Vinny does Shelton, Washington, with Kodak Panatomic-X (Abandoned Films 05d)

Vinny at his best

Vinny, my Little Voigtländer Vito BL camera, does not get out often. Long-term readers may remember he insisted that I take him to the big city of Jackson, Mississippi, in 2021. Well, Vinny was restless and again called out, "Take me to a city."  

This Vito BL has a 50mm ƒ/3.5 Color Skopar lens, Voigtländer's superb 1950s reformulation of the classic 4-element Tessar design. This one is fully coated and unit focus, meaning, the entire lens moves rather than just the first element. And I have genuine Voigtländer 32mm color filters. The shutter speeds are reasonably correct despite the Prontor shutter having not been overhauled. The selenium light meter does respond to light but is non-linear and unusable, so I use a separate Gossen hand-held meter. 

My Buffalo, New York, friend had sent me a roll of 35mm Kodak Panatomic-X film. The last rolls I used in Mississippi and Louisiana were grainy and a bit fogged. Was this one better? Was it the last roll on earth? What could be a better use of Panatomic-X than to photograph urban decay with Vinny? I decided to expose this roll at exposure index (IE) of 20, so that required a tripod to stabilize the camera. Using a tripod makes you slow down and frame each picture carefully. 

We set off to Shelton, Washington, one April day (2025) with mixed sun and cloud. It was dry, a treat after a soggy March. Well, any day with Panatomic-X is a treat!

Coming in to town from the west, you drive along West Railroad Avenue. Years ago, the Simpson Lumber Company operated lumber trains along this route.  An old rail yard is overgrown, but you still see track. Someone has mowed the fields. 

Riverside Manor is a mobile home park at the west end of West Coda Street. The wooden bridge crosses Goldsborough Creek. 

Near the bridge, some dudes came out of a house with a dog and multiple cats. They admired my 44 year old car. One guy showed me his fixer-upper BMW M3. He said he formerly raced it. Then, some kids came across the bridge and spent some time looking at my car. They asked if they could look inside. They were friendly and even more cheerful when I showed them the engine compartment.

The old rail line crosses Goldsborough Creek at South 9th Street. A fellow from the house to the left came to talk. He thought the City planned to convert the former rail line into a rail trail. He said he could not afford to pay for water, so he went down to the creek to get water to flush the toilet. 

This handsome brick commercial building is on South 2nd Street. Some of the former glass show windows have been covered with plywood. But wait! What is that in the overgrown lot to the north?

Ah-ha! This building is protected by guard flamingoes. I will not mess with them.

Rail yard off South 1st Street (1/4 sec. ƒ/11, medium yellow filter)

Storage tank, Grove Street (light yellow filter)

Chicken to go, South 1st Street (1/4 ƒ/8, light yellow filter)

South 1st Street (1/4 ƒ/8 light yellow filter)

Alley parallel to Railroad Avenue (Fuji Presto 400 film, 50mm ƒ/2 Pentax-A lens)

Vinny did well on his outing to the big city of Shelton. I certainly cannot complain about the results from his Color-Skopar lens. It is a classic 4-element optic of Tessar design. Of course, using a tripod let me set the lens at its optimum apertures of ƒ/5.6, ƒ/8, or ƒ/11 and set the shutter speed as needed. I measured the light with a Gossen Luna Pro Digital meter, mostly on incident mode. This tends to be foolproof on days with soft light.  

This roll of Panatomic-X looked good, with no obvious fog but more grain than when it was fresh. Northeast Photographic in Bath, Maine, developed the film in Xtol. I scanned the negatives with a Nikon CoolScan 5000ED film scanner. The last picture of the alley was on Fuji Presto 400 film.

That you all for reading along.

Olympia with Kodak Panatomic-X film (Oly 21)

My good friend from Buffalo, New York, sent me a roll of Kodak Panatomic-X film! Where did he find this treasure? Was this the last roll on earth? 

