On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

There is no doubt that when you walk through anywhere you see so much more than you would by any other means. When you’re on a motorcycle you can feel the landscape around you and can connect with all that is around with you, much more so than in a car. In the car everything rushes by in a blur and anything you do manage to spy is gone in a second and catching a glance could be dangerous. On the train you do get to catch glances freely but often they are gone in seconds much as they are in the car. Therefore walking by foot gives you an impression of a place, any place that is quite different to most modes of transport… That’s why when I went to London for a mere two days I walked, about twenty five miles in all.

Even though London is my country’s capital city, and I have plenty of memories recent and long ago to piece together an impression of the place, I have come away this time with a distinctly different feel for the place. Even more amazing was being a mere fifty miles or so from home and yet, it felt at times I could not be further away. Whilst Sofia Copolla’s movie Lost in Translation is not universally regarded as a great film, there is a great vacant swimming emptiness that lays at the heart of the movie, and in this silence as I was on a number of occasions with foreign languages twitching in my ears, I felt what it was to be truly lost in translation – It’s queasy, foreign and distant, vacuous and an over-exposed mindscape where the pieces don’t quite fit when you think you are ‘getting there.’

In the tiny room I stayed in over night. I developed a love affair with it close snug four walls. I felt like a foreigner in my own country in London to start with as I heard very little English spoken for nigh on a day. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing but I couldn’t have felt more lost and foreign in a city only 50 miles from my quiet, safe place by the sea in Worthing where my sanity hums peacefully. Not easy to set this up but I managed. Sorry, no face in it but I had to guess my pose. Make the most of it, I don’t often get in the frame. I’m behind it…

Well I’m back and I had a fantastic time. I’m pretty worn out but on looking at it, I walked about ten miles on Sunday around Central London and fifteen yesterday, which was actually really quite exhausting but fantastic all the same. I’m going to write about it in much greater detail this evening as there was so much that I saw and even though I probably only live fifty miles from London it’s quite a contrast.

I’ve taken about 200 photos mostly black and white, street scenes, landscapes and so forth but it was pretty exciting all the same. In all the photos are of contrasts, from Westway, Trellick Tower, Westway and Battersea, to street cleaners and market traders, Houses of Parliament, bicycles, London Underground, Big Ben, Kensington Palace, coffee shop patrons and photos from the gig with Stephanie Dosen who was, can I say – OUTSTANDING.

to be continued…

I’m off to London for a couple of days, armed with the EOS, the Olympus Trip 35 and copious rolls of Tri-X and FP4….

Currently I have a small range of computing devices, at present they run the following:

• Dell Optiplex GX240 – Windows 2000 and XP dual boot (since my Coolscan III refuses to work on Windows XP SP2 or later with NikonScan)
• IBM Thinkpad T40 - Ubuntu 7.10
• Apple PowerBook 1400c/133(!) - System 7.6.1 (This is my mean word processing machine)
• Philips Velo 1 - Windows CE 2.0

I use them all quite regularly. Even the Velo turns some heads and its now 12 years old. Don’t really travel with the 1400c, it’s just a mean word processing machine. My main machines are clearly the ThinkPad and GX240. But notice, I don’t really own a really modern PC.

Just guess what I have is holding up very well and I foresee no need for me to move over to a dual core stonker.

Pentium M 1.5GHz and Pentium 4 2.4GHz provides plenty of power for what I require. After all my main workstation at work is a Pentium 4 2.26GHz, and yes Outlook is a dog when it first opens in the morning but overall it’s still a good PC. I get a heck of a lot done on it and when it comes to being replaced I’ll probably question apart from support, why?

I’d rather use this tech until it dies. If it dies… Of course if I put Vista on any of these machines I’d be more inclined to upgrade as Vista is more demanding (as you’d imagine) — likewise Compiz and 3D desktop effects on Ubuntu also kill performance…

So I’ll soldier on with my antiques that I’m perfectly happy with After all, it’s more money saved!

I would have written this a week or more ago but with the recent illness and slowly recovering I have been slow to do anything, let along spend any time really on my blog. (Bar the Olympus Trip 35 which is by the way — proving to be a rather versatile little camera, quite odd though when one fires the shutter and here’s a ‘puny’ click when one is used to all the clack and whizz of a fancy 35mm SLR….)

