Picked up my recent acquisition from the tech that I regularly use after having a full service. It has been given a clean bill of health, everything is working as it should and the shutter speeds are spot on. I shall stick a roll of film in it at the weekend & double check. Afterwards it will go on the shelf with the rest of my film gear. All I am looking for now is a nice Nikon F3.
Who knew that was a thing…. Upgraded the firmware on my Prograde CFExpress cards, downloaded the app from the Prograde site and bobs your uncle, also offers the ability to health check & sanitise the cards as well.
I recently upgraded my 10.9″ inch” iPad Pro which has had a cracked screen for the last couple of years, with a new 13″ iPad air with 256GB storage & WiFi & Cellular. I also added a protective case, which adds quite a bit of bulk, but has the advantage of a strap & stand built in, I also have a blue tooth keyboard case for when that would be useful. I am impressed with the iPad Air so far, but I haven’t used it in anger yet. I still need to sort out the editing & captioning of images as the application that I used to use is now no longer supported & never got ported across when the OS changed a while back.
I hadn’t realised what a pain the arse it was going to be to upgrade the Sim I had in the old iPad to an eSim, but eventually got it sorted by EE sending me an eSim via snail mail FFS.
From a rather tired Pentax Spotmatic to a rather nice Canon Canonet QL17 GIII. I picked this up today for a great price, in nice condition but unable to test the meter as the battery in the camera had died, fortunately it had not leaked. As with most things of this age it required quite a clean up, the white numerals on shutter speed ring were barely readable as they had turned a rather unpleasant grey colour (probably a build up of skin oils & skin cells), same with the aperture ring. Cleaning with Peroxide restored the brightness and a wipe down with naptha removed any other grime. Now looks pristine.
I compared the built in meter with the Sekonic hand held meter that I have and I was surprised to find that it was absolutely spot on, not just close, but bang on the money. I stuck a roll of film in the camera & took a few pics. All good.
The Spotmatic I purchased at the weekend has had a hard life, but it came with a Super Takumar 50mm F1.4 lens, which unfortunately had some fungus.
Anyway, A quick strip down and clean up of the lens elements and the fungus is now a thing of the past.
The Pentax Spotmatic has had a hard life, been more than a little neglected however it refuses to die, its shutter performed very well, centainly within my tolerance for equipment of this age, the meter powered up & worked when introduced to a battery (which did surprise me)
Went out to have a look as some used equipment, which included an old Pentax Spotmatic & Pentax ME some k-fit lenses, a Canon AF35M and an EL-Nikkor 50mm F2.8N & some odds and sods, I ended up bringing home a Pentax LX as well. A bit of a punt as there were some old batteries in it that had corroded, but only in between the 2 LR44 batteries, nothing in the battery compartment. So I took the risk & it came home with me.
Whacked in some new batteries & given it a bit of a clean up & it is now working pretty much as expected. It is showing signs of developing a sticky mirror, which they are well known for & can be fixed, the 50mm F1.4 is in really nice shape, it also came with the FB-1 viewfinder and an external battery pack.
The shutter speeds are a little slow at the high end 1/2000 is approx 1/1400 and the everything slower than 1/60 is absolutely spot-on.
Having had my Canon FS4000US repaired by a splendid chap from Lllandudno recently, in readiness for scanning some negatives for a client, I thought I had better get back in to practice, and work out the method to extract the best possible quality. One of the things that I wanted to assess was how much difference multiple scans would have on image quality. First try reveals not an awful lot of difference on a well exposed & processed B&W negative.
I have yet to try with some colour neg & slide films, also I will have to try some less well processed/exposed images, which I will do over the next week.
I have owned this 35mm Canon FS4000US since they were first launched, probably back in 2001 and last used it some 20 years ago, when it broke. Since then it has lived in the bottom drawer of my desk, unused and pretty much unthought of until I had a clear out, I thought about throwing it away, but never got around to it. Fast forward to last week & a client asked if I could scan some old negatives for them & I said hesitantly “Yes”.