Panatomic-X was Eastman Kodak's great achievement from the middle of the 20th century, film-making excellence from the golden age of film photography. I have written about Panatomic-X before and concluded that because of the age, it is not worth seeing out unexposed rolls. But here was a great gift, so I headed out with nostalgia and anticipation. Thirty years ago, I typically exposed it at EI=20 or 25. This film has a reputation of aging well (as long as it was stored cool), so I decided to use it again at EI=20. This required a tripod for most frames. I used my 1950s Voigtländer Vito BL, a precise little camera with a superb 4-element coated 50mm ƒ/3.5 Color Skopar lens. This was a 1950s recompilation of the Tessar type of lens. And I had genuine Voigtländer color filters. A classic film in a classic camera, what could be better? 

Olympia

Here are some frames from my April 2025 walk around Olympia, Washington. It was a hazy spring day with no sky texture.

Tracks near Jefferson Street, view north (1/4 ƒ/11, light yellow filter)

Homeless people, Jefferson Street

Handsome traditional wood architecture on 9th Avenue (1/4 ƒ/11, light yellow filter)

This house is a few blocks from South Capitol, a neighborhood of beautiful traditional early 20th century homes. 

Burned out black house, now demolished (1/4 ƒ/11, light yellow filter)

7th Avenue railroad tunnel east entrance (1/4 ƒ/11, medium yellow filter)

When I first moved to town, the 7th Avenue tunnel puzzled me. I asked a homeless fellow where the tunnel emerged, and he replied "Near the black house." I wondered what he meant, what black house?  Walking on 7th Avenue, we saw a grungy house painted in black paint. Later, we found other black houses in the city. A few months later, the house burned. The mess remained on the lot for several months before someone cleaned the debris.

215 Thurston Avenue

This is an interesting door, and the markings change occasionally. I have photographed it before. (Update October 10, 2025: the building has been painted and this doorway is now boring)

Union, Washington

The Hunter Farm, on Washington Rte. 106, has a big barn and numerous out buildings. 

I love these kinds of complicated scenes. I will ask the owners sometime if I can return with my large format camera.

This ends our short tour with the famous Panatomic-X film. Standby for examples from Shelton, Washington.

Technical Stuff

The camera on the left is my Vito BL. I posed it with my 1949 Leica IIIC camera as a size comparison. I must be honest, the photos from the Vito are higher resolution than the ones from my old IIIC. The latter has some error with its lens mount. 

 

Checking out South Seattle, Washington (Sea 08)

South of Seattle's business district and south of T Mobile Park is a broad flat area that is heavily industrialized. Rail lines criss-cross the area feeding King Street station and numerous companies and warehouses. Boeing Field is to the west, a short distance from the Duwamish waterway.  Here are a few frames from March of 2025, an overcast day with soft light. 

Downtown Seattle from South Horton Street (135mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax-M lens)

The Amtrak train and the Sounder run on some of these tracks as they approach the King Street Station.

Sounder commuter train, King Street Station (Canonet GIII QL17 camera)

King Street Station clock tower

King Street Station view south

The bell tower on the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy inspired this graceful clock tower. When new in 1906, it was the tallest structure in Seattle.

View south from South Horton Street

The neighborhoods south of the city offer interesting subject matter. I want to explore some more.

Fixer-upper house, 3rd Avenue South

Guard Lion, South Bennett Street

Teriyaki, 4th Avenue South

Most of these pictures are from Kodak Portra 160 film. I used my Pentax Spotmatic-F camera with various Pentax lenses. The photos in the King Street Station are from my Canon Canonet GIII QL17 compact camera. It has a superb 6-element 40mm ƒ/1.7 lens. I scanned the negatives with a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED film scanner.

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 06 - Fading Small Town: Mabton

Mabton is a small town in Yakima County, Washington, a few miles southeast of Yakima on Hwy. 22. Most travelers rush by on Interstate 22 just to the north, but I took the local road to see the small towns in the region. Mabton has had a rough recent history, with a deputy city clerk being arrested for stealing $22,000 in a fake robbery scheme, along with other small-town graft exercises. Hmmm, sounds like small towns in the Mississippi Delta - or Jackson.

