More Wide View in Central Jackson (XPan 09)

We continue our Hasselblad XPan tour of Jackson, Mississippi.

Jackson was, and still is, a major railroad junction town. I like railroad photography and am always impressed by how massive the railroads build their bridges and infrastructure are. In the previous article, you saw the rail overpass on South Gallatin Street. If we drive north, we reach  Pascagoula Street. Turn right (east) and the road drops under the tracks.

Near the Pascagoula Street rail overpass, Jackson (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens)

The Amtrak station is just north of where I took this picture, just beyond the King Edward Hotel (now comdominiums). I later found out that I am not supposed to have clambered up to the embankment ("No trespassing").

Waste land south of Pascagoula Street (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens)

The tall building in the photograph is the 1929 Art Deco Standard Life Building. According to the National Park Service,

Originally built as a tenant office building with a retail annex, the building and annex have undergone a successful $27 million rehabilitation providing retail space on the first floor of the tower and 64 desirable market-rate housing units. The limestone, brick and terra-cotta exterior has been meticulously cleaned, the transoms of the storefronts, display windows and entrances uncovered and restored. The elaborate Art Deco marble, terrazzo floor, limestone wall panels, geometrically shaped storefront windows and decorative ceilings have been retained while finding a popular new use for this Jackson architectural treasure.

I have never been in it and need to make a trip there. 

The low building beyond the white car is an abandoned lock store. I photographed there in 2015. 

North Mill Street view north from Woodrow Wilson overpass (45mm lens at ƒ/8)

The Woodrow Wilson Avenue overpass provides a good view of the Canadian Pacific rail yards and tracks below. The public is not allowed in the rail yard, but from the overpass, you can see locomotives moving rail cars back and forth. I usually park near Mill Street and walk on the sidewalk. Cars rush by but no one cares. Many of the warehouses on the east side appear to be unused. 

Mill Street is pretty rough, with closed gas stations, warehouses, and what may have been manufacturing operations. Many of the warehouses once had tracks leading onto the properties. I wrote about Mill Street in 2016 (click the link).

Abandoned oil mill from under Fortification Street overpass (45mm lens)

Fortification Street overpass view west

The next road crossing to the south over the rail yard is Fortification Street. Just to the south is a complex of sheds and tubes, an unused oil mill. With the XPan camera, I liked the view under the overpass, sort of a no-man's land of trash and construction debris. 

These photographs are from a Hasselblad XPan camera with its spectacular 45mm ƒ/4 and 30mm ƒ/5.6 lenses. The film was Kodak Portra 160, which I scanned on a Plustek 7600i film scanner. Click any picture to see it at 2400 pixels wide.

Next time, some scenes in west Jackson. Can't you wait?

The Wide View in South-Central Jackson (Hasselblad XPan 08)

Jackson, Mississippi, is fun for my type of photography because so much of the city is rough (I am trying to be polite). Let's continue our explorations using the Hasselblad XPan panoramic camera. Here are some examples of south Jackson around South State Street and Gallatin Street. This frames are from Kodak Portra 160 film, expired since 2013 but frozen for all of its life. Click any picture to expand it to 2400 pixels.

South State Street view north (45mm F/4 lens at ƒ/11)

Anyone here? 330 S. Rankin Street, Jackson

South State Street was once prosperous and lined with car dealers and various other businesses. Not today. Heading west, South Rankin Street may be even more desolate. I took black and white photographs here in 2020.  

South Gallatin Street view north (45mm lens)

Warehouses, South Gallatin Street

Addison Auto Body, 828 S. Gallatin Street (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens)

Turn north on South Gallatin Street, and there is a bit more commercial activity. The road dips under the early-20th century railroad girder overpass, which is in regular use. I have photographed along here in the past. 

