30 July 2009

Agfa success





First roll from the Agfa Isolette. I'm pleased. I had to eyeball the exposure, but you can't really go wrong with 800 film, can you?

Kudos to local camera chain store for getting the job done well.

Now, bring on that Kiev...

23 July 2009

I have a problem...



Thanks to a decent tax return, I have one of these on the way.

Despite not having a good lab in town that develops C41 120, I have confidence in the specialist B&W lab to do a good job. That'll be the only way, I guess.

And yes, this already has a name: The Beasht ('h' very much intentional).

14 days to wait...

10 July 2009

Latest arrivals


From ebay: 5 rolls of Svema FN 64, expired 2004. Svema were one of the major film manufacturers in the Soviet-era, however I'm lead to believe that these days the film's more than likely just re-branded Foma. Even if it's not "proper" FSU film, the boxes are worth it alone.


And to something more useful - my new Leningrad 4 light meter, direct from the Ukraine. Terribly useful, particularly considering I've recently acquired a few meter-less cameras. I checked it against the meter in the Minolta, and they seem to more or less agree, so I assume it works correctly.

02 July 2009

Old slides




On the day of my wedding (February 2009), my dad gave me a shopping bag full of slides. Originally I had asked him to bring down some boxes of slides he bought in Hong Kong in 1984, which I used to enjoy looking at as a wee tyke - I thought it'd be fun to have a look, but mostly I wanted the tiny plastic projector he bought with them. However, somewhere along the line he also dug up another, much larger, and far more important box of slides.

You see, the slides were taken by my great grandfather, and feature images of my dad & his family in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Unfortunately I lack a projector to view them large (dad forgot to bring this down), and my flatbed scanner just doesn't cut it. The above images were attempts to scan with a flatbed - not totally flash, but a start.

These are probably some of the few images in existence of my dad as a child. Photography wasn't a huge part of nan & pop's lives when their kids were growing up.

It's nice to have a photographic link to the past. Dad says his nan & pop (ie. my great grandparents) used to go for a Sunday drive with their grandkids quite regularly. In fact the first slide I looked at I instantly recognised as a view of the Great Western Tiers from the Bracknell area. I hope to find a few more gems when I get them scanned (whether I buy a cheap neg scanner & do this myself, or have them done by the local photo chain, I haven't decided).