Well, I say art, but at the moment it’s just photography. I seem to have stopped writing so much. And I think that’s about as arty as I’ll get.
Highlights:
- Getting a Yashica Mat for a smidge over £40. Bargain, and it works well. Not done that much with it this year, but gets my foot in the door of medium format - All other options are too expensive. ‘Paid’ for itself with this shot:
- Getting a Praktica 135mm f2.8 for about £25. Nothing better than a huge chunk of glass on your camera. Great for stuff like this:
- Getting my Great Grandpa’s Kodak Folding Autohraphic Brownie converted to 120 film. Now I just need to fix the bellows:
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Shooting Kodachrome. I have still to get this scanned, but I’m very happy with what the slides look like. So, all good for my first and last ever roll of Kodachrome.
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Having a kind fellow send me some APS film from the US.
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Roidweeks. First did this last year. One of those global community events on Flickr where you can feel the love. Always fun.
Lowlights:
I didn’t want to have any of these, but on New Year’s Eve I found out my Praktica was broken. It had broken cleverly: The lower shutter curtain is not working on automatic. Only on the fixed 1/60 speed. But since the top curtain was working it gave an almost perfect impression of a functioning camera. The thing is, once I realised it was broken, I then twigged when it broke: about four rolls of film back. So that’s all the shots in the run upto Christmas, and from Christmas itself, gone. Arse.
Next year plans:
Large format - Ha, in my dreams! Equipment wise I reckon a close up lens for my Yashica and a 50mm f1.4. That’ll do. Although I still need a 110 camera for the one roll of film I have (and like the Kodachrome, probably ever will have).
Well, they were my plans before my Praktica broke. So now a new Praktica is first on the cards.
I never really have any photographic outings planned. I’ll just see what happens.