adetorrent; photography, lifestyle.

Just returned (in one piece) from West Africa and immediately I've got colour withdrawals. Everything out there is so colourful that it at times becomes overwhelming for anyone that lives in a relatively monochrome city.  At least in London we have red brick buildings that help to break up the shades of grey. I think until I re-adjust, I'm going to be spending a lot of time in areas of town with lots of graffiti. That shouldn't be too difficult.  We have loads those here.

So I've been home-and-away for over a week now and I'm having a blast.  I hear London has been basking in some good sunshine in my absence.  That's good to know. I'll be back soon enough. In the mean time, I've managed to lose one of the cameras I brought - the digital one I was shooting video with.  My Olympus 35RD is safe and sound, for now.

I'm gearing up for some plastic point&shoot fun throughout summer. I'm going to be talking about them on my YouTube channel so subscribe to me there if you're interested .  The first is this faux-rugged thing from Japan - the Fotorama PC-500.  It's a basic, no frills point and shoot with a decent f/4 38mm focus-free lens.  It is fully automatic so you get no creative decisions to make apart from composition and whether or not to use flash.  It does however allow you to set the ASA (ISO) of 100, 200 or 400, so I suppose you could push and pull within those settings. The lens itself made of glass, so it's relatively sharp, especially in good light. I enjoyed shooting with the camera mainly because it looks and feels cool in the hands.  The shutter release action is a little quirky.  That, combined with the fact that the camera is so light, may cause blur when the camera selects a slow shutter speed - and it does often for whatever reason....

The whole process of developing film, especially the bit where you gaze at your negatives for the first time, has been described by many as magic . Chemistry has had that effect on us for a very long time. Practitioners of a certain mystical, 'magical' tradition also dabbled in chemistry - claiming to turn simple elements to gold - Alchemy! Fast-forward to today, I think I've managed the opposite. Well, my lab did. They have somehow managed to turn a roll of Kodak Gold  to violet. I'm not sure how this happened, but you know what? I kind of like the resulting effect. After all, I do have a little inclination to lomography and their crazy cross-processing sometimes.  I have messed with some of the photos digitally by desaturating to black and white. They don't look too bad then. For now tough, I think I'll leave them purple.

The South Bank of the Thames is one of my favourite places to go in London for a nice afternoon walk. There's a lot of art and cultural events happening almost constantly. It also has limitless potential when it comes to photography. There's also food. Lots of it! Even if there's no actual festival going on, there are are many restaurants and food stalls to chose from. I quite enjoy street food - quick, cheap(er), and delicious. When the tide is low, the river acquires a beach. I've taken some photos on the 'Thames beach' that people have refused to believe weren't taken by the sea side.  So I always make sure to include some landmarks now :) Talking of things happening all the time, suddenly out of nowhere, the deafening sound of the legendary red arrows and their signature red white and blue engulfed the South Bank as they jetted by directly overhead.  Thanks to the quick focusing of the Olympus 35 RD's rangefinder I was able t...

Full Disclosure: This post contains  affiliate  links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. I love Blurb, so I became an affiliate of theirs in order to support my hobby. Thanks. My very first DSLR was the Canon 350D, which I still use.  I decided to upgrade from a Nikon Coolpix 775 because my sister was getting married, and I needed to get better photos of the event - not as the official photographer of course, but as the guy grabbing all the candid shots of the family and friends.  I did just that and got amazing photos of the day which everyone appreciated.  Back then, disk space was quite a premium, so I’d archive photos away in CDs. About a decade later I was feeling nostalgic and decided to have a look at some of those photos.  I found the CDs exactly where I left them in storage, hurried to my computer, oh wait, I couldn’t.  I had a macbook that no longer included a CD/DVD drive.  ...

After throwing my toys out of the pram a couple of weeks ago about the Asahi Pentax Spotmatic + Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4 setup + Expired Kodak Gold 200 setup, it's clear now that the fault was all mine.  I did not have a full grasp of the properties of expired film.  Sure, the behaviour of expired film is capricious, but apparently there are some rules of thumb I could have employed. In my second attempt, I used a fresh Agfa Vista 200 instead.  Apart from a little loss in contrast because of the almost head-on light source it was all good. I did get some looks from the restaurant staff, and a smile from a certain older gentleman across the room as I composed the photos.  A 35mm lens would have been more fit for purpose, but where can I get a 35mm f/1.4 lens without having to swap a kidney for it?