My City

Cape Town, South Africa

Ricoh 35-ZF
Agfa 100 + KodakBW400CM

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From my new camera. The Ricoh 35-zf, with the "ZF" standing for Zone-focusing. Pretty looking camera, but with a focusing system so cumbersome and slow, it's a lot like driving a vintage MG...in first gear...all the time! but, you wont mind. its ok. It looks nice, and works most of the time.

With a light meter so devious, it has the innate ability of making you believe it works, manipulating you, giving you false hope, only to realise it has been standing stationery for last 3 hours, leaving you to disregard the role of TMAX that you've just waisted (which ironically cost more than the camera). Then the viewfinder, that is so inaccurate there is almost no point looking through it, but, you do it anyway because of habit. Because looking through a hole calms you, making you feel less vulnerable to the world, almost disconnected, almost invisible, with reality only creeping in after the "click" (not CLANK!).

Then the focusing system. aaah, zone-focusing you piece of...which is just a pain. But I suppose it is that little bit of pain that makes it fun. Standing still, looking around dreamily, trying to figure out the distance from yourself to your subject, who will be gone in the next 2 seconds, is challenging(even more so at f2.8). Its a lot like starting all over again, and gives you a new sense of reward. The reward of figuring out something new technically and more so, patience. So after thinking about composition, subject, light, aperture, shutter speed and making an informed decision about what these should be, you now have distance to consider which teaches you something new, and that is anticipation (which holds hands with patience, but they're not quite in love, its complicated)

Anticipation = realization in advance & intuition.Basically, you have to do a lot more thinking before clicking, which is a good habit and something a DSLR wont teach. Again, I say it for myself to remember, in a similar fashion Brick Heck (the Middle) would whisper something important to himself in the hopes that it would stick to his brain..."anticipation".

Anyway...My first 2 rolls in another attempt at street photography. I almost got into 2 fights, but the camera saved me because it looks like a toy. In general, strangers don't like being photographed, but because it looks a play thing, its ok as most people like playing .