Month: Jun 2010

Freya Stark.

Freya Stark – Passionate Nomad by Jane Fletcher Geniesse.

 

Freya Stark – now she was a lady we do not see much of these days, of Polish/German English descent. Made Dame of the British Empire in 1972.

To quote The New York Times –

Dame Freya’s books about the Middle East and nearby countries were called lucid, spontaneous and elegant and were lauded for imparting an inspired sense of both history and people. The consensus of reviewers was that she wrote with spirit, authority and humour and that she was a consummate traveller because of her fearlessness, candour, charm, idealism and streak of naïveté.

And to quote her –

“One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one’s own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism”   – Freya Stark

Weston Euro-Master light meter.

Meters

I have this thing for old well-engineered equipment that is not meant to fail six months after the warranty runs out. Hence the Nikon F2, F4 and Bronica S2a cameras.

This includes my light meters, the Pentax digital spotmeter and a really nice Weston Euro-master.

The Weston Euro-master was made until 1984 I think, it has a look and feel that denotes quality and can be found for very little money on the used market.

Have a look at this link that opens a site dedicated to the meter: westonmaster

The advantage of my own darkroom.

Another from Shams – I love that place….

I spent several years working on Jebel Shams and had a great time; it is one of the most spectacularly scenic places in Oman, especially on the very top!….

The same image on Kodak Panalure paper – sadly no more!

Kodak Panalure was an example of a panchromatic black-and-white paper which was discontinued in 2005; it gave the advantage of being able to print colour materials in nearly ‘true’ black and white. The problem with using conventional B&W paper or converting digital colour images into B&W is that the tonal range gets changed; it is very hard to reproduce what would be obtained from true B&W film. A little like Mp3 files verses true analogue vinyl recordings. (Sorry that is another subject altogether)

Some of the films I use.

Ilford HP5 plus – a good all round 400 ISO film that is quite forgiving when it comes to exposure latitude.

Fuji Neopan 400 – a very nice film that prints well, but rather more critical with exposure.

Kodak T-Max 400 – this film needs very critical exposure control but is excellent if personal film speed is worked out first. (More about that later).