Catching The Rain

Lots of lovely Canon F1 equipment for sale

Well, the enigmatic Zeus camera mentioned previously has been handed over to Royal Mail who should hopefully deliver it to its rightful owner by 1pm tomorrow.

* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM BY *Meanwhile I’ve been busy listing a whole load of other auction purchases on eBay, the real highlights of which being some fabulous 30+ year old accessories for the Canon F1 (I am keeping the body for now - for some reason I felt loathed to part with such a gorgeous piece of kit!). If all goes to plan I expect that the Servo EE Finder, a device which gives this essentially all manual camera a shutter-priority mode, to go for upwards of a hundred quid. Likewise I am hopeful the Booster T Finder and Motor Drive Unit will fetch good money. Things are looking good, with more than a dozen ‘watchers’ so far and none of the auctions close until Sunday evening (UK time). Oddly it’s actually the battery case that powers these items that is the only one with any bids on it so far.

* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM BY *There are also some more eclectic photography items listed, including some 40+ year-old 8mm cine film (one box still has all the original seals), and some instructions and a warranty card from items that I don’t even own!

Should anyone visit this page and feel like placing a bid, I’ll take off 5% from the final selling price if you mention this site before paying.

Whales and croc fish

It seems the Thames is not the only place where unusual aquatic life turns up. In Malaysia a recent report tells of a ‘Croc fish’ not of local origin.

The report goes on to say that this fish, of American origin, was probably released from a fish-tank when it grew too big. Do we have a new hypothesis for how the sadly demised Willy got to swim past the Houses of Parliament?

Faces in the kitchen

There’s a free 10×8 print of a photo of your choice for the first person to guess what this is. Just add your suggestion to the comments….

Mysterious old camera - Zeus

I was in my local auction house on Monday and spotted three old cameras in one lot. A couple were nice-looking (but seemingly valueless) Kodaks - an old folding ‘Junior’ and a Box Brownie. The third was intriguing, a simple box labelled ‘Zeus’ and ‘Made in England’ and inside a very, very basic compact-sized 35mm camera with an almost home-made look to it.

* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM BY *
* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM BY *
* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM BY *

I made a few notes and headed home to do a bit of research on eBay/Google but on the little Zeus drew a complete blank. So I posted a message on photo.net’s Classic Cameras (pre-1970) Forum and the rest, as they say, is history.

In a nutshell someone on that list pointed me to gbcameras.org.uk which had somehow eluded my Googling, and a quick email to the site owner David Gardner (who also happens to be newsletter editor for the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain) and a very enthusiastic reply came back asking for more info. The long and the short is that I ended up winning the camera on David’s behalf and it will soon be winging its way up the M1 to him in Sheffield.

The history of this little camera is something of an enigma - we don’t even know who made it and when, although David does have the address of the distibrutor from a magazine advert from 1950. That’s it - that’s all that seems to be known about it, anywhere!

Anyway, temptation got the better of me and I walked around Kew yesterday with a B&W film in it. If anything comes out, I’ll post the pictures here!

Is it spring yet?

We seem to have had such a dull, damp and dismal start to 2006 in London. So much so I’ve lost track of what season it is (although I see next week’s weather forecast is suggesting we’re going to be plummeted straight back into winter).

The plants carry on doing their stuff though, and it’s encouraging to see the first snowdrops, some glorious witch hazels fully out, and even an early viburnum coming into flower.

snowdrops

Witch hazel (Hamamelis)

Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’

You can see more photos in the winter gallery, or if you want to look on the bright side in expectation, then no matter what the weather throws at us, the first real spring flowers should only be a few weeks away….

Can’t resist…..

It’s not new, but it is funny and it’s very clever, so I tend to agree this has to be one of the best blonde jokes ever…..