adetorrent; photography, lifestyle.

I recently met up with a friend to go shooting. It'd been a while since I'd gone shooting with someone. Can I say, it was tons of fun. Sure, I didn't get into the 'zone' as I usually would, but it was its own kind of fun. London already has its fair share of red things - phone boxes, buses, royal mail stuff, but being christmas, it's looking plenty red in London right now. I spotted countless red christmas 'ugly' sweaters, shoes and of course, hats. Santa hats, obviously, but my favourite for the day was this awesome red fedora this lady had on. The Helios-44-2 was really in its elements with the winter lighting conditions. I basically shot at f/2 the whole time. One thing's certain when you shoot f/2 on the helios - epic bokeh!

Nowadays we have become so disconnected from the planet.  Not only in terms of the bigger picture of what we're doing to the environment, but actually literally.  We hardly ever touch the earth, unlike our ancestors who were in almost constant contact with it.  We wear shoes all the time, we live in highly sanitised environments, many on high-rise buildings from which we can get into a car and drive around on cemented/paved/tarred roads to other buildings. I've read about many articles about the effect this is having on us - some based on clear science, some on spirituality. What ever the case may be, I find it at least therapeutic to just take off my shoes and walk barefoot on some grass.  It does make me feel quite literally grounded .

Having been predominantly shooting fully manual film cameras for a while now, I had become a little bored with my Canon 350D.  I know it can be set to fully manual as well, but for whatever reason, I just wasn't that excited about using it that much anymore.  It was too easy to use, and the kit lens is basically rubbish. To be fair though, it is quite an old DSLR (11 years or so now), so it hasn't got most of the bells and whistles present in today's cameras.  So it is sort of vintage in its own right.  Still though, there's vintage and there's vintage. Normally when I fancy a bit of instant gratification in the form of digital photography, I'd reach for my iPhone, or my Sony NEX 5n.  Having recently lost the Sony however, I've been forced to dust off the Canon.  I found an M42 adaptor and swapped out the kit lens for the Helios-44-2 ; the kit lens from my Zenit-E. What a difference it made. Sure, there was no autofocus or shutter priority,