or interest in the things that we took so long and worked so hard to amass.  In fact they probably have an aversion to those things, seeing them as useless baubles, or things that took their parent's time away from them.. And so many end up on the auctioneer's block.  Or worse Cash Crusaders.  Guess where I'm headed next?!

Xefina Revisited (Again)

Some of you may (or may not!) know that in 2008 I published a photobook via Blurb called "Xefina Island".  That book was made using photos shot over a two year period, from 2007 and 2008.  I had been visiting this small sandbank of an island for much longer than that,  and have managed a few trips back since my book, although the last was in early 2017...  What could more that 3 years do to an island already ravaged by the forces of nature?  A lot, as I learned this past weekend!  

However the island continues to live in an eerie calm, just perched at almost walking distance from the Costa do Sol beaches of Maputo.  Although it maintains it's mystery for most Maputans, except for a few intrepid kiteboarders, it is a habitual haunt for a significant number of fishermen that use it's beach as a launching point for their expeditions.  A small village is home to some of the poorest people in Mozambique, though rich in pride and humility.  I was fortunate to have had had a nice interaction with some of them while taking these photographs.

I have to confess that the impetus for this trip were a photographer friend, Nii Obadia, as well as my wife.  Through the former's insistance and latter's organisation, we were able to make it onto the island.  Here are some pictures from yesterday's trip.  Hope you enjoy.

 

 

Fisherman on structure

 

Wait, am I in your photo?

 

New beach structures

 

Claw

 

Monolith

 

 

Fishermen and structures

 

Differing horizon lines

 

My favourite structure

 

Local fishermen with their catch of oysters

 

The long walk back to our boat

 

 

For the technically minded these photographs were taken with a Canon 1Ds mark III, which was released about the time I started photographing this island (2007!).  Coupled with this camera were two Nikon (!) lenses, a 17-35 f2.8 and an 85mm f2.8 Tilt and Shift lens.  Other photographs (not shown yet) were taken with a Hasselblad 500CM with a 50mm f4 Zeiss lens on Kodak Plus X 125 asa film.  Oh, and for the record, I used the Gitzo tripod I saved from oblivion as reported in this blog page.

Fixing a Gitzo GT1541OT

 Photo by Cavell from Facebook - used with permission

So today's post is about one of my pet likes.. fixing things.  I was browsing Facebook's marketplace when I chanced upon an advert for a Gitzo tripod for $80!  Intrigued, I read on, although the pictures explained exactly why the tripod was going for so little.  A tripod that in it's day (+/- 2009) retailed for 800 POUNDS!  The guy who I eventually bought it from said he paid over AUD 1000.. still a big chunk of change.  As I am living away from my trusty Giotto tripod (Chinese clone of Gitzos), and still waiting for my Peak Design travel tripod, I was in need of some stability.. so to speak.  So I met up with the seller and after a bit of haggling bought the tripod and head for a measely AUD60..  However the scars were deep and they were many.  The centre column has completely crushed in the middle and was disintegrating at every attempt to raise or lower it into a position, where it could be tightened and put to good use.  The leg joints were completely loose and 2 legs had lost their original bolts and were held together by your bog standard galvanised bolts, all rusty and not really doing the job.  Still, could be worse...

 Photos by Cavell from Facebook - used with permission

And indeed, when I got home, on looking closely at one of the legs, it too had been wacked, although thankfully the scar seemed mostly superficial.

Note to self, bring my reading glasses when examining photo equipment!  

The most pressing problem was the centre column, which in it's present state was totally unusable, as the legs did in fact work, though in a wobbly fashion.   So I immediately set about dismantling the legs..  Priorities!  What I found both disheartened and delighted me.  At some point this tripod had sat in the back of a car driving across Australia.. Only that could explain how everything had gotten loose and in some cases lost.  Washers were missing, bolts replaced..  Anything that was a screw had some issue with it!  Someone though had tried putting the legs back together at some point, and where there was once brass, we now had either a galvanised washer or none.  Eventually I managed to get everything off, cleaned and then re-assembled the legs using the original parts to complete 2 of them, with all the "spare parts" used to complete the third leg - two perfectly working with all the right parts.. and one.. sadly a frankenstein.  A quick visit to the "net" revealed that Gitzo, 10 years after releasing this tripod, still stocked spares!!  I was totally amazed.  Not only that, they had an exploded diagram of my tripod with all the spares marked.. You could practically build a new tripod out of parts!!!

