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. 

 

On the Waterfront, Raymond, Washington (2024)

Raymond is on an estuary of the Willapa River near South Bend in Pacific County, Washington. Much of the city was built on piles on the tidelands. Like many rural Washington cities, it was originally a lumber mill town with adjacent farming in the river valley. Early in the 20th century, the city was bustling with lumber mills and freshly cut logs trains. Ocean-going ships took lumber to distant ports. Like many Pacific Northwest towns, the Great Depression devastated the local economy. The economy revived during World War II and during the post-war housing construction boom. Logging began to diminish in the 1970s, and the town fell on hard times. Today, it is part of the Evergreen Coast and has partly reformed itself as a tourist and museum town.

Willapa River (Kodak Panatomic-X film, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens, dark yellow filter)

Weyerhaeuser Raymond Sawmill (250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens, yellow-green filter)

Raymond Trestle swing bridge, Willapa River (40mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

Detail, railroad swing bridge (100mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens)

The Raymond trestle is another example of the impressive engineering that railroads achieved early in the 20th century. The control house was wood and has partly collapsed. The bridge is part of the Willapa Hills Trail, but the trail needs to divert through town instead of cross the river here. 

Stan Hatfield South Fork Industrial Park (50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

Stan Hatfield South Fork Industrial Park

The Port of Willapa Bay runs several industrial parks with buildings rented to tenants. I do not know what this machinery once did.

Commercial Street, Raymond 

I plan to return to Raymond and look around some more. It is revitalizing, but there is old architecture and housing that I want to photograph.

The 2024 photographs are from Kodak Panatomic-X film and my Hasselblad 501CM camera. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film in Xtol.

Trains Through Chehalis, Washington

Chehalis is the County Seat of Lewis County, Washington. It is south of Centralia and is overshadowed economically by the larger city. But Chehalis has a well-preserved downtown with late 1800s and early 20th century buildings. It was primarily a logging and railroad town in the late 1800s.  It also hosts the BNSF rail line, which cuts right through the center of town. 

Thundering through, get out of the way! (West Main Street, March 23, 2024, Panatomic-X film, 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens, yellow filter)

These enormous freight trains come thundering through town. The lights flash at the West Main Street crossing, the barrier arms swing down, and you wait. The ground starts to vibrate, and these trains roar through at 40? 50? 60 miles per hour?

Track debris

Milky Way dairy transportation company

Milky Way is the largest milk hauling company in the Pacific Northwest. One of their terminals is right next to the rail line off West Main Street.

DrinkAMugAMilkAMeal (Samsung mobile phone photo converted to black and white)

Line off Prindle Street (250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens, dark yellow filter)

Chehalis is a nice little town. The Willapa Hills bicycle trail starts here and continues west to Pe Ell. Eventually, it will be graded and paved all the way to Raymond. I need to explore Chehalis in more detail.

I took most of the photographs with a Hasselblad 501CM camera using Kodak Panatomic-X film, all frames tripod-mounted. 

Small Towns in Washington: Shelton

Shelton is the westernmost city in Puget Sound. It is northwest of Olympia at the western end of Oakland Bay. Travelers taking US 101 north to Port Townsend or Port Angeles at the north side of the Olympia Peninsula would pass right by Shelton. 

In the early-mid 20th century, Shelton's economy included logging, farming, dairying, ranching, and oyster cultivation. Logging was the heavy industry, and the Simpson Timber Company operated a mill complex at the waterfront of Oakland Bay. Formerly, trains carried logs out onto a man-made peninsula, where they were dumped into the bay. From there, tugboats moved log booms to other processing centers and mills, such as the huge mill in Everett. 

Frontier Antiques, S. First Street, Shelton

Bob's Tavern, S. First Street, Shelton

South First Street carries a lot of traffic, but the stores did not look too prosperous.

Rail yard off S. First Street with mill complex in the distance

Timber rail cars off S. First Street

From Google Maps, I could see the remnant of the lumber dump at the waterfront. But I could not personally get to the waterfront because it was it was part of the Sierra Pacific Industries work yard. Only employees were allowed in past security. 

Boathouse, Oakland Bay Marine

This was a rather frustrating visit because I could not reach the industrial waterfront. And the June sky was brilliantly clear and featureless (boring). But Shelton will be worth further exploring. Not far away, the High Steel Bridge over the south fork of the Skokomish River will be worth a visit. 

Dear Readers, you know where this is going. What do you do after a few hours exploring and photographing? Well, that's obvious, go to the Cabin Tavern to eat Fish 'n Chips and drink cidah (that is New England tawk). 

Post-photography health food at the Cabin Tavern, Shelton

Don't do it in the water

I took the black and white photographs on Kodak Panatomic-X film with my "Texas Leica," the Fuji GW690II camera. It has a superb 5-element Fujinon 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens that equals the lenses on my Rolleiflex and Hasselblad. I used medium yellow, dark yellow, and yellow-green filters to darken the sky. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film. 

At the BNSF Rail Yard, Tacoma, Washington

 Railroad photography is always interesting if you like industrial/infrastructure/machinery topics. There are so many shapes, patterns, and details to record. Your eye can wander around the scene and seldom run out of new details. 

Most rail yards today are off limits to casual visitors. This is true for the large BNSF rail and off Puyallup Avenue in the Port of Tacoma. However, East D Street, just east of the Foss Waterway, has an overpass with a pedestrian sidewalk! That was too good to resist. On a May day with interesting clouds, I parked nearby and walked along the overpass with my camera and a tripod. The roadway vibrated when a truck rumbled by, so I waited for a quiet period. These frames are 2400 pixels wide, so click to see more details.

Turntable, BNSF rail yard, Tacoma

Years ago, there was probably a roundhouse here, where steam locomotives would have been repaired and readied for duty. Turntables were necessary to spin steam locomotives because they did not run in reverse efficiently. Modern diesel locomotives can run in either direction.

Buildings in background are Tacoma Dome parking garages (Panatomic-X film, med. yellow filter)

Signal equipment

South side of rail yard from East E Street (Tri-X 400 film)

Train moving around south end of Foss Waterway en route somewhere south

Tracks below downtown Tacoma parallel to Dock Street (Kodak T400CN film, Leica IIIC, 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens, med yellow filter)

I took most of these pictures on Kodak Panatomic-X or Tri-X 400 film with my Fuji GW690II camera (the "Texas Leica"), with its EBC Fujinon 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens. This 5-element lens has amazing resolution. I bought the camera in 1992 and have used it irregularly over the decades. It is a big package to take on an air trip but is fine for car travel. I expose the Panatomic-X at EI=25, which normally requires a tripod. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film.