South State Street (BW400CN film, Voigtländer Vito BL camera, 50mm ƒ/3.5 Color-Skopar lens)

As a comparison, here is the view of South State Street taken on black and white film with my 1959 Voigtländer Vito BL camera and its 4-element 50mm ƒ/3.5 Color-Skopar lens. The XPan's lenses are modern, sophisticated, and amazingly capable on the 68mm wide frame, but this simple 4-element Skopar (a Tessar-type of design) holds its own for the normal 35mm frame. 

Railroad overpass, S. Gallatin at W. Porter Street (TMax 100 film, Rolleiflex 3.5E 75mm Xenotar lens, 1/250 ƒ8, yellow filter)

Here is the north side of the railroad bridge where West Porter Street intersects South Gallatin. This is from my 1959 Rolleiflex camera. Hmmm, how come this "antique" equipment works?

Standby for more Jackson photographs next week.

Jackson's Steel Lustron House - Brilliant 1950s Housing Concept

Background

A Lustron House was a post-war innovation to make affordable and durable houses for growing families, many able to buy their first home via the GI bill. From 1947 to 1950, the Lustron company, from Columbus, Ohio, represented the future of housing. Based on a steel frame and porcelain enamel-covered steel panels, Lustron made these homes in a factory and shipped them around the country. 

These modest houses were termite-proof, highly fire-resistant, and low maintenance on the exterior. They were complete with appliances and plumbing. Many mid-century gasoline stations used similar enameled steels exterior panels, which require no repainting and are clean and colorfast for decades. 

Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson has at least one steel Lustron House at 144 W. McDowell Road. 

Lustron House, 144 W. McDowell Road, Jackson, Mississippi

Preservation in Mississippi wrote about the McDowell Road Lustron house in 2010. Shortly after the article came out, I drove to McDowell Road to see the house. A neighbor said it had been unoccupied for two months. 

Note raised slab foundation and gutter channeled down decorative overhang support

Original front door matched exterior tile color; add-on burglar bar outer door

Contrasting steel window trim and steel roof tiles

Handsome bay window marred by ugly burglar bars and nasty awning

I am awed by how well this house had survived the years. When I photographed it, it was at least 60 years old. The siding tiles are immaculate. Considering the neighborhood where it is located, I doubt the  occupants do much maintenance or washing. The nearby conventional houses looked pretty rough in 2010. The April 2022 Google Maps photograph shows trash and filth strewn on the yard. 

1948 publicity photograph (from Flickr). Note modern fluorescent lights and linoleum floor

Albany, New York

My friend in Albany took the following photographs of the charming block of Lustron Houses on Jermain Street Historical District. They are on the National Register of Historic Places. A Wikipedia article describes their history. The first one below has been re-sided, but the others have their original enameled steel panels. Seventy years later and they are still shiny and bright. Astonishing.

Closing Thoughts

It is a pity that this experiment in steel housing did not thrive. A Flickr page shows Lustron houses from around the country. I do not know how many are standing.

The Wikipedia article notes:

The Lustron design was created to adapt it to mass production. A steel framing system was devised consisting of vertical steel studs and roof-ceiling trusses to which all interior and exterior panels were attached. The concept of prefabricated housing was well established by firms such as The Aladdin Company, Gordon-Van Tine Company, Montgomery Ward, and Sears in the early 1900s. These companies, however, used conventional balloon-framing techniques and materials in their kits. After World War II, the domestic demand for steel exceeded production and the federal government exercised control over its allocation. Strandlund had orders for his porcelain-enameled panels for use in construction for new gas stations for Standard Oil. He made a request for allocation of steel but was denied. However, he was advised by Wilson W. Wyatt, Housing Expediter during the Truman administration, that steel would be available if Strandlund produced steel houses instead of gas stations.

I would not be at all surprised if conventional builders lobbied municipalities to enact restrictive building codes or other impediments to these innovative housing concepts. And now we have houses built on site from bulk lumber and supplies by workers of varying skills and with huge waste in material (just look at the scrap lumber, sheet-rock, and debris at any McMansion construction site). The craftsmanship of many new houses is severely lacking; bling without substance. Caulk covers up a myriad of poorly cut panels and timber. Is it time to reconsider a concept like the Lustron Houses again?

