I haven’t written much here lately. Not for bad reasons, just been busy making the most of summer and that is in some respects why I am updating my blog on Saturday afternoon – I have been out and about so much that my flat has turned into a dump! So I’m having a day of cleaning up, mopping, hoovering – everything. Later on today I’ll be off out to take a photo of a subject I need for my entry to Black and White Photography Magazine’s B&W Photographer Of The Year competition (something I don’t anticipate getting anywhere with but I’m giving it a go, and the end result is 4 prints I will like and hang on the wall even if the critics think they suck!

This time last year

Today a year ago I started walking the South Downs Way, and since then in June I walked the North Downs Way. A combined distance with all the to-ing and fro-ing of probably 380 miles. I’m quite a nostalgic person and I own a pair of rose tinted specs for every day of the year but it did get me thinking a little, of how awesome it is to be able to just get out there and walk, enjoy the countryside and take photos. I’m actually going to do a print tonight of Gander Down which is where I walked through a year ago today, pure coincidence but a happy one all the same. (My subject is the South Downs.)

About three-four years ago I had got myself into a rut, one that I progressively made deeper and deeper, it taught me a lot in hindsight but I got in with the wrong people (again) and it almost destroyed me. It’s only now I’m looking back thinking, “What the… why!” I got myself into something I didn’t need to, probably only because I felt lonely and was having a hard time adjusting to the difference of being in University and then going into work, hardly trauma central but enough to unseat you, especially when you get made redundant  and then progressively all your friends move away back to their parents and you’re holding the fort out of stubbornness, blind stupidity and mostly a love of where you now live. This was in 2005/6 (before this recession) so I do feel for people out of work who have strong work ethic, signing on at the DSS is the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done.

And then there’s the stupid things I did in that time too, at the time I felt I should be doing them, and I learnt a lot, saw a lot (and I already had beforehand, life really ain’t all roses and sweet-peas I’m afraid, not for everybody anyway, but you can make your own life pretty OK if you try hard) but even though at the time I felt I should be doing these things, I look back and think what I damn idiot I was. But c’est la vie; it got me to a good situation now of where I know exactly what I’m doing and most of all, I don’t really have much but I’m now happy and even feel that I’ve got to really cram as much in as possible because life is so short!

Next year I have plans to probably do some more chalk-hill walking, Cotswolds Way is likely. I did think of Offa’s Dyke but I also want to go to France for a week and 2 weeks of holiday one for walking, one for France eats half of my annual leave, let alone taking 2 weeks for Offa’s Dyke and 1 week for France, I’ll be left with nothing for the rest of the year virtually.

Nostalgia

Last night I sat down and went through 4 boxes of Kodachrome slides I got back from walking on the North Downs Way. (It equates to the first 4 1/2 days of walking) I swear that looking at projected slides is one of the biggest things people miss out on with digital photography. I don’t like engaging in any trivial spats like digital or film, Mac or PC etc. but the cost of a 1080p projector (which doesn’t have the resolution of projected slides) vs. a half decent slide projector and some well exposed chromes is an experience so many are now not enjoying. The richness of the colour, the detail almost dripping off the slides. Gorgeous stuff.

Anyway, it was lovely just to sit there and “re-walk” that part of the North Downs, really casts the mind back and it was most enjoyable. It’s much more enjoyable to look at a print or a slide projected than looking at something on a computer screen I think, much more detail and saturation (whatever you use, including digital) and this year alone I have had 4 or 5 people loose their PCs due to hard disk failure and you guessed it either no backups or very little, losing all of their photos!

They’re now backing them up thank goodness but it worries me people aren’t looking after their slides, negatives, JPEGs or RAW files as well as they should. Get prints, get photo books done (one of the amazing things we can now do easily due to digital), store those slides properly, just get hard copies and back up any scan files or pictures from your camera. It’s so so important, otherwise we all risk losing a great deal of photographic history of our time on this planet.

First things first: My Canon EOS 5 and then 3 never fell apart on any hike. But then I hadn’t walked 160 miles with either in one go, but they proved to be tough cameras. So the Leica’s first outing on a hike through Surrey and Kent in South East England for 2 weeks around my neck covering at least 130 miles up and down on the trail and 30 miles to and from pubs, accommodation and around towns would give it a gruelling challenge.

The result was the M2 holding up perfectly apart from one screw going walkabout somewhere in Rochester probably.

It had always been loose, the one on the right on the top plate, it was loose probably due to the camera shop not tightening it properly – I should get it sorted, and will, but not having my M2 for even so much as an hour is a daunting thought! Otherwise the camera kept soldiering on, come wind, rain and an awful lot of shine. The beauty of a manual camera is there is no electronics for water to foul although you wouldn’t necessarily want to drench the M2 in a downpour as I’m sure it wouldn’t do much good in the long run.

The lenses were a slightly different ball game. First the Voigtlander Ultron, held up magnificently until day 11 of 14 when I noticed the back screw thread plate was working itself free. I can forgive it as it had a lot of stress and that would work screws free to an extent, this had the effect of getting the focussing helical (?) off kilter so that at infinity it was focussing beyond infinity if that makes sense. Also the focussing was slipping with the rangefinder coupling becoming uncoupled as the lens shifted a few tenths of an inch from its usual position. I assumed this meant adjustment under warranty but was advised by Robert White it would be a 4 week turnaround time, so I have tried adjusting it myself and will run a test roll and see whether it is indeed now OK.

My ‘new’ 50mm Canon Serenar (a gem of 1950s optical design, 50mm f/1.8 and pretty flare resistant and excellent colour rendition) managed to end up in two bits The front part which contains all the optics unscrewed from the rear part which is the barrel and rear screw mount. Screwing it back together tightly solved the problem. (It hadn’t been done when I received it and I had no idea how to adjust it as it has no externally visible screws, so it took it to fall apart for me to realise how its held together!)

Overall, I shot 13 rolls of Kodachrome, 1 roll of EBX and the camera did a grand job. Leica sent a replacement screw to me for free (which was unexpected!) so the M2 is visually all 100% again. That said, I found the elastoplast I had taped over the hole made a comfortable thumb rest, might keep it on!

That said, the Leica just kept on going. Just what I expect from a camera. They have tough lives with me, but they’re like working dogs – they appreciate it that way.