A balanced, three course meal of photography, tech and repair
A balanced, three course meal of photography, tech and repair
I didn’t want a Leica. Genuinely, I didn’t want a Leica. Of any description. The prices are astronomical, well out of my league at any rate, and I’ll let you in to another secret whilst I’m at it – I’ve never used a rangefinder of any description in my life.…
There’s a junk shop in Lichfield called Quercus of Quonians, its situated down an ancient side street in an equally ancient building. It has the exact musty, old smell you’re imaging right now and is rammed floor to ceiling with anything from bits of old crockery to stuffed crows sat…
If you look back at old photography magazines you quickly discover that 35mm cameras were fine, but if you wanted to do real photography then you needed to join the exclusive, expensive medium format club. In this world, people don’t shoot off 36 frames with merry abandon, take advantage of…
Since I returned to film photography a few years back, I’ve been on a mission to do the whole thing on a budget. Price wise, buying film and shooting it isn’t too bad, you can still buy black and white for around £5 a roll. Developing is super cheap too,…
Is it possible to buy one single camera that does it all? A camera that can replace any others you might own and negate the need to buy another for a long, long time? That’s the question I had in mind when I started thinking about buying a new digital…
I’ve lived in Lichfield on and off for the best part of 40 years and, as with anywhere you become familiar with, you’d be forgiven for thinking nothing much ever changes. Lichfield is a city due to its main tourist attraction – a huge, three spired cathedral. The cathedral is…
In my constant search to find something interesting from the past, I’ll often pick up huge piles of old photography magazines. Not only are they a time capsule of social history, they’re also a great source of unexpected inspiration. You’d expect that most of this inspiration comes from things like…
I seem to be one of those few, select people for whom buying things never quite goes to plan. If I buy a car, it either dies within a week or I discover it has an exploding engine. With cameras, I’ve had similarly depressing experiences – M W Classic Cameras…
By the end of the year 2000, the writing was already on the wall for film SLR’s. The launch of the insanely brilliant EOS 1v signalled the end of serious R&D spending on film cameras as attention shifted to the growing digital market. Although 35mm SLR’s would continue to sell…
Strangely, Canon didn’t launch their all new EOS line of 35mm film SLR’s with a top end professional model. Instead, they chose to break ground with the “enthusiasts level” EOS 650 and then very quickly followed this up for “higher end” enthusiasts with the 620 and 600. This apparently saw…
Many years back I was happily scanning film using a Canon 4400F flatbed and, in all fairness, I thought it was pretty good and used it well past its sell by date. When Windows 10 decided it didn’t like the scanner any more and Canon had long since made it…
Two years after the launch of the groundbreaking Dynax/Maxxum 7000i, Minolta launched a totally redesigned and upgraded range of single digit “xi” cameras. The Dynax/Maxxum 7xi was the “prosumer” or “enthusiast” model in the lineup and came second only to the professional grade 9xi. Minolta had seriously shaken up the…