Approaching Mabton on Hwy 22

A block north of Hwy 22, B Street was the former commercial strip, complete with square-front shops of the type typical in small towns. Most are now closed. It was rather sad.

Proceeding west, we reached Yakima and stopped for a coffee. The downtown looks prosperous, but there may be possibilities in the outskirts. The famous teriyaki burger joint was too tempting to resist (for a photograph, not lunch).

I took these photographs on Kodak Portra 160 film with my Pentax MG camera and various lenses. The lab that processed the film made some major chemical or timing error, and the film was very thin. This resulted in exaggerated grain and odd colors. 

The old barber shop and unused grocery were behind dirty glass. I attached a rubber hood on my 28mm ƒ/2.8 Vivitar lens and pressed it against the glass. The Pentax MG camera has aperture priority exposure measurement, so I set the lens at ƒ/11 and let the camera calculate the exposure. The rubber hood shielded the lens from external light. This was much easier than trying to point a hand-held meter at the scene through the reflective glass.  

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 05 - Farms and Basalt Country in B&W

The big open country of Eastern Washington invites black and white photography. It is a relatively new photographic terrain for me, although long-term readers may remember that I took a September 2024 trip to eastern Washington. Here are some scenes from my 2025 trip.

Spokane 

Centennial Mill (50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/8)

This immense concrete monolith is the former Centennial Mills on East Trent Avenue, built in 1940. After several mergers, Centennial became part of part of the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) corporation. The mill is now unused. It dominates the skyline east of downtown. What a view you would have from that tower.

Reardan

Reardan (50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens, dark yellow filter)

Here are more of the silos that dot the skyline throughout eastern Washington. Most now are made of concrete or steel. The wood silos from the early 20th century have mostly succumbed to fire. 

Davenport

Farm off Rte. 2, Davenport (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/5.6)

Davenport is in open farm country. This farm still had a traditional wood barn with shingle roof. But many farms now have modern steel buildings, which I find are not nearly as picturesque.

 

Grand Coulee

Midway Avenue, Grand Coulee (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, 1/250 ƒ/8)

Beer store, Coulee Boulevard, Electric City (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens)

The towns near Grand Coulee still have a bit of company town appearance. The dam certainly is a monumental engineering achievement. 

Ancient Lakes 

The Ancient Lakes occupy one of the huge coulees created during the great floods. They are near Quincy, Washington, just east of the Columbia River. The trails are easy to walk. As you enter the valley from the west, the basalt cliffs loom over you. The coulee feels lonely and remote, although the surrounding plateau is farmland and vineyard.

Basalt boulder that tumbled from the nearby cliff, Ancient Lakes Trail (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, yellow-green filter)

Ancient Lakes Trail, near Quincy, Washington (Canon 50mm ƒ/1,8 lens, med. yellow filter)

Basalt columns near Deep Lake, Dry Falls State Park

Mabton

Grain silos, Rte 22, Mabton (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, orange filter, 1/250 ƒ/5.6)

This ends our short tour through eastern Washington in farm and basalt country. I took these pictures on Kodak T400CN film. The film was expired, and Photoland at The Evergreen State College grossly underdeveloped it. Therefore, some of the frames do not have the full tonal range and are grainy. I like C-41 film because the ICE tool in my Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner can clean up most scratches and chemical blobs. But for 35mm film, I will return to using fresh black and white film (such as Tri-X or Acros).

Technical Note

I took most of these photographs with my 1960s Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 Leica thread-mount lens. This is a nice example of 1960s Japanese optical and mechanical excellence. The one had intact coating (rare) and no internal haze (even more rare). When I bought it, the seller disclosed some fungus. Don Goldberg (DAG Camera) cleaned it and reported that it was intact. Unfortunately, many (most?) of these 1.8s are ruined. Some lubricant internally outgassed and etched/hazed the inner elements permanently. Such a pity. The Canon ƒ/1.4 thread mount lenses seem to have survived in better condition.