So I started to look for a 35mm Film scanner, with ICE or similar technology, and looked at Minolta & Nikon variants and settled on a Nikon Coolscan V ED, as being the highest resolution scanner that was a reasonable price & was capable of connecting via USB (Many high end scanners seem to be SCSI or Firewire, which both present problems with modern machines).
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Having had an iPad pro for some years, i decided to upgrade, for two reasons, firstly the battery was dying & secondly I had a crack in the screen. Whilst the crack didn’t adversely affect the operation, I felt it was time to move on. So yesterday the replacement arrived, a 13″ Ipad Air, with 256Gb, wifi & cellular.
First job was to move everything across from my old iPad, then get the cellular working…..where the first issue occured. The new iPad doesn’t use a SIM, so onto the EE website to try & get an eSIM. But neither the EE app nor the website would enable me to download an eSIM. So an hour on the phone and still no eSIM, but they can mail me one?????
So once I have mobile data, I’ll need to work out how to connect the R3 cameras to it, I currently use a USB card reader as it avoids the clunky Canon Connect app, but it would be nice to use the wifi ability to ping images straight from the camera to the iPad.
The price of these things is ridiculous now, nearly £300 for the Sandisk 256GB and £140 for the Prograde 128GB. The worst thing is that I will never fill one on a job, I may shoot all day & only need 10-12GB of space spread over two or three camera bodies, if shooting a football match then I may use 6 cards, one for each half in each body. However you can never have too many backs up or three.
Having upgraded to Canon EOS R3 bodies I find myself with a few CF Cards that are now no longer of any use. It would seem that I was fortunate in upgrading to CF Express Cards before the price of memory rocketed, I have now thrown this bundle of cards on Ebay. I now have six CF Express cards from Prograde and Sandisk in varying capacities from 128Gb to 64Gb, which is a ridiculous, the cameras are only 24 megapixels and realistically 16 or 32Gb cards would be more than enough, but they don’t make them that small.
The only reason for having 6 is that I never fill a card, usually for Sports I will shoot one half & then swap cards, so that in the event of a card failure & haven’t lost everything. I also have the same volume SD cards for when I need to shoot RAW & jpeg to different cards, again providing another layer of redundancy.
I am also gobsmacked by the price that old Hitachi/IBM microdrives are selling for. I may hold onto my 1GB microdrive for a little longer.
Usual Saturday morning, dive out to the bakers for a fresh loaf, in for a valet, inside & out, stop to pick up some beer & top up with fuel, whilst waiting at a red light 100 metres from home a geriatric tw*t drives into the back of my car, TWICE. The traffic light was just changing so I had started to lift the clutch, the auto hold disengaged & bang the tw*t hit me, sending me in to the car in front. Two hours on the phone with the insurance company filing a claim, good news is they waived the excess & are organising a rental for the duration that my car will be away.
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Over the past few weeks I have been getting used to the new RF cameras and I think that I am now comfortable with using them on a ‘paid for’ job, I have to say that I am really impressed with the EOS R3 bodies & very impressed with the new RF glass, it is a shame that there isn’t the same wide range as the EF Glass that I have been using for the last 20+ years.
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Ordered a replacement for the Canon ST-E3-RT Speedlite Transmitter, not entirely sure why, as it will work with the Canon EL-5 Flashguns that I have, but the ST-E10 does offer some significant advantages. First of all, it’s tiny, so tiny that there is a concern that I could lose it in my bag, yet a lone the boot of the car. It also doesn’t require any batteries and it doesn’t have a screen. Which definitely means it is a work tool & not a toy, toys have screens and joysticks & controllers, this doesn’t thus it’s a tool. Tax return will testify to that.
