adetorrent; photography, lifestyle.

**I was compensated for this post. This post also contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.  If you watch my YouTube channel , you'd already know that I have decided to downsize a little bit in the camera collection department.  Many of those cameras that I have written about on this blog have either been sold, or are for sale in my Etsy Shop . I had an idea to create a kind of catalogue to remind me of my cameras once they're out the door. I had been taking portraits of these cameras and collating some photos I took with the camera in question, along with some words about the camera. This would then be made into a book I can have sitting on the coffee table. As you guys already know, I mostly use Blurb for my photo books and highly recommend Blurb - so much so that I am an affiliate of theirs. Unfortunately, I had already sold some of the cameras before I thought of this project.  Also, I hadn't been ...

Exactly a year ago, I posted "reflecting on 2015" which included some of the tweaks I would be making in 2016 in light of hindsight. In a blink of an eye, here we are again, another year gone. This year, I'm even more grateful to be here than I was last year. There have been definitive instances when I could have been taken from this planet. One I probably will never forget was a split decision I made not to cross the road at a traffic light despite it being in pedestrian crossing mode ("green man"). For whatever reason, I didn't cross. I just didn't. I don't know why not, but boy am I glad I didn't. At the point when I would have been right in the middle of the road, a woman that appeared to be having a heated conversation on her mobile phone sped through the red light. She would have turned me into Flatman - the dead superhero. She of course was non the wiser as she zoomed obliviously along a residential road at motorway speeds. So yes,...

La Bodeguita Del Medio | Havana, Cuba Isn't it funny? Now that technology has overcome most of the technical difficulties that were so hated back in the days of film and analogue cameras - e.g., vignetting, lens barrel distortion, scratches, e.t.c., technology has also given us ways to re-ruin the photos to make them look like 'back in the day'. Every year around about this time, I usually do some digital housekeeping. That involves cleaning out hard drives and consolidating photos from various locations. This was when I stumbled upon some photos taken 'way back'. No, these are not film photographs, but rather digital ones taken on my first iPhone - the iPhone 3 GS. I was hit by a cold wave of nostalgia tantamount to looking through an old box of photo prints discovered in an attic. I kid you not. Havana, Cuba Havana, Cuba Not only were these photos quite lo-fi, thanks to the 3 Megapixel camera and tiny sensor, but I took them using the Hipstam...

Christmas came a little early this year as I found myself in possession of a gorgeous film SLR by the name of Yashica FX-3 Super. My first Yashica was the Electro 35 GTN . That one is a 35mm rangefinder with a phenomenal lens. This one is an 35mm SLR, so the lens could be phenomenal anytime I want. Both of them are all-black. The Yashica FX-3 Super was an upgrade to the Yashica FX-3 and was released in 1984 just after Kyocera acquired Yashica. It's relatively light weight and small for an SLR, which I like - especially if I'm to be suspending it from my neck all day. The construction is metal with an outer plastic shell and a very delicate looking leatherette finish.  The leatherette is very easily scratched and scuffed so mine came with multiple marks and said scuffs. I don't mind - it kind of gives it character. The kit lens is a 50mm f/1.9 prime. From my experience with the 35 GTN, I had high hopes for this lens. A cool fact about the FX-3/FX- Super is that i...

If you're one of those people that don't like conversation - say, for instance, you'd rather people didn't ask you about your film camera, then this camera may be for you.  Look at it, the Minolta Dynax 303si, it looks like your first DSLR doesn't it? Fully automatic with some program modes, it doesn't let you do anything about aperture or shutter speed ( or ISO for that matter. It detects it automatically).  It basically takes all control away from you.  It doesn't even have exposure compensation. There may be a way out - you could swap out the lens with one with an aperture ring I suppose. I'm not certain how that would work seeing there is no aperture priority mode on the camera. So you're left with composition, which some people would argue is the most important photographic skill anyway. In the right hands, this camera should give good results. I took it out for a spin in the park in less than ideal conditions. It's Autu...

We were meant to move. By we, I mean human beings. When not asleep, we are meant to be running, swimming, jumping, climbing, fighting, procreating or lifting. The vast majority of those activities have been nearly eradicated from our daily lives. Instead, we sit. We sit all the time. Ours is the generation that is sitting itself to death. When we're all gone, extinct, all gone to that giant sofa in the sky, there will be one group left. Dancers. They will be here because they've kept true to what their bodies were made for. To move.

Never mind the tyre-shaped lard deposit around the old waistline, an excess of a different kind was starting to weigh me down recently. You know all those services you signed up for over the years that started up as 'great offers', but then crept their way up your bank account, ever so slowly, until they were significant outgoings? Yes, those. I had accumulated quite a number of those, and they had gradually, quietly gained significant weight.  The vendors, naturally, hoped and (probably even) prayed I wouldn't notice that their 'unbeatable value' had doubled in cost. I did. And today, I shed the weight. Bluehost. British Gas. British Telecom. Sky. NatWest Bank. You've all failed me, and I'm letting you go.