Richmond Trestle

I shot this in 2023 with a damaged Sputnik. On my way to the location, I was doing something with my camera bag, and it suddenly inverted, spilling out both my spud and my (brand “new”) Heidoskop onto the pavement of the parking lot. I soon discovered that the fall caused the Spud shutter to become partially inoperative – I had to close the shutter manually… it behaved like a bulb setting (actually worse, I had to push up on the cocking lever to close the shutter).

I shot this scene with the Spud, timing the exposures around 1/2 second by the “seat of my pants.” The Heidoskop had worked better, it didn’t appear to have suffered any damage; but I later discovered it had developed a large light leak, because of a broken seal in the custom roll-film back – so none of the exposures from that camera were any good.

Just goes to show: even a busted Spud can make good images!

railroad trestle and architecture

P.S.
In the interim, I’ve not had much success with fixing the Spud shutter. My efforts on that front are detailed in this Patreon post. Last year, Bob Venezia was kind enough to send me several Spud lens boards/shutters, to help me fix this thing, but alas, I’ve not yet gotten into it deeply enough to succeed with the repair.