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It’s been something like 50 days of rain in the UK , I have been fortunate to not have any outdoor jobs in that time, but I did realise that I had lost my rain cover for the 400mm F2.8, it was only a cheap one, that I have had for many years, but it has gone… So I ordered a new one. This one is made by Manfrotto and called the Pro Lite Tele-shield. Quite a bit cheaper than the Think-Tank version & certainly better made than the rather flimsy Canon one that I had with the original EF400mm F2.8L mkI.
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Caricatures have been a bit of a trend recently on social media, I thought that I’d have a go. Some are better than others, all created with ChatGPT. Enjoy.
Having got the Canon RF 85mm F2.0 Macro lens recently, which isn’t a true macro, only going to 1/2 life size, I thought I’d get some extension tubes. The ones that I ordered are made by MEIKE and came as a set of two, one 13mm and one 18mm. I was surprised by the quality, seeing as they were relatively cheap, even more surprised that they are also weather sealed, unlike the 85mm. They won’t get used very often, but handy to have.
Suddenly realised that I had not only whacked my EF 100mm Macro lens on Ebay, but that I had also sold it a week ago. I don’t often need or use a macro lens, but it is very handy to have available. The RF 85mm Macro isn’t a 1:1 Macro, only going to half life size, but it is more than enough for what I need.
Whilst enjoying the upgrade to the Mirrorless Canons, I do have a little issue with the Eye Focus & have been struggling to get the cameras calibrated for my eye in different lighting conditions. Someone recommended a deeper eye cup, so had a look around and found a Kiwifotos long eyecup. Wasn’t that expensive so I ordered one & it has made a significant difference, so much so that I have ordered a second one.
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Seeing as I no longer need to use CF cards, I therefore no longer need CF Card readers, so my Lexar Workflow HR-1 is binned, as they don’t produce CFexpress Card modules, which is a shame, but I have had it for a long time, so off to ebay it goes. To replace it, I am going to use Prograde CFexpress & SDX card readers. I have currently a USB4 CFexpress reader & a USB3.2 CFexpress & SD card reader. As I am only running two bodies currently there is no need for any more than this, I also have a Sandisk CFexpress USB3.2 reader which will go in my kit bag with the laptop.
So my transition to Mirrorless is nearly complete, just some fast primes and a macro lens to replace, but for now most of my working kit is here, I opted for the RF 15-35mm F2.8L to go with the RF 24-70 F2.8 and the RF 70-200 F2.8. Now all packed in my ThinkThank Hard Drive pack.
There is still some gear for sale on ebay
Now in the process of upgrading the flashguns, replacing two EX600RT units with the Canon EL-5s. First impressions are wow, weather proofing, something that the old guns never had, and I have had a few failures due to poor weather. Second impressions are oh, no charger for the Li-on battery, admittedly I knew this as I had been informed by a colleague Neil Turner, so I purchased a genuine one Canon on eBay for £14. Have tested it & it works, it took a couple of hours to fully charge the battery. Whilst I haven’t even looked at the manual yet, I have used the flash for a couple of test photos and have to say that I am impressed with the recycle rate, far quicker than my old EX600RTs even with fully charged high capacity Eneloop batteries, which I now have no use for. In fact the only thing that I need AA batteries for is my PocketWizard remotes, so having more than 30 of them seems like overkill.
Having taken delivery a few days ago of the RF 24-70mm F2.8L, the second RF lens landed today, the RF 70-200 F 2.8L Z, so just waiting on the third lens of the holy trinity, but I still have to decide which way I am leaning, whether I need the F2.8 or the F4 version of the wide zoom.
In other news the Prograde CF Express card reader arrived yesterday, which is a USB4.0 version rather than the USB3.2 that my Sandisk is, and also comes with a decent USB4/Thunderbolt cable.
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Having up dated my cameras from EOS 1Dx mkII bodies to EOS R3 bodies, now comes the expensive part. I was going to hold off buying RF lenses for a while & stick with the EF lenses that I already own, but having purchased the RF24-70 F2.8 L IS USM and really enjoyed using it over the past few days, I have now decided that I should upgrade the rest. I have ordered the RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Z, which will be here next week & I am thinking about either the RF 14-35mm F4 L or RF 15-35mm F2.8 L, I will need to have a play with them both before I decide.
