Descriptive adjectives and ebay.

What's ebay doing to the English language?
Recently, two advertisements were posted with the following pictures. 

Extremely good condition A-1 The camera pictured on the left  (click for larger pic) was described as "Extremely good condition". I have no arguments with that, if anything it is an undersell. The owner has treasured this 30 year old camera and looked after it well.

Excellent condition A-1

In contrast, the camera pictured on the right  (click for larger pic) was described as "Excellent condition". Really? In what context can that be described as excellent condition?

Either the seller's day job is  as a real estate agent, or it is excellent as in "Excellent, it still looks like a camera after several hammer blows".

Lomography Belair X 6-12 City Slicker - First impressions.

Boxed Lomography
Belair X6-12 City Slicker

Lomography have shipped their first batch of  Belair X 6-12 Cameras. Pictures and specifications of the camera can be found at the Lomography Belair microsite.

Here are my first impressions of using the City Slicker with the 58mm wide angle lens;

• It is delivered in a nice cardboard package with the body, 2 lenses (58mm and 90mm) and matching viewfinders.
• The viewfinder is very approximate, particularly at less than 5m focus range.
• The 58mm lens is really soft at f8. As you would expect it gets a bit better at the f16 setting.
• Focus fall off from the centre is quite severe on the 6x12 format (this lens would be better with the 6x6 and perhaps 6x9 formats)
• There is a stop or two of exposure falloff from the image centre to the edges (for that lomo vignette effect)

Here are two sample images from the first roll;

Stone shed. Kodak TMax 400, Lomography x6-12, 58mm @ F8

A girl and her dog. Kodak TMax 400, Lomography x6-12, 90mm @ F8

However even with its flaws,  all in all it is a very light & fun medium format camera.

"The Edit" by Ed Wargin

I can relate to this quote from photographer Ed Wargin,

"Waiting for film to come back from the lab is the closest thing to being a kid again, kind of like waiting for Christmas so you can rip open that one special present to see what is inside..."

This quote accompanies the short video "The Edit" at the Fresh coast project blog.

Sadly, it doesn't matter how long I wait, my pictures don't look as great as those in his Fresh Coast Project.


The Edit from Ed Wargin on Vimeo.
(to view, type in "coast" for the password)