"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2013-08-02, Jim Wilkins wrote:

I put together a very compact no-darkroom film developing kit,
mainly
to quickly read the license plates of suspicious vehicles I was
assigned to watch for and photograph.

O.K. Changing bag, developing tank, and bottles for the
chemicals -- and running water for the developing.

The hard part was loading 16mm Minolta film onto the spiral developing
tank reel by feel in the bag. Wherever it jumped the track it touched
another turn and didn't develop properly. I learned to judge and
preset exposure and distance so I could shoot with my hand down at my
side, or at right angles to the direction I was pointing the Pentax.

But I guess that you were simply reading the license plates off
the negatives -- perhaps even while still wet. :-)

I never caught any. Apparently Black September, the Baader-Meinhof
Gang and the Red Army Faction found out that we were alerted for
suspicious activity, and carrying loaded weapons. It was fine with me
that the front gate MPs didn't have to start a gunfight while I was
waiting for a bus that never came.

So -- you did have some way to print in there. No enlarging,
probably, but with large enough negatives, contact prints do a lot
of
what you need.

I had a simple collapsible enlarger that took lenses from my old Leica
III. The PX was well stocked with photographic and audio equipment, I
suppose to compensate for our inability to keep or transport larger
consumer goods. We were nomads who in theory couldn't own more than we
could carry.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rothenburg_BW_4.JPG

That is an intersting looking building -- with some history,
I'll bet.

Every place had some history. I had learned enough of it in high
school to know the context for local tales of Tilly or the wars of the
Guelphs vs Ghibellines. One small town had a monument to a long list
of casualties in the fierce battle against the American invaders. Over
the centuries France had inflicted a great deal of destruction there.
http://www.joe-offer.com/folkinfo/songs/525.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24736216@N07/2462391079/
The inside of the wall is covered with carved signatures, some by very
old historical and literary figures. I recognized those of the writers
Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, but didn't find Mark Twain's.

http://www.examiner.com/article/on-t...-ob-der-tauber
"The sad anecdote to this tale is that the mayor died minutes later,
presumably from a combination of alcohol poisoning and kidney
failure."
The glockenspiel (clock-play) is an animated clock that acts out the
scene.
Many of the tales end on a sad, Kafkaesque note.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz

This was my favorite:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dettelbach
I stumbled onto it before it became a tourist attraction, when
Americans were a novelty.

The very helpful photo shop owner who set me up was later exposed
as a
Soviet spy.

Of course! Would that not be likely for anyone very helpful to
GIs near an Army base in Germany at that time? :-)
DoN.

If anyone asked, I said I repaired office equipment, and never took
color pix that might have revealed where I went on repair calls.

jsw