I've bought an Olympus OM2 yippee!

(Images via Jonathan Winstone)

Happy days! So, I finally got myself an Olympus SLR. Been trying to track down a OM2sp or an OM4. I found myself an Olympus OM2-n, and can you believe it? I didn’t even buy it off the internet. Bought it from a certain camera repair shop in London, who was actually quite helpful. I had an old OM-10 way, way back and was in love with it. And recently, bought an Olympus XA, which broke down. So instead of repairing or replacing my XA, which I will at some point, I bought an SLR. It’s been at least ten years since I’ve operated a 35mm SLR and although I have yet to see processed pictures from the camera, it’s been a blast using it. This one was a real find. I had already purchased one from the internet, which was bust, and still awaiting a refund. I also bought another from a camera shop which was also broke, but did manage to get my money back on that item. The one I have now is well minty. I also have a 35mm f2.8 Zuiko lens for it and am very looking forward to seeing the results. Even went out and bought myself a snazzy Olympus strap.

I shall post some images soon.

Snap!

Howdy. Finally got ‘round to replacing my website with a new one. I’m quite excited about this version, because it’s the first website I’ve had where I can update the images with ease. The problem I had with all my other sites is that once I have built them, it seems to take hours in Flash to replace the images. I’ve long dreamed of a site I could update, from say, the images on my Flickr account. I dream no longer. My new site takes images from a certain folder on my Flickr and imports them to my website - magnifico! My site uses a very neat little program from PictoBrowser. Give PictoBrowser certain info from your Flickr, and it returns a piece of code that you can easily drop into your web building application.

Feel free to visit my site here.

Hong Kong

(Images via Jonathan Winstone)

I do love a view from a tall building. Unfortunately, all the high-rise buildings we have in London don’t often allow access. I guess we can pretty much blame the IRA for that when they took out the top of the BT Tower in 1971. One of the most easily accessible views is now from Vertigo42, in the City. Although, you will have to splash out on a glass of Champagne for the privilege. Hong Kong has a very different landscape to London, meaning there are some 7500 skyscrapers alone, allowing a much greater chance of capturing that epic vista.

The top image was from our Hotel in Sha Tin and the bottom image was snapped from Victoria Peak.

Also, destroy all colour too.

(Image Via Jonathan Winstone)

Relating back to my previous post. My first XA, I sold to my friend Chris (pictured). It sometimes had a very tiny amount of light leak, which I loved. Me being a bit anal, decided to buy another XA, but this one was proper minty. No scratches, no dings and with box and instructions. But no light leaks. So to create my own light leaks, I just open up the back of the camera really briefly, like a micro second and voila, light leaks. Depending how quick you are, and the brightness of the ambient light, varies the effect. I’m going to try it in a dark room with a different light source, a telly maybe.

Go, mini lab!

Ruin the last frame - here's how . .

(image via Jonathan Winstone)

So, I’ve been loving my Olympus XA. I take it with me every where I go, and it’s been very successful in returning some quality images. You see, there’s been a big whole in my picture taking for a while now. For the last couple of years, I have been carrying around large format and medium format cameras, normally requiring some kind of three legged support. What this equates to is not taking photographs of my every day life. The XA has filled this gap. Family, friends, places and alike all get recorded without a moments hesitation.

What I found with the XA sometimes, is that the last frame doesn’t always wind on fully. And it’s at this point, most folk press the rewind button on the base. In pressing the rewind button, the camera enables the last frame to become fully cocked. This is when you can take another snap, albeit, a multiple exposure, like the one pictured above. And you can go all day, depressing the rewind button and snapping again.

I love that little camera!

Slacking blog duties.

Been well busy this week. Won’t bore you with the deets though. All I will say is that I have had eBay woes. Bought a really nice camera of the ‘Bay, a OM2sp Olympus, and it doesn’t work. Worse thing is, the seller refuses to give me a refund - dang! Silly old codger.

I feel an eBay dispute in my waters.

Hong Kong has semi-circular escalators.

(Image via Jonathan Winstone)

Even if you despise shopping, you can’t help but love the craziness that is the shopping malls in Hong Kong. A complete underground world solely inhabited by mall upon mall. It’s quite breathtaking at first. All well conditioned and absolutely immaculate. I mean, not one thing out of place. Even the slightly older malls from the 1980’s have been kept in tip-top condition. It’s quite refreshing compared to some of our shopping centres over in Blighty.

Anyway, this place was no exception. Plus, it had these really fascinating escalators. It took me till the plane journey home to figure out how they worked.

Times Square Mall, Hong Kong.

Going down anyone?


It's nice when your nephews like to be photographed.

(Images via Jonathan Winstone)

I got three very nice little nephews. Some of you may even have met them, and probably wouldn’t even mind vouching for them. What’s really good is they don’t mind having their picture snapped.

Just as long as I let them take my picture after.

Fancy that, children growing up knowing what film is!

Walthamstow Dog Track

(Images via Jonathan Winstone)

Walthamstow Stadium was a greyhound racing track located in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, in East London. This was one of a limited number of remaining greyhound race tracks operating in Greater London. The track closed in August 2008, despite assurances from the owners in December 2007 that no deal had been made to sell the track, and that racing would continue indefinitely.

These photographs were taken on the day of the tracks closure.

Some more of my images can be viewed here.

Fujifilm instant prints from Virgin Mobile campaign 2006.

(Image via Jonathan Winstone)

You would be forgiven for thinking that Apple along with the BBC were the first to bring you television on your mobile, but ya wrong. Here’s a piece of tech that was quickly assigned to gadget history, the Virgin Lobtser TV700 mobile, originally launched in 2006.

Being an avid techy kid when I was young, I owned such miracles pieces of gadgetry wonderment from the likes of the Sony Watchmen, the Casio TV21 and the amazing Sinclair TV80. All very workable and watchable pocket wizardry. So I was dead pleased to work on the advertisement campaign for the Lobster from Virgin. It was pretty smart too. The television signal was broad-casted on the DAB frequency, pretty rad. Practical use of the Lobster though was quite disappointing. Bearing in mind that the average DAB signal is choppy at the best of times, receiving a good picture was seldom. To enable the TV to work meant plugging in your earphones, the earphones also acting as an aerial, which also meant fuzzy reception if you moved the earphone cable too much. Coupled with the fact the the viewable picture wasn’t much bigger than a postage stamp, the actual quality of the image was often pretty poor.

Unfortunately, Virgin pulled the television DAB service just seven months after launch. It initially created quite a stir, but sadly, especially for a lover of tech, short lived. On the plus side, it still operated as a DAB radio, and of course, a very sophisticated smart phone running Windows 5 operating system.

You have to give props to Virgin, from signing The Sex Pistols to pressing compact discs at their Oxford Street branch back in the 80’s, and to maybe taking us to space, they have been pretty bloody inventive. It’s just a shame I wasn’t able to pick up Jeremy Kyle.

Out.

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Themed by: Hunson