Getting ready

In a few hours I will leave for our month-long ski expedition through the Karakoram mountains. I have set up a simple blog where you can follow our progress (given good satellite connections). Hopefully I will return with a good collection of images. I have the Fuji 690 rangefinder in the backpack as well as the Contax Aria loaded with Rollei IR film (which I will have Scala developed upon my return). Fingers crossed. We'll be back to the Bravo20 blog early June. 

Confirmation

Sunday was our daughter Emma's Confirmation. As said I wasn't in great shape. But the weather was nice and we enjoyed being together with the family. My parents came down from France for the occasion. Picture above was taken with the 5D and the Zeiss 85/1.4. Marvelous lens, obviously. Marvelous girl too ...

Caps in Ag

I'm back in from a week away in Vancouver. I returned badly out of shape due to jetlag (a 9-hour difference) and an acute viral nasopharyngitis (also known as a "common cold" of which I know only the explosive variety). So I languished away the last couple of days whilst trying to make the best of my daughter's Confirmation and doing some work in the margin. Now it's going better again (although my biological clock is still out of sync).

Upon my return I was pleased to see that the spring issue of  British photo journal Ag ("The International Journal of Photographic Art and Practice") had arrived. It featured a positive review of my Capitals book, carefully printed (as always with Ag) and generously illustrated with five images from the book. The review starts: "This is a beautifully produced little book, printed in tritone on a study pale cream paper" and ends "Recommended". That's plenty good for me. 

Son

Impromptu portrait of our son, Witold. With the Konica Hexar RF and the Noctilux wide open on Efke 100. Lots of ink has been spilled over the supposed uncompatibility of Leitz optics with the Hexar M-bayonet. Clearly, my Konica has no problems focusing the Noct' even with its relatively narrow rangefinder basis. Marvelous camera and superbly easy to use with this particular lens due to automatic exposure. With a handheld meter, the Noct' wide open is fickle to work with. And it is beyond the range of aperture-speed combinations that I am able to guesstimate. To be honest, I didn't even entertain the idea of fitting the Noctilux on the Hexar until I saw Tommy Oshima doing it. Thanks, Tommy.

Prep weekend

I have just returned from a week away: first to the Alps for a Pakistan preparation weekend and then onwards to my parents' home in the South-West where I spent a quiet few days mostly working and writing. 

The weekend was a mixed affair. I enjoyed the winter camping and hauling the pulkas (sledges) went reasonably well. But on the Sunday tour I lost a ski fairly high up the mountain so I had to make my way back down the slopes grumbling and on foot in the most atrocious snow. Anyway, it was an opportunity to put the Fuji 690 in action and see how that would work. It's an easy camera to deal with: light and very simple to use. I didn't take a light meter and relied on sunny sixteen for the exposures. That wasn't too difficult. I got a series of fairly evenly exposed negatives as a result. Above is a sample of the 12 pics or so I took. It's not exactly the type of images I'm looking for on my trip. Point was to show that the Fuji/Tri-X 320 combo works fine, that's all. And it does. Although I will obviously have to watch flare. I have ordered 50 rolls of 220 Tri-X. That makes for 800 negs or roughly 4,5 square meters of emulsion.