A walk on the Long Mynd

Cardingmill Valley

Cardingmill Valley

Townbrook Hollow

Cardingmill Valley

The Long Mynd

Ruins, Rectory Wood

Yesterday I went for a walk up the Longmynd with a friend (and a dog).  We started in Cardingmill Valley in Church Stretton and walked a long loop up which took us to the end of the valley, up on the moor on the top of the hill, to the highest point at Pole Bank – 516 m (1,693 ft) – and then down again via a parallel valley. Then we had jacket potatoes in the Cardingmill Valley café, which I felt we had earned (It was a very late lunch – nearly 4pm!).  We had missed the nice weather, and it was cold and grey, but warm enough once you got moving.

I didn’t measure the route beforehand, guessing about 5 miles, but it turned out to be nearly 9 miles. It would have been 7 miles, but for an unplanned detour – ie, took the wrong turning.  We took a planned detour on the return leg of the walk, through the old rectory wood. The walk took us almost exactly 4 hours.

This was, of course, a fine opportunity for photography. After long deliberation – a couple of hours, at least – I decided which of my 20-odd cameras to bring.  I took my Fuji XF1 and my new camera, a Voigtlander Bessa (1946 version, loaded with Fuji Neopan Acros 100 B&W). I won’t get the Bessa negatives back for a week, which is one reason I took the Fuji.

Advertisement

New Camera, Old camera

I finally got that new camera to replace my old broken one, my final choice made for me by Asda putting up the price of choice B by £15. So this Fuji Finepix AV150  isn’t a bad deal, a 14 mega pixel device for £30. Can’t argue with that. I can also shoot HD video with it.

I decided to give my old camera one last chance, so put the fresh batteries in it just to check. And it WORKS. So I didn’t need  a new camera anyway, just needed to get some fresh alkaline batteries (and not bloody own-brand batteries, never again). So there’s nothing wrong with it, except the lens cap is broken.

But still, I’ll be off camping with my friends this summer, so my new camera will come in handy.

A Good-looking Camera

I have decided I need a new camera. My old Fuji seems to have died after number of years of excellent service. It was ‘only’ 8megapixels, but I got loads of really good shots with it. I am most  likely camping/beaching with my friends this summer, so I’ll need one by then.

I know there’s a camera on my mobile phone¹, but a dedicated camera will be better than a mobile phone². So, I am on the lookout.

But after a couple of hours looking a review pages of just 3 cameras I am tearing my hair out trying to make sense of the technical specifications and everyone’s conflicting opinions of image quality and so on . So I think in the end my choice will come down to which is the best looking camera.

¹ My old-old Nokia N73 still works, and I have taken some brilliant shots with that. I could use it without a SIM I guess.

² Cameras are designed to be held while photos are taken, phones are designed to look sleek, which can be a problem.

Farewell, Fuji Finepix A850…

My camera is no more. It had done a pretty good job of taking photos of four five weddings, several birthdays, a Hen/Stag night, and taking moving pictures of at least half a dozen gigs. And now whatever it is that makes the lens slide out and the shutter cover open (and now just makes a pathetic clicking noise when I press the ON button) has died, and with it the camera.

I’d had it four or five years (about 50 quid from Asda), it had been camping with me a few times, and to the beach and been stood in pools of beer while my friends filmed my experiments in open-mic nights. I am a bit upset, not only that I have lost a camera that took good photos, but that I’m going to have to buy a new bloody camera.*

  

*Some of the best photos I’ve ever taken have been on my Nokia N73, which is still going. Might have to start using that.

‘Ice Cream Girl’

The Lloyd Cole fan page on Facebook suggested we – the fans – film a cover and post it. So I did.

Recorded live in Ableton Live using ADK large-diaphragm condenser mic, and filmed using my Fuji camera in ‘movie’ mode. It was done in one take, I suppose I could have got a perfect take if i had spent all morning on it, but I wasn’t that bothered.