UPDATE March 2024:  Ted Shideler photographed Lustron Houses in Muncie, Indiana. He included pictures of the interiors and references in his article. Ted also wrote about the Lustrons of Richmond, Indiana.

Ohio Magazine described the Rise and Fall of Lustrons.

An academic article on Lustron houses is "A New Standard for Living": The Lustron House, 1946-1950 by Tom Wolfe and Leonard Garfield, Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, Vol. 3 (1989), pp. 51-61 (11 pages)

Hasselblad XPan Panoramic Camera: How to Handle the Film? (XPan 03)

Hasselblad XPan camera with 30mm, 45mm, and 90mm lenses

XPan with 30mm ƒ/5.6 lens and special viewfinder

Center filter on 30mm ƒ/5.6 lens

The amazing hardware

A friend in town generously loaned me his fabulous Hasselblad XPan camera with its three unique lenses. The Hasselblad XPan (and the identical Fuji TX-1) were innovative cameras that used regular 35mm film to create a negative that was 24×65 mm in size rather than the usual 24×36 mm frame common in most 35mm cameras. 

For me, the wide frame was a revelation. Through the viewfinder, I could see topics that I might have skipped with a normal camera or would have found boring without the wide frame to show the context of the scene. The wide frame provides a narrative to the main topic. I will post a series of XPan articles in the next few months. 

A recent guest author on Casual Photophile also wrote about how the wide view gave him a new way of viewing his world. An author on 35MMC found his XPan to be his favorite travel camera. But Hamish Gill of 35MMC found that the XPan just did not suit his type of photography enough to keep the valuable camera. It is a specialist tool to be sure.

However, this camera's wide frames require different handling than normal 35mm negatives. I did not see much on the internet about how people process or scan this unusual 24×65 mm frame. This article will describe my procedure.*

XPan negatives (converted to positive). Oh, oh, what to do with the odd shape?

Optical enlarging

If you print in a darkroom optically, any medium format or 4×5" enlarger like a Beseler would be suitable for the XPan negatives. I was surprised to see that Beseler still sells an XPan film holder. It is rather expensive at B&H, but at least is available. 

Years ago, some commercial labs developed XPan negatives and printed 4×12 inch machine prints. Nice. I have some albums with pages just for this size.

4×12 inch prints in plastic album. Lake Union, Seattle, Washington

Some companies made plastic print booklets specifically for the 4×12 prints.

Scanning options

Most people today probably scan the negatives and then post the results on the web or make ink jet prints. But how to scan these odd-size negatives? Some options:

1. Use a digital camera with macro lens and a copy stand to take a picture of the negative, and then reverse with software. My friend who owns the XPan uses this technique. 
2. Scan the negatives on a medium format scanner. My Minolta Scan Multi will fit the 65mm length, but I would need to cut a 24×65 mm mask. Minolta may have once sold a frame and mask in this size, but I doubt I could ever find one. Nikon's medium format scanners could be used for Xpan negatives. They used to sell a glass negative carrier that came with a mask for the Xpan format. It worked but was clumsy and very slow. 
3. Scan left and right frames of 24×36 mm in a regular 35mm film scanner and then combine them with software. I used this method with my Plustek 7600i scanner and then merge the two pieces with Photoshop CS6 (details below). 
4. Commercial scanning. Some laboratories may offer this service via the Imacon Flextight scanner (alas, no longer available new and staggeringly expensive)

Digital camera scanning

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona. © Bill Stripling

Acueducto de Segovia, Segovia, Spain. © Bill Stripling

French Pyrenees. © Bill Stripling

This is Method 1 above. These are all scans made with a Nikon Z7 camera and reversed in Lightroom with Negative Lab Pro software. To my eye, these results look fantastic. If you have a high-resolution digital camera, this is an excellent technique. The quality of the light source is important if you are scanning color negatives. For LED sources, the spectrum needs to be as smooth as possible. Gaps or spikes in the spectrum can cause color shifts. 

