Photographica 18th May 2008 - UK

[Bob F.]

I was at Waterloo yesterday and made a point of checking the parking meters. As with most they are free Sundays and bank holidays. I can't say 100% for sure in Victoria which is in a different borough (Westminster) but I think that is the general situation with London parking meters. I do know that the Tate is in Westminster and parking meters are free around there on Sundays.

[little green acres]

I'm new but wanted to bump this up for the weekend.
Photographica is this coming Sunday, 18 May.
I'll try to insert a link to the website, here
Apologies if that didn't work, it is also earlier in this thread.

[Wishy]

My bags are packed, I'll hopefully get there at 10, M1 permitting!

Does anybody want to meet up for a stroll around london in the afternoon? (Weather: cloudy)

[Wishy]

Well, Not a huge haul for me. (One of the other Exakta collects snaffled a huge tray of cameras before I spotted it - Doh!)

Bought a Kodak Beau Brownie (Brown) (Loads of box cameras and folders to choose from through) for £15 (Plenty of cheaper box cameras around, but for the sake of a tenner i generally go for something a little better looking)
An ensign ful-vue (£8, slightly iffy shutter)
An Exakta RTL 1000 (Prism) with Oreston lens (£10, wanted it for the lens - the RTL is a horrible fake exakta)
Got myself 10 rolls of assorted horendously expired slide film for a tenner - XPro Fodder! and Ten rolls of lucky 100 in 120 for a tenner.

Not a huge haul for me. But I kept cash in my pocket and spent the money on a cosemtically good (IE Broken!) Kine Exakta on ebay (Yay ) Ummed and Arred over a Minolta SRT101 with a 1.4 and a Penticon Six with a Biometer and Flektogon, but couldn't justify £60 and £180 respectively to myself.

Worthwhile going, i spent about 4 hours in there, but honestly i think there was just too much to look through - i barely did any bargin box digging! (Although I have learnt to look at how cheap the cheapest camera on the table is, if its a fiver or a tenner, you know that the bargain box is going to have a significant quality of ****)
Traffic was dead easy on the way in. I then went to belfron tower (MMM Grungy Brutalist buildings) and back to the hotel, which was an absolutely mare. But hey, a car with a working engine that doesn't cut out on idle made the job a lot easier! Wish I'd done more in London, but i were fed up with the parking and didn't really fancy leaving the shiney new car in east london and getting the tube in!

Has anybody got any suggestions for places to get to from Chertsey for a bit of early evening photography?

[delphine]

I don't know the area of Chertsey, but hopefully somebody can help you out with a couple of recommendations.

I went to the exhibition too... got a cool signal mechanical self timer with two red bits looking like mickey mouse ears coming out as the time lapses. It has its own mini leather case and is coming in as a replacement. I bought two boxes of Agfa Brovira paper Gr 2 (any processing recommendations welcome), and two glass negatives which I am hoping to contact print.
There was a beautiful Pentax 6x9 SLR, built like a tank but wonderful... amazing click... I wish I had walked away with it. Voices of reason spoke out very loud.
I fell for a small folding retinette, so cute, there again, very sexy click ... but the seller was not ready to lower the price. But did I need a 35mm folder?

Some of the stalls were better than others... some of them displaying a lot of rubbish. But still, a nice stroll and a good day out.

[Akki14]

I didn't get much either. I wanted a tripod but they only had stupidly huge and heavy video tripods or silly flimsy 35mms and nothing inbetween really. All I got was a random large format lens which I've estimated to be about 200m focal length, still have to try it out... a flash for my sx-70 (eh, might as well use up the stockpile of film I bought it) and a 6x6 negative carrier for my enlarger which will be nicer than the "universal" carrier I have for 120 stuff. This should give true 6x6 format and no glass to dust/dirty up either (yay). I need another camera like I need a hole in my head so there was less "draw" to the whole show for me this year.

[Brian Jeffery]

got a cool signal mechanical self timer with two red bits looking like mickey mouse ears coming out as the time lapses.

So, you got one then. I'm glad I didn't purchase the last one in the place

Photographica definately seemed smaller this year, I don't know how much longer it's going to last, especially in a venue of this size

Ha, I did manage to try a Dyson Airblade though: what a hand dryer.


Brian

[Wishy]

Photographica definately seemed smaller this year, I don't know how much longer it's going to last, especially in a venue of this size

They mentioned next year they will be moving into a smaller hall.