Christmas day one of my snipes won for a new camera (because I really need a new one). I ended up getting a minty Yashica Electro 35 GSN. It’s a Japanese range-finder manufactured in 1973 or there-abouts. It sports a very, very, nice 24mm Yashinon lens, 30s-1/500 aperture priority (yes, it has an exposure meeter and sounds like this meter is very good), self timer, etc. I’ve heard from numerous places that the lens on this camera is good. very good. leica good. So I really just had to have one to see for myself. This is the last camera for a while now. Really. No more.
On a sorta related note I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We sure did. Also posted some pictures of our holiday so far.
I shot another B&W roll on my FED and just got it back. I’m rather pleased overall. I’m still not too great at guessing exposures but when I guess right they are sure nice and sharp. Posted pics here.
Earlier Mike had posted about his E-Bay addiction and insinuated that I too had a problem with E-Bay. I figured no way. I can stop anytime I want. Well after buying two Russian range-finders last month and just winning an Olympus XA2 yesterday I’ve come to the conclusion that Mike was right. I am addicted to E-Bay. I’m not sure what exactly it is but I find myself being drawn in and bidding on stuff I don’t need (yes really. six 35mm cameras is enough for any man). So far Anji has been really nice to me about my problem but it can only be so long before, as Mike put it, “the point that she snaps and stabs you with a butter knife”.
On Saturday Anji had my first roll of film from the FED3 developed and prints made and they look good. I definitely had some exposure problems but given I was just guessing they look alright. I’ll have to experiment more to see how close the shutter speeds are or maybe get around to building that device to time the speeds. In any case the only real problem is the lens coating isn’t. Any time I would of had sunlight across the lens the image looked terrible. I’m not used to seeing it look so bad as all my other lenses are fancy multi-coated ones. I’m part way through a roll of B&W right now so hopefully that’ll generate some images worth posting.
Tonight we hung out with Scott, Candice, Doug, Brandi and Tara and while we were over there I asked Scott if he had any ideas on what sort of grease might be appropriate for fixing up the lens on my FED3 (Focusing was all sticky because the 40 year old grease is turning to waxy gunk). He gave me a tube of some sort of automotive grease. When we got home Anji was tired and I wasn’t particularly so I grabbed the grease, my jewelry screw-drivers and some windex and set to work on my lens. It took me about an hour to pull it apart, strip the old gunk off, relube and reassemble but boy did it make a difference. It feels about like my nice Pentax lenses now. Unfortunately I think I see the signs of fungus on the lens. I might try removing the elements and scrubbing them but that sounds more difficult. Task for another day maybe.
Well my FED3 finally arrived here at work this afternoon. Definitely a super cool camera. Like all the other stuff I’ve ordered from Russia it came wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine (how cool is that). Anyways it comes in a very heavy duty leather case and the camera itself weighs a tonne. A quick inspection seems to show that the shutter speeds look reasonably consistent and plausible, the lens most definitely will need to be cleaned (the grease is all hardened), but aside from that it looks great. The winding action on this camera is very nice and smooth although it has rather long stroke. The shutter release is pretty quiet as long as it’s on the faster shutter speeds. Once the slower shutter-speed mechanism kicks in it is really loud. The self timer even seems to work as expected.
I think this weekend I’ll shoot a roll and just try it out and then I’ll take a stab at fixing the lens.
So last night while Anji and I were getting ready for the ENI Christmas party Anji gave Kailey a Minigo (Yogurt) to keep her occupied. I’m pretty sure Kailey didn’t eat any of it but she sure was having fun. Hard to get upset with her for making such a mess when she was being so cute 
An Exciting bit of news from our little family. It looks like our little family will increase in size by one sometime towards the end of May 2005. The official due date is May 29th, 2005 which is two years to the day from Kailey’s birthday
Partly because I like making websites and partly because my domain registry of choice was offering .info domains for $2/yr, you can find out more (and subscribe to our eNotification list) at our expecting website. Also feel free to say hi in our guestbook.
Ryan (my brother in law) arrived in town Thursday night. On Friday night Scott, Candice and Tara came over. Scott, Ryan, Tara and I spent some time in the garage playing with glass and rapid temperature changes. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as we had hoped. But in any case I took a cool picture of the jar once we were done with it.
On Sunday Ryan and Anji built gingerbread houses so I went out and spend some time working on the deck. I’m making progress. Pretty much just need to get the boards on the lower deck laid and then it’s some of the finishing stuff like railing’s and the between deck step and finishing all the screws on the surface.