Merging 24×36 mm scans

Plustek 7600i scanner with 35mm negative holder. Note how one XPan frame overlaps into the second opening.

I use Method 3, where I scan left and right sections of the XPan negative sequentially. For the two frames to blend properly, there must be some overlap (possibly 10-20%). You need to set the exposure and color balance for one of the frames and then be sure to not change those settings for the second frame. What I do:

1. Preview the left or right section in a 24×36 mm frame (i.e., the full size for this scanner).
2. Adjust color, gain, and contrast as needed.
3. Make a final scan at 3600 dpi and save as a 16-bit (full color) TIFF file.
4. Remove the film holder, pull the XPan frame so that the other side is in the 24×36 opening.
5. Reinsert the holder in the scanner but leave gain and color unchanged. This means I cannot preview this second piece.
6. Make a final TIFF scan of this second section.
7. If needed, clean scratches and chemical blobs with the heal tool in Photoshop.

Assembly

It sounds confusing but is relatively simple. Then I use the >Automate>Photomerge tool in Photoshop CS5 or CS6 to combine the two sections. Make a final check if the wide frame needs some cropping and you are done. It is a bit time-consuming but works well. 

Below is an example from the rail line south of the Amtrak Station in Jackson, Mississippi and one from a junk yard in Edwards.

Pascagoula Street overpass left frame

Pascagoula Street overpass right frame

Final panorama from Pascagoula Street overpass (Kodak Portra 160 film)

I-20 junk yard left frame

Junk yard right frame

Final panorama, I-20 North Frontage Road, Edwards (Portra 160 film, 45mm ƒ/4 lens at ƒ/5.6½)

Despite the work, this Xpan is a lot of fun and an amazing creative tool. Standby for more examples. Thank you, Bill, for letting me use your camera.

* I am not going to use the term "workflow." That is a cliche on photography web pages, especially the infamous DPreview. "I returned from my weekend in Paris and did my special workflow to my 15,000 shots." Bleech.

Vinny the Voigtländer Vito BL does Jackson (Abandoned Films 08a)

Introduction

Mr. Vinny, my little Voigtländer Vito BL camera, shares shelf space with a bunch of other cameras. He does not get out nearly often enough. Although well over 60, Vinnie is still a sturdy, well-built little fellow (I wish I could say the same for me). He has a rigid body and a 50mm ƒ/3.5 Color-Skopar lens. This is a unit-focus 4-element lens, Voigtländer’s masterful 1949 revision of the classic Tessar formula. This may be one of the best of these post-war 4-element lenses, and, of course, it was was fully-coated. The refined lens and the precision of the entire system contributes to Vinnie’s excellent optical output.

Last October (2021), I heard Vinny say, "Come on, take me to the big city." I loaded a roll of Kodak BW400CN film and took Vinnie to Jackson. 

BW400CN Film

BW400CN was a C-41 monochrome film. It was intended to be used by photographers who wanted convenient black and white prints from any store or photo shop with a C-41 processing machine. Kodak discontinued it in 2014.

I have mixed feelings about the BW. Sometimes, the tonality was very pleasing and the results looked good; other times, the dark areas were muddy and nasty. Even though Kodak claimed that it was extra fine grain, I found it to be surprisingly grainy and it often looked gritty. But that sometimes worked for me because I frequent gritty places. Regardless, I had three rolls left to use. I exposed them at EI=320 but probably should have given more exposure. This group of Jackson pictures is from the first roll, which may have degraded with time. It was X-rayed at least once during a trip to Asia, which may account for some loss of sensitivity and fog.

If you want a current film that can be processed in C-41 chemicals, Ilford still sells its XP-2 in 135 and 120 sizes.

East Jackson

Junior Achievement of Mississippi, High Street, Jackson

This is the abandoned Junior Achievement building at the very east end of High Street, just below the Pearl River levee. The organization educated young people in business and economic issues, taught them financial literacy, and prepared them for work and careers. However, Junior Achievement of Mississippi failed in the 2009 recession and left its building behind.

