Our postal auction went off without a hitch. It did not attract quite as many bids as David and I had hoped but surprisingly, the accessories were the items that received most interest. I hope that all those who participated, whether sellers or buyers, were pleased. We hope to run another auction in the near future, so start hooking out your surplus items......
As I write this, the financial markets are a ’little unsettled’ to say the least and I expect that many readers will become conscious of ‘unnecessary’ expenditure. Although we have lovely cameras at our disposal, the cost of ‘feeding’ them can become expensive. This is where digital has a big advantage, in that once the camera equipment has been purchased, the cost per image taken is zero. However, the cost of printing an image is roughly the same as for an image produced from film stock. Michael Coles has suggested a 2¼ square slide show at the meeting next month and quotes some costs in his letter. Shooting on transparency film is one way of still being able to take quality images with our much prized camera equipment but with less expense than when using negative film. I remember when I was at school (!), I used to occasionally use colour transparency film (when I was feeling extravagant) and I would send the exposed film to ‘Gratispool’ for mail order processing because they gave a free film and the slides were returned mounted. Colour print film was way above my meagre resources!
The down side of this is that exposure for transparency film is more critical but I for one, quite like the opportunity of spending a little time checking exposure and compensation before pressing the shutter release. The pleasure is in the anticipation of seeing, when the film comes back, that the images have turned out as I had planned. With digital, you can just keep pressing the shutter release, checking the image on the screen and taking another shot if the previous one is not really satisfactory; eventually one image will fit the bill. I think that this is more photography by trial and error than photography by skill and patience!
Try some transparency film, I think you will be pleasantly suprised.......
Front Cover: Paraná river promenade by night, Photo: Carlos Manuel Freaza
3 XK60 Diamond Weekend by John Wild L.R.P.S.
4 Latest news from Franke & Heidecke
8 Rolleiflex 3.5F: classic build and optics 1979 by Harry Kitchen
9 The Forgotten Portugal by Denis Camp A.R.P.S
12 Rollei creating the right image since 1921
14 On Returning to Rollei by J Raymund Livesey
16 Readers’ Photographs
18 Your Forum
19 Wanted
19 Obituary, Claus Prochnow
Back Cover: Photo by Bill Forbes