So here goes, and you might just notice a trend in this…No Kodak. I’ve never needed to reach outside of the results Fujichrome provides, but maybe I should do someday…

• Fujichrome Astia 100F
  Not everyone’s cup of tea this, but on the odd occasion this is great for demure portraiture and slightly downbeat atmospheres. It’s a low saturation delicate slide film that when used right is incredibly powerful in a way that even Provia 100F doesn’t capture for me.
  ‘la vita e bella ma la mia ragazza ne piu’ – by esmus (Flickr)
  
• Fujichrome Provia 100F Low grain, excellent colour saturation and a very good general purpose slide film (in my terms.) Fine detail and very good for portraiture. Also good for landscapes when you don’t want the blown out ‘Disney’ effect that some people apply to Velvia 50/100. I’m not a big user of Provia 400F as I rarely shoot colour shots needing high speed film, that is usually down to Tri-X 400, Ilford XP2 or Delta 3200 at either 1600 or 3200.
• Fujichrome Velvia 50
  There was a time when god bless it, old Velvia RVP was RIP. Replaced by Velvia 100 and 100F. Velvia 100 is quite nice but just not quite the same and 100F is something I have not quite fallen for, as I will always reach for Provia 100F instead. However, Fuji was so inundated with demand for the old Velvia 50 that they managed to source new chemicals or something, but the main thing is its back and just as good as it always was.Velvia is a famous slide film, lush greens, rich blues, sock it to them reds and happy yellows. It does exagerate colour but in a way that I love, as its often said Velvia captures the scene how people remember a scene after a few days i.e. much more saturated than it really was.
  This slide film only works on bright sunny days. I have never been impressed by a Velvia slide shot in overcast/dull conditions. I tend to shoot this at ISO 50 close to sunrise and sunset, and ISO 50 during the rest of the day. If I use a polariser which isn’t really needed for Velvia IMHO, I even sometimes step sunset shots down to ISO 32 which can have a good effect and save shadows turning black and skies turning deep blue if not inky black themselves.

  Velvia is poor for portraiture as a rule of thumb but I’ve shot a few parades with it in Summer and the result whilst a little OTT, has been very fun. My main use for Velvia is landscapes on bright days throughout the year, and evening street shots when I want a bit of that summer zest and punch at 7pm in Brighton’s North Laine or that ilk!

  
  Red Sky at Night Panorama (2) by myself
  Canon EOS 3 + Velvia RVP 50 + 24mm Sigma Lens
• Velvia 50 to me is the polar opposite to my sheer love for black and white. I currently don’t find any difference between RVP and RVP 50, though my current fridge levels shows I only have 10 rolls of old RVP left (2 refrigerated, 8 frozen) and 1 roll of new RVP 50 (refrigerated) so… yikes. Need more

My current stock levels

They’re fairly healthy but lacking in two key areas:

1. 21 rolls of Reala Superia 100
2. 1 roll of Provia 100F (what?!)
3. 0 rolls of Astia 100F (not unusual…)
4. 0 rolls of Delta 100
5. 1 roll of XP2 (what?!)
6. 2 rolls of FP4
7. 3 rolls of Tri-X
8. 1 part used roll of Delta 3200
9. 1 roll of Velvia RVP 50
10. 10 rolls of Velvia RVP (old Velvia 50)

Bit concerned at the lack of XP2 and Provia 100F. But the level of Reala 100, Velvia 50 and Tri-X is good And for irony… a picture captured with a digital camera of this…

I’ll paste it here in a few days time, the Windows PC is refusing to acknowledge my phone is plugged in and right now I don’t have the patience to get it to see sense

Ahhh this is a year or so old now but still love it. Massive Attack have done little wrong over the years but Live With Me just seemed to be poignant to me tonight; not for any reason (no I’m not downing vodka nor is anyone I know — I hope) but the sound just worked with me tonight:

You may find this a little depressing but emotion isn’t always about expressing happiness.

If it’s not a migraine (before Christmas), a dodgy back (January) or just feeling sick as a dog (cough, sneezes, lethargy and dull headache – now) I’m typically ill before I go away and I can ill (no pun intended) afford time off work at the moment as I have so much to do. Hopefully an early night will cure much of my ills… Being single is great except for that bit where you get ill and when you need someone to just nip out and get some paracetamol or Lemsip!