Bayou at High Street, Jackson (1/300 ƒ/11, green filter)

This is a typical bayou, or stream. This one separates Junior Achievement beyond the thicket to the left from the BMW automobile dealer off to the right. This bayou may be too small to support any alligators, but I avoid wandering down in the brush and muck.

Morris Ice Company, 652 S. Commerce Street, Jackson (yellow filter)

Morris Ice Company, 652 S. Commerce Street, Jackson

The former Morris Ice Company is an interesting time capsule of early 20th century industry. Ice was critical in the hot southern summers for hospitals, food preservation, brewing, food shipment, and keeping your martini chilled. Mr. Pickering, who was planning to redevelop the old factory, let me photograph inside in 2019. The Covid must have disrupted his plans because I have not seen any changes there since 2019. But a company that builds wood canoes still rents part of the space.

South State Street, view north (1/300 ƒ/11, yellow filter)

Dot Com Motors, 1011 S. State Street, Jackson (1/300 ƒ/11, yellow filter)

State Street is a major north-south street running through the heart of Jackson, The southern part of State is pretty grungy, with closed car dealers, tire shops, and warehouses. The Corvette in the first photograph has been perched on its post for at least three decades. A former fast food restaurant once hosted Dot Com Motors. I supposed it wanted to be modern.

West Jackson

Tarrymore Motel, Hwy 80 west, Jackson

Former Coca Cola bottling plant, 1421 Hwy 80 west, Jackson (1/125 ƒ/16-22)

During the post World War II era, Highway US 80 west was a thriving industrial and commercial area. Old-timers recall sophisticated restaurants and motels, and major companies established factories there. 

Today, Hwy 80 is a wasteland of closed hotels, empty factories (like the Coca Cola bottling plant in the photograph above), low-end fast food restaurants, payday loan shops, used car dealers, and abandoned warehouses. Homeless people have occupied old hotels and stripped the fittings. I am baffled and have no explanation for the decay. But this is not unique to Jackson; many other American cities have experienced the same hollowing out and decay of their infrastructure. 

Long-term readers may remember that I have photographed on Hwy 80 before. It gets worse as the years pass. 

4986 Hwy 80 (west of Metrocenter Mall)

Summary

Vinny enjoyed his outing to the big city of Jackson. His Prontor shutter is accurate, and his little 4-element Color-Skopar lens is highly capable, sharp, and free from obvious flare. He demonstrates top quality German precision manufacturing and has aged well (better than I have!). Thank you for sharing his excursion.

The Kodak BW400CN film worked out well for these frames. It is grainy, but that is fine for some topics. The film has been discontinued, and I recommend you readers not bother trying to find any. Use Kodak Tri-X or Fuji Acros instead. I will post more photographs from this last group of BW400CN rolls in the future.

 

Appendix A, Filters

Voigtländer filters are confusing to buy because the company used a numerical code to describe their various types. The table below summarizes the filters available in the 1950s and 1960s. A label such as 301/32 meant type 301 filter (light yellow) in the 32mm size. Some of their lenses used filters that pushed on, but others were threaded in various sizes. For the smaller lenses on Vito cameras, an alternative is to buy a 32mm Series VI adapter and mount Series VI filters. These are inexpensive but somewhat inconvenient in the field. The genuine Voigtländer filters are elegant, coated, and compact. Focar filters were for magnification, i.e., diopters.

 

Voigtländer Filters
Name	Type	Factor	Code
G1	Light yellow	1.5	301/32
G2	Med. Yellow	2	302/32
Gr	Light green	4	306/32
Or	Orange	5	308/32
Uv	Haze		317/32
85C or A	Color correction		318/32
SF	Skylight		325/32
Focar 1			303/32
Focar 2			304/32
Focar 0	f = 2m		342
Focar A	f = 1m		343
Focar B	f = 0.5m		344
Focar C	f = 0.5m		345
Focar D	f = 0.15m		348
Hood			310/32
Note: /xx means lens diameter. 32 is push-on.