Gitzo parts manual for GT1541OT

However Gitzo is not cheap, and the centre column and leg bolt set would set me back US165.. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but I thought I could do better.  Also, I wanted to use this tripod NOW, not wait for the vagueries of Christmas time shipping!  So I started searching for suppliers of bolts and washers in Brisbane, Australia (I'm here now) and found a few, one just 10 minutes away.  So at 2pm on a Friday afternoon I shot off down the road to try my luck..

Items required:

2 stainless steel button hex bolts M8 15mm long
2 brass washers 6.7x15x1.5mm
2 stainless washers

After 10 minutes the pregnant storekeeper handed me a little bag with part that approximated my need, but weren't exactly the right size.  Note to self.. next time bring along a caliper.   Total spend AUD 1.18.   Well at least I wasn't too too out of pocket!

So as that hadn't gone quite as I hoped, with the hex bolt heads being a bit too small for the tripod, I headed to Bunnings Warehouse, where low prices are just the beginning..

While there I found larger philips head bolts.. not the most elegant solution nor as easy to tighten, however a much better fit for the tripod leg connection.. more brass washers just in case the first lot weren't perfect and then.. well, what about the tripod column?! Yes, I'd need to deal with that, so some glue, sandpaper and gaffer tape..  You'll find out just after the break..

Before we continue with the rebuild though, I thought I'd talk a little about this tripod, which doesn't have much in the way of literature about it.  A long and almost fruitless Google search did however provide a few pointers.. I finally found one video with barely 15 likes that talks about how this tripod is built, which at only 4:44 is definitely worth a watch.  If you don't have time, let me summarise.. Stainless steel parts so tripod can be used in the sea with salt water.. aptly called Ocean Traveller (the OT part of the GT1541OT model number).  So this is a Gitzo traveller tripod, one of the first with reverse storage legs to make it smaller when packed, but almost as large as normal tripods when opened up and extended.  I'm not a fan of tripods with big centre columns as they tend to sway in anything but a whisper of wind.  Not this tripod aparently.  The load rating is low at 4kg, but I believe that to be conservative.. Maybe not for large format, but medium format should definitely balance on top.

So back to the rebuild of this Ocean traveller.. The centre column.. Well, in it's present state it was all but useless..however I'd read somewhere about shortening broken carbon fibre tubes, and so set about doing just that.  After a tap test (tapping the tube to hear changes in sound) I worked out that roughly half of the tube was damaged.  I then proceded to wrap the gaffer tape around the tube along where I wanted to cut, and just next to that with scotchtape, leaving just a thin sliver where I would cut along.  This would help prevent spintering as I cut through the fibres.  I did a test cut into the broken tube first to understand how my handsaw would react with the carbon, and proceded to make a huge amount of dust as I cut into the tube.  So if you're doing this at home, then make sure you wear a dust mask, have a cloth or piece of paper underneath.  The cut was almost perfect, with very little splintering.  The tapes were doing their job.  I then cut into the channel I'd left uncovered between the 2 tapes and with bated breath proceded to make another almost perfect cut.  Now I had little less than half a perfect carbon tube.. However the open end would be at risk and would need to be stoppered, so I took the off-cut end and removed the metal stopper, and then glued that with epoxy glue into the open end of the good part of the tube..  Perfect connection!  And you can hardly see any glue.  Wow, I must be getting good at this after years of model planes :-)

So we are done!  Perfectly working tripod with a shorter centre column, ready and waiting for my camera to go take some pictures.  But wait.. there's more..

Because I'm a bit particular about these things, the AUD1.18 bolts were not doing it for me, and so I decided to splurge on the Gitzo bolts and washers, which in actual fact were a bit wider and held the leg more securely, so off I went to their website, ordered the parts, and 2 weeks later they arrived, right in the middle of the Christmas rush! Well, Christmas came early for me, as the parts were spot on, and now I have a perfectly working, perfectly looking (short) Gitzo tripod.

With Gitzo spare parts, and the other consumables I ended up spending $60, and with the tripod at $60, a total of AUD120, or for those inclined to use greenbacks, around USD80.. Not bad for one of the highest quality tripods I've ever seen in my life.

And one last word about this ST version.  The stainless steel used in this tripod is a special cast type which is non-porous and therefore even more rust resistant than ordinary stainless steel, and therefore weathers the elements perfectly.  This tripod is 10 years old and not a spot of rust on it!  Obviously this process must have been very expensive because Gitzo (now made by Manfrotto in Italy, after it's UK holding company closed the French factory down) no longer manufacture this type of steel.  All their tripods have their standard greyish laquer paint, which is nowhere near as resistant to chips and bangs and marks, and eventually rust.   Sad.  You will not see a more beautiful tripod around than this one..