Anyway aside from feeling dog rough (and looking a right dog too, blodshot eyes, grey pallour — for I am not an image of health and wellbeing…) I have acquired a new toy. Along with splashing out in some ways on the EOS 3 just after Christmas (not intentionally but shit happens) I have really come to love it. It’s one heck of a piece of kit. However it has one thing that it doesn’t do quite as well — discreet street photography.

The EOS 5 wasn’t a small camera either (not like the Rebels/three digit EOS series’) but it was I would say a quiet SLR. The EOS 3 has a noticeable (but not a terrible) mirror slap that immediately I aware of on the first frame I fired. This isn’t too much of a problem but with the size of the EOS 3 and the mirror slap, it’s not easy with a prime lens to snap a shot in the streets and carry on with people unaware the majority of the time. Sure if I had a 70-200 f/4L I would not have a problem, but I don’t — at least not yet. (Maybe by the end of the year.)

So the next best thing was a discreet good quality point and shoot which was cheap and unobtrusive with a good lens. Somehow and I cannot remember how I stumbled upon the Olympus Trip 35.

Photo Copyright mrlob (click on picture to open it in Flickr)

A solar powered camera that requires no battery, is constructed from metal, durable, accurate, automatic, small, rugged and of course can shoot a mean roll of Tri-X.  It has a 40mm f/2.8 Zuiko lens, and automatic aperture control and shutter speed between 1/40sec and 1/200sec depending on lighting conditions metered by the selenium meter. Not too bad for a camera launched in 1968. (My example was made in October 1970.)

It’s basically a good solid point and shoot with a bit of a rangefinder capability on it too.

Photo Copyright twentyhertz (click on picture to open it in Flickr)

Now I’m not for one minute thinking that this will take pictures reliably that are anywhere near as good as some of results from my SLRs (notably the EOS 5 and 3) but by all accounts it doesn’t appear to be useless either. Ken Rockwell’s site has some interesting information on the Trip 35 and how it stacked up to his EOS 5D and 17-40 f/4L lens… Should I mention at this stage the Trip cost me less than a tenner with postage?

I’m off to London on Sunday for a couple of days and I’ll have the EOS 3 and Trip 35 in tow but something tells me that the EOS 3 is going to be resigned to the night shots underneath Westway and that during the daytime the Trip will be champion… I’ve already loaded it up with one roll of Tri-X, which to me seems its natural film. That said, here’s a great photo taken with this little camera:

Zabriskie (Flickr)

Of course this is assuming I still don’t feel like a bag of shite come Sunday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7249135.stm

So some clever sod thought they would cause a huge fire just for a laugh or because they are a sad wanker with nothing better to do.

Get a fucking life and grow up. Be thankful that the fire you caused didn’t hurt anyone or that any one you love and care for deeply (even though you’re “far too ‘ard and cool” to admit that) wasn’t involved in an fire made all the more worse because you were being a dick on the sea front diverting important emergency services.

Seriously, what is fucking wrong with some people?

Oh my god. I am spending the day so far watching music videos from the 90s and totally getting in the zone. I’m going to do a post when I return from Lindfield of all the things the 90s remind me of and meant to me.

Here’s what I am watching at the moment, although I think this was at the very end of the 90s (1999?):

Tina Cousins – Killin’ Time (Radio Edit)

I will have to check, I have a lot of her 12″ singles in the front room. Ahhh all the cheesy stuff that I only like because I liked it then. The current (well read everything post-2000) pop-dance has been crap. Nostalgia eh? I just love it!

There probably is still a demo culture but not as strong as I am aware from the Commodore 64 and Amiga days. These were basically demos of great graphics, video, 3D all with music and were pretty much masterpieces that squeezed every single kilobyte into action with every clock cycle.

This one was made in 1995 and I remember watching it then on an Amiga 1200 (14MHz 68020 and 2MB RAM.) Comparatively I think the Pentium 120MHz with 8MB and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups was about top of the range with the ‘486/DX4 4MB being pretty much standard.

This reminds me heavily of Apple’s iPod adverts actually. But remember this is 1995, not 2003…

Ahh computing was so much fun then. And the Amiga was truly an awesome computer, shame Commodore was the kind of company that would have been utterly lost for what to do if they were tasked with organising a party in a brewery…  (Couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery in other words)