London Eye

I had a day in London at the start of September. At one point in my life I went a lot, but the last decade or two not so much. I’m older, and I can feel it! What I used to consider a buzz and exciting, I largely find tiring and a great effort these days! That said, I had a week off work approaching and nothing booked, so it was decided a city break in London, visit some old haunts and take it at leisure would be a good idea. Today’s post consists of a few images taken of the London Eye, about a 5 minute walk from the hotel!

The (main) camera I took was the Canon EOS30. I’ve mentioned before that it has become a “go to” mainly for it’s big bright viewfinder that critically, I can focus to my eyesight. My favourite lens for it is the Canon 40mm STM. It’s not an expensive lens but it’s a good performer! Mine had developed an issue. Occasionally the viewfinder would darken and the camera would refuse to fire. I brought another, to my surprise the same fault happened occasionally, so I returned the lens and assumed the fault was in the camera. Of course while off for a week and being away the camera got a lot more use than normal, and I made a discovery – there was no “fault” at all, except me.

Under the lens bayonet release is a much smaller button, one that I’d been pressing sometimes unknowingly whilst holding the camera. Turns out the EOS30 has an iris shutdown (depth of field preview) button! Non existent problem fixed!

I sorted out a bunch of film from my stack – remember I’m trying to have a “use it up” year. I took much more film than I thought I’d need, or so I thought. I ended up seeing so much, including visiting some places I’d not been before, and only brought 3 rolls home of the 19 I took with me! It was a good week of photography. Since I’ve been having a catch up with processing. I needed another bottle of fix, and that lead to another discovery..

I had a look at a couple of the usual places I order from. Having lost “Silverprint” earlier this year – that list is one shorter. I wrote about that here. It now looks like “Speedgraphic” has also gone. From a 10 minute internet trawl it looks as though the owner has decided to retire and it’s closing down. Another analogue player has left the market. Although I’m pleased for the owner to be able to retire, it still means that we are two main suppliers less in just one year!

The main film I’ve used on this trip is Ilford Delta 400. I’ve been working my way through the processing – I do two films at a time and two processes per session, in other words 4 films at a sitting. I’ve cracked open my bottle of Rodinal – so I’ll do some of my usual tests in due course. I’m not convinced that Rodinal and Ilford Delta 400 are a good match – but it’s ok.