Pregled posta

Marketing

Stuck on the upgrade treadmill? Take a tip from Fray ...downgrade. Downgrading can also become a treadmill, of course, but is very much less of a strain for the simple reason that it costs next to nothing. And because it's less expensive you can afford to do more of it. Since midsummer I've bought half a dozen good quality lenses, three cameras and a set of extension tubes. I doubt that I've spent more than seventy or eighty nicker. You can imagine the cost of equivalent digital equipment. There can be a satisfying inverted snobbery or one-downmanship about it too. I have a daydream of attending one of those "workshops" that are advertised in the back pages of Mrs B's photography magazines. As the other participants, mostly stubbly-headed men in their forties, stand around in their preposterous "stealth" outfits and "pro" bags ...taking snaps is the latest hobby to be reinvented as an "extreme" activity... comparing their plastic DSLRs and trying to out-megapixel one another, I insoucantly extract from its stitched leather case a ravishing Super Ikonta, or Contax III, producing a sudden pin's-drop hush as conversation stops and all eyes turn to me. It would be rather like those old Cointreau advertisements you used to get on the telly.
Unfortunately this isn't the old 1950s Zeiss Ikon Contessa 35, which must be one of the most beautiful cameras ever made. This is its successor, called simply the Contessa. Subsequent models had letters added to the name; the lack of these dates the camera to 1960-1. The later models also had the name bitten into the top plate in simple lower case letters. This fancier squiggly writing is much nicer. I bought the camera thinking it was a rangefinder. Actually it's not. It has a simple viewfinder and one must judge the focusing distance. At least the distances are marked around the focusing ring in feet, suggesting that the camera was made for the English or American market. The eBay listing gave the selenium meter as not working, but it looks OK to me. The self-timer however isn't ...which was not mentioned. Oh well ...I suppose I've come out even. It cost me Ł15.49. Zeiss Tessar lens of course.

Harwich, Essex. Built in 1667, this is the only surviving example of a double treadmill crane in Britain. The cost was Ł392. In 1930 the crane was moved to its present site on Harwich Green.