Andrew @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org

Medium format film seemed quite scary (separate paper backing! little sticky tabs! no canister!) but turned out very straightforward to use - spooling it into a tank was really smooth and honestly a bit less fiddly than 35mm. No need for cutting anything. Not sure this is going to be a regular thing, but definitely fun.

Technically really interesting to use as well - the shutter controls are all on the lens itself, so you set aperture and exposure, cock the shutter, and then that's it. No meter, but thankfully a phone takes care of that these days...

Focusing is entirely by a distance dial - this was the cheap model of the series, with no rangefinder. (You paid almost twice as much for that, but you did also get a wider lens)

The camera itself is surprisingly well-preserved for something that has "MADE IN GERMANY US-ZONE" on the back. Retail UK price was £10/4/4 for this model, which is pretty close to what I paid on ebay last week.

further #photography experiments: my first roll of medium-format film, on an untested 1950s folding camera, using Ilford XP2, which is not meant to be developed in normal B&W chemistry so I had to make up the times.

Amazingly, there are actually pictures coming out on the film. I mean, let's not assume they're in focus or reasonably exposed, but still.

One of those idle figures I was wondering about today: when did Japan overtake Germany in camera manufacture? Earlier than I thought - 1962 for domestic production, 1964 for export numbers, 1967 for export value. https://imaging.nikon.com/imaging/information/chronicle/history-f/

I sort of see what the gov.uk people are trying to do here, but my goodness, this is a wild prompt to put on the confirmation screen for a form that has nothing to do with organ donations.

Have to admit I find it kind of bleakly amusing that someone who moved to Edinburgh *in 2017* is alarmed by the growth in tourism, and thinks it's because of the films. https://www.businessinsider.com/living-in-scottish-city-from-avengers-action-movies-edinburgh-2024-2

Update: absolutely everything is on the internet. Here's the full concert, complete with audience in the second half getting a bit punchy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etpUN36GSKU&list=PL9tWM07_jQ9QjdzSLISVMqyjEYpv3Kuhm

(this was a week into the tour & two days before the infamous "Judas" concert in Manchester - I suspect half the audience had read the papers from the earlier legs and were going in spoiling for a fight...)

Their competitors (the Leicester Chronicle rather than the Leicester Mercury) were a bit more pro. Get the feeling these two reviewers did not often agree.

This evening's delightful discovery is a regional English paper's slightly bemused review of Bob Dylan's 1966 tour.

"I must admit I was surprised at the heavy emphasis Dylan put on this type of music which has by no means become associated with him. But one must give him credit for such a brave display of his amazing versatility."

Good news: the following Monday it had dropped to just 11 patients on the critical list, and also the censor would grudgingly allow romance