Which Way Now

Digbeth, Birmingham, June 11th

I’ve dribbled a few more of my photos from the Flickrmeet into this set with a fair few more to come. There are currently 216 in the group pool (slideshow) and the quality level remains fucking high.

Today I’d like to draw your attention to Harri B’s Through the Viewfinder shots, taken by shooting a normal camera through a Kodak Duaflex (one of those box cameras you look down into). He’s got loads more here and, naturally, there’s a Flickr group for this inspired nonsense. Lovely stuff that I never knew was being done and it adds yet another valuable angle on the walk.

As I said before the nice thing about these meets is the mix of cameras being used, from professional-level DSLRs with fancy lenses to cheapo pocket cameras, not to mention the old-school film cameras which we’ll have to wait a while to see the results of. It’s a keen thing that we’ve got an environment where those at the top of their game can stretch themselves while newcomers just figuring things out can feel comfortable. As you can tell I’m pretty chuffed at how it’s all turning out.

In other photo news, because photo news is all you’re getting from me these days and you’ll learn to accept it, I’ve currently got a frightening number of pre-digital cameras scattered around the place which I’ll be selling on ebay for me dad (I have better feedback than him). The Nikon FM2 is a perfectly normal beast that I enjoyed shooting with at the weekend but the Nikon F5 is a monster, weighing a ton, requiring eight batteries and so complex it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to turn it on. I spent a while reading the manual this evening and tentatively popped a film into it. Tomorrow I’ll be taking it out around Brum (before Robot vs Dinosaur). Given that the lens I’m using is not compatible with all the F5′s fancy-pants auto-bobbins (except Aperture Priority mode) I’m not expecting anything radical, but at least I can say I’ve used one before flogging it.