This gallery contains 25 photos.
I’ve just arrived home from Leeds, where I have been attending the European Beer Bloggers’ Conference. It’s been a fascinating and entertaining weekend hearing peoples’ stories, learning about things I don’t know much about, such as the hop business, and … Continue reading
This gallery contains 11 photos.
This weekend I’m going to be at the European Beer Bloggers’ Conference “EBBC12″ in Leeds, and will be live blogging, tweeting, and generally making a nuisance of myself while I’m there. I’ll be sharing photos and flippant comments on Twitter … Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago I bought a Zorki-4 camera on ebay, because I wanted to see what it was like to use a rangefinder, and I don’t have the money to experiment with Leicas. I think I have been lucky with my purchase. This particular camera was made in 1968, the year I was born, but as the pictures below show, there isn’t much wrong with it. Even the slow shutter speeds seem reasonably accurate. The Jupiter-8 lens is in good shape too, but more on that later.
Zorkis were made in Moscow, starting with the Zorki-1, in 1948. The Zorki-1 was a copy of the Leica II rangefinder, from the early 1930s, and indeed if you are thinking of buying one of those, check carefully that it didn’t start out life as a Zorki. They look almost identical even before they have been modified, and you’re better off with a working Zorki-1 than a fake Leica. The Zorki-4s were made from 1956 to 1973, and were the best selling of the Zorki range. This one was made for export, and probably arrived in Britain when it was new.
Of course I am old enough to have used film cameras when there was no alternative, but what little I know about photography has mostly been learned with digital cameras. In fact if it hadn’t been for digital, I doubt I would ever have felt excitable enough about a camera to buy one of these, because I wouldn’t have spent enough time taking pictures. The Zorki has no electronics, and gives no assistance, not even a passive light meter. That was quite scary at first. The problem shifted from “How do I get this light into the camera in the way I want it?” to “How much light is there? Now what?” I downloaded a couple of light meter apps to my phone, and have also used another camera just for metering, but mostly I have used the “sunny sixteen” rule, made a guess, and worked it out for myself. The distance range on the lens, and the rangefinder way of focussing is very easy. The Zorki is a revelation.
Jupiter-8
The Jupiter-8 lens that came with this camera is a little stiff, but not in a problematic way. It’s clean and tidy, and seems to be free of scratches. One thing that has shocked me a little though is how variable it is. With modern lenses there is some slight variation in sharpness, depending on how wide the aperture is set, but for middle of the road snappers like me that doesn’t make much difference. This lens though is radically different with the aperture wide open from the way it is “stopped down”. I was pleased to get the shot below, largely because I was finding out whether the slow shutter speeds were working (they seem to be). But since it was taken indoors, the lens was wide open. Even allowing for a tiny bit of camera shake, you can see how soft the image below (taken at 1/40 second at f2) is. Not in a bad way, necessarily–maybe in a way you could use–but soft nonetheless.
Compare it with some of the outdoor shots in the slideshow below to see how sharp it can be at small apertures. A huge range.
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PS. This camera and lens cost less than a fast SD card.
Alex Johnson, of Shedworking fame has a great looking new book out this week, called Bookshelf, based on his popular blog of the same name. The blog is always worth a quiet browse, and the book promises a similarly pleasurable experience. Alex kindly came out of his hut at the bottom of the garden to answer a few questions and tell me about it. Don’t miss the video at the bottom of this post, where Alex shows off the book, and the wonderful book-related domestic architecture inside.
What’s in the book?
A huge variety of bookshelves, bookcases and things that look like them from designers around the globe. So there are bookcases shaped like animals (including porcupines, dogs, elephants, humpbacked whales, cows and polar bears), ones made out of elastic, some built into armchairs, and others which are circular. And there are single shelves, some which only hold one volume, others in the shape of cartoon bubbles. It’s quite amazing how ingenious designers can be using something as simple as a bookcase as their starting point. Oh, and there are two bookends.
Where did the idea come from?
On my Shedworking blog I’ve always covered interior design of garden offices and sheds and about five years ago I started noticing that there were increasing numbers of incredible bookshelf and bookcase designs emerging. Rather than flood Shedworking with these, I felt it would be fun to start a new blog, Bookshelf, really for my own pleasure and this inspired the book. Over the last few years the blog has really snowballed and is now almost as popular as Shedworking.
Why are bookshelves important?
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Penguin Group CEO John Mankinson made the distinction between the ‘book reader’ (who is as happy to read digital books as paper ones) and the ‘book owner’, who wants to ‘give, share and shelve books’. It’s an important distinction – there is still a very strong emotional attachment to the printed word.
Alberto Manguel’s portrayal of reading at home in The Library at Night (2007) is one of the most evocative descriptions of how a collection of books becomes more than a pile of papers, how even the very smell of his wooden shelves relaxes him. This is the library as emotional sanctuary. Of course there are many online bookcase sites but what they cannot provide is that sense of public display, offering visible pointers to guests and clients of who you are (or who you would like to be perceived to be). Your bookcase design says (almost) as much about you as the books on show.
Do they have a future?
Absolutely, though their presence in the home might change a little. With fewer physical volumes to be housed, perhaps readers will look for more exciting ways of storing their home libraries than a mere shelf, with the bookcase becoming closer to a trophy cabinet. The determination to save the book may also see people move towards treasuring their volumes in fitting surroundings (special edition furniture, including bookcases, is now being sold in galleries that were once the domain of the artist). And I take heart from a survey by Legal & General (‘The Changing Face of British Homes’, 2008) which suggests that many people really do value this kind of space.When asked which feature room they would most like to have in their new home, 15 per cent said they wanted a library, compared to 13 per cent who chose a gym, 9 per cent a music studio and 8 per cent a home cinema. I think the bookshelf is in rude health.
Find out more about the book here, and view a slideshow of images from it here.
Steve Powell has an interesting post at the Venetian Vase quoting Chandler telling Ian Fleming how a gangland killing might be arranged. The interview took place in London, and Chandler refuses to be drawn on whether there is anyone in England he might like to kill. Chandler was drunk from the start, and much of the interview is indistinct, but the post pulls out one of its great moments. Link