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Since changing kit, it seemed to be the right time to upgrade the bag. Having used Think Tank bags for a number of years, I went online to find an upgrade, I have the Airport Accelerator which is getting a little tired after 10 years of daily abuse, an Airport Security v3 which is fine for a lot of kit, but I wanted something just for two EOS R3 bodies, 11-24mm, 16-35mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm along with a couple of flashes, batteries, and other odds and sods.
Researched a couple and settled on the Think Tank StreetWalker HardDrive V2, however it is no longer made and nothing else seemed to fit the bill. So I turned to Ebay and found one, brand new, with all the bits still in original packaging. It handles everything that I need to carry, it’s a little tight at the moment, but will loosen up a little with use.
Bought a Gimp Suit for my one of my R3 cameras, not sure about it yet, I have never used protection before (stop it!) usually rely on gaffers tape, or for the most part go au naturale. Anyway this was cheap and took a couple of weeks to arrive from China, I thought I’d give it a try.
Finally, I am now converted completely to mirrorless. Picked up a bargain second R3 body, now means my DSLRs can be retired. Only thing that I may add is a high pixel count mirrorless body for studio/commercial work, but for the news & sports side I am now covered.
I have a few Pelican cases, mostly 1510s that use for transporting & storing kit in, many have stickers, but I have now added i.d vinyls to them, I have had some of my website stickers on them, but that kind of hints at what is inside the cases.
Purchased this screen cleaner back in the early 2000s, about the same time as I got my Apple Cinema Display screen, and I am still using it, it was expensive at the time, about double the price of any other screen cleaner, but it is despite its age still brilliant. As it is nearly empty I thought I’d purchase some more, however I couldn’t find any. However a check of the bottle revealed a website. Turns out they’d changed the name of the product.
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It’s been a while since I have changed camera systems, the last time was from Canon FD kit to Canon EOS kit, that was bad, no compatibility between systems, so everything had to be replaced. The next change was film to digital, which, other than the cost of the cameras was relatively painless. Having purchased a Canon R a short time ago I have decided to replace the Canon 1Dx mkIII cameras with Canon R3 bodies. I shall for now run the old EF lenses with adaptors, as I can’t justify the prices of replacing some of the glass, £12K for a 400mm F2.8 is bloody ridiculous, and the fact that I have some rather nice EF glass that will do for at least a couple of years.
I shall also keep shooting with the Canon 5DS, and the R will be used primarily for shooting with my old Canon FDn glass, but may be promoted to 3rd body for some jobs.
So now have invest in new memory cards, adaptors, card readers and probably dozens of other things. that I haven’t thought of yet. Oh and the laborious process of familiarising myself with the new kit and seeing what impact it has on the workflow that I have used pretty consistently for the last 10 years or so.
Bloody typical, I purchased a Swedish Ice Scraper back in 2020, not used it for a little while, needed it a couple of days ago, damned if I could find it, check everywhere, eventually gave up, assuming that I had left it in the old car when I part-exchanged it, so I ordered a new one, then wouldn’t you know it almost exactly an hour before the new one arrived, I found the old one.
If you haven’t already got one, I’d definitely recommend one, so much better than anything that Halfrauds sell, and definitely better than damaging a debit/credit card.
A little more work is required on the Berkey timer, I have tested all of the electrics which seem to work fine, however there is an issue with the clock motor. So I have opened up the case & had a dig around. After opening the motor for the clock, it is clear that something has gone wrong. The drive for the clock has lost all of its teeth, I have been in touch with a specialist in the US that knows these Intermatic motors & he has never heard of the particular motor that is installed, but confident that he can supply a replacement cog set for it.
