drama in the london sky


The silver lining (ahem!) of it always raining in this city is that there's always drama in the sky.


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boots 500AF - part 1

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Much displeased am I to report that my nostalgia project isn’t going as smoothly as I expected. Why is it that in a mostly plastic camera, one of the only metallic parts turned out to be the least durable? The source of my said displeasure is a thin little strip of metal. Thus the story goes. Camera number 3 finally. I was excited about this one, as it was my first ‘good’ camera. Branded ‘Boots 500AF’, it has a 34mm f4.3 autofocus (hence the ‘AF’) lens. Come to think of it, both the 34mm (as opposed to 35mm) and f4.3 (rather than f4) are quite obscure values for a film point and shoot. I have no way of telling, but I assume the ‘500’ in the name denotes the maximum shutter speed of 1/500 the camera can achieve, but that’s pure speculation on my part. It has an auto flash, and the lens does a faux zoom action when turned on. Very cool indeed. I read somewhere that it was a rebranding of some Japanese camera, but again, I have found no evidence of this. Oh how...
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“Is that a Leica you’re wielding like a sword?” uttered the street snapper as I walked past him one chilled out afternoon in east London.  “I beg your pardon? oh this? It’s an Oly”.  He was then immediately less impressed and apparently more understanding of my nonchalant attitude to the camera.   You will occasionally see me holding my camera by the neck strap while walking, leaving it free to swing back and forth.  The gentleman used the wrong medieval weapon metaphor of course - the correct one would be a ball and chain.  He could also be forgiven for mistaking it for a Leica.  I’d by then pimped the thing up with a Leica Leitz style vented hood, and the self timer lever had snapped off in such a way that it left a Leica looking ‘red dot’ in the correct place. The Olympus 35 RD has been referred to elsewhere as the ‘RC on steroids’.  That’s basically accurate.  The lens on this thing is simply magnificent.  The aperture ope...
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