Always wanted a Sekonic 508 meter, I had a 308 for a number of years and loved it, along with a Gossen Lunasix and previously a Minolta Autometer III. But really fancied a 508 Zoom Master. Anyway a 558 popped up in my feed so I shot down to Southampton for a looksee. Needless to add that it came home with me.
One of the reasons for my trip up north, was to pick up some equipment that I had been looking for, for quite a while, first and foremost was a Durst UT-100 film drier. I have seen a few around for silly money, well north of £300, and none of them was complete or without issues. However, in Morpeth I not only found a UT-100 for £120, it also came with a bundle of other stuff.
I gave the UT-100 a safety test, namely I plugged it in and switched it on, then left it running for a short time, other than needing a clean out, (you could smell there was dust on the heater) and removing the remains of the old filter (new replacement material ordered)it was in near mint condition.
Also included in the deal was an RR Beard 20×16 easel, in fantastic condition, a Berkey Omega Lab Timer (which I will strip down & service & replace some none standard power sockets for IEC C13 sockets) and loads of odds & sods, including a Krokus enlarger, which paid a visit to the local SCC tip, and some trays & safe-lights (which when I have rewired will find new homes) 35mm & 6×6 contact printers, as well as print washers etc.
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Been a little busy in recent months and haven’t added anything to the blog, but that is about to change.
I recently started shooting & processing film (only for private work) which I haven’t done since I went completely digital in the very early 2000s. It has been fun shooting with a pair of Canon F1n bodies & FD glass, some of which i have owned since the early 1980s. I recently decided that I should shoot some digital images with the old glass as well so I bought a little Canon mirrorless camera & an Urth RF to FD adaptor.
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It’s that time of year again, MOT time. You’ve got to love it when the car sails through the MOT with no advisories & a clean bill of health. I used the same place that looked after my last Golf for the last 15 years, first £50 MOT for a few years, hopefully a few more to come.
Having upgraded the MacPro to a Mac Studio M2, I decided that it was time to replace the two 30″ Apple Cinema monitors with something a little more modern, but I couldn’t justify spending £3000 on the current Mac Studio monitors, & I don’t really need 5K resolution, so I opted for a couple of Apple 27″ LED Thunderbolt screens. I also picked up a couple of Thunderbolt 3>2 adaptors. Researching showed that the latest Mac Studios wouldn’t allow daisy chaining Thunderbolt monitors and each one would require a Thunderbolt 4/USB-C port to provide video.
Anyway, picked up the second one today and I thought I will try daisy chaining them together. IT WORKED. So I now have two great monitors on a single Thunderbolt port, which frees up some expansion capability, no dreaded Apple Power Blocks that are rare in working order & all for less than £250 (the two thunderbolt 3>2 adaptors were £50).
Loving the new car, but…..needed to get the spanners out. VW cut some costs when building the mk8 Golf, most noticeably and annoyingly in replacing the hydraulic struts that hold the bonnet open, which the last 3 generations have had as standard.
Fortunately I am not the only one to notice and there are several companies that make an upgrade kit that solves the issue. It is a really simple job and took me about 20 minutes to do this morning. The Rams are made in China, so will probably need replacing in a few weeks, if that happens I shall look for some quality parts to replace them.
It finally became time to retire the old girl after 10+ years of service. Originally purchased as a stop-gap to the old Grand Cherokee, after it clocked up some 180k miles. Toyed with going back to a 4×4 but common-sense prevailed and I got another Golf.
Whilst the old Golf was brilliant (I had added handsfree/DAB etc) it also had a five disk CD changer, which was probably the only thing that the new car lacks, I prefer CD quality to the compressed mp3/mp4 that my iPod uses, but the digital cockpit and the high def infotainment system is awesome, but I am not sure that the audio quality is as good as the old mk5.
Time for another one of the cameras that I acquired from auction to get the treatment, ready for ebay.
What started off as a quite grubby camera ended up really presentable, I had to retouch the Canon & the FT engraved logos, the shutter dial was really very grim, but cleaned up well. Shutter speeds are within tolerance and the meter works. Cleaned up the mirror & the focus screen. Light seals probably need replacing but I’ll let the new owner take care of that.
Finally managed to get a Canonet 17 GIII QL in black. Only problem was that I had to buy several other cameras that were bundled together. One good thing was that between them I now have a nice rangefinder with original strap, case & lens cap as well as a Canon UV filter. It was in really nice condition, just requiring new light seals and a little cosmetic fettling.
Out yesterday shooting for a regular client, a horrible murky day, but at least it didn’t rain.
Picked up a couple of rangefinder cameras at an auction a couple of weeks ago, I was after a Canonet 17QL GIII, there were a couple available, one chrome & one black. The problem is that they were grouped with other cameras. So I bid on the two lots & ended up with 10 cameras & a box of “junk”.
The black one has been checked & had new seals fitted & has a roll of film in it for testing. The chrome one has been cleaned & checked with batteries & everything is fine, however the light seals were in a proper state.
Bloody messy job, but new light seals have been fitted and the camera will be tested with film in due course.
However even the box of junk turned out ok, a Gossen Lunasix, a couple of Canon D-lite flashes, a couple of other meters & flashguns, and as well as a few Takumar lens hoods, a rather special Leitz lenshood, most of which will end up on ebay.
Finished restoring the old GIII QL19 that I bought down on the south coast. The top plate was removed and the rangefinder mirrors & glass was cleaned, the wrecked light seals have been replaced, the camera body & lens have been thoroughly cleaned and a new battery with a voltage converter have been installed. The camera is now loaded with film and some test photos will be taken. I am now on the look out for a Contax G1 or a Canonet GIII QL17.
I have wanted a little film rangefinder for a little while, having used the Canon AF35M back in the 1980s as a back up camera for night snatches, I thought about one, but they are totally electronic & most of them are f**ked, so I went for an Old Canonet, I wanted a QL17, but haven’t found one yet. However, I did find a working QL19 for not much money, so headed out for a look. It works, although it has the wrong battery in it (a 1.5v instead of the 1.35v it needs) and the viewfinder was very cloudy, the lens needs a though cleaning & the light seals need replacement.
So first job, off with the top plate & clean out the viewfinder. Next mission is to strip down the lens and clean out, then to replace the light seals which are shot. Anyway it is already looking better.
Another cheap Junghans 8″ chronometer, this time a twin dial version, probably from the 1950s, described as not working, but a quick service and the clock has been running for the last 48 hours without issue. The dial & glass has been deep cleaned, the reset knob has been polished back to its original finish.
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There aren’t any sensibly priced Junghans clocks out there that are ripe for restoration, I purchased the last one about a week ago, all of the others are overpriced for their condition, £200 for a rusty clock with missing knobs is beyond taking the piss. That is only a little less than I will be looking to sell these restored ones for.
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The crustiest, nastiest, rustiest Junghans stop clock arrived a few days ago, even worse than the last grey one. This one is just about saveable, the mechanics are in ok shape, and have been serviced and work perfectly. It is missing all three control knobs and the case is well out of whack.
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A rather crusty & non-working Junghans arrived a couple of days ago (expecting another in a week or so). It had been badly abused, the stop/start controls had been pulled so hard they had exploded inside the case & two huge scratches on the back plate evidence of subsequent attempts to start the clock. These things only require the lightest of touches, if you have one and feel resistance, stop you’ll only f**k it up even more.
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Over the last few weeks, I have received a few more Smiths Timers, various types, two types of interval timer, several 60 minute timers, and a few German made 60 minute timers. One so bad that it needed a complete rebuild & paint. There were a couple that needed a service & a repaint, so I went with a couple of custom colours. Smiths were never very adventurous with their colour schemes, it was either black, silver or cream, so I have gone for “luminous yellow” “scarlet red” and “glossy white”. The rest will be restored to their original colour schemes.
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The ramblings of a press photographer 