Last day of Summer?

Last week, on my day off, I drove the short distance into Bournemouth, parked up and had a photo walk. I park near the top of a chine, and walk down to the beach. All along the seafront promenade until I reach the pier then turn around and walk back, unless I need to walk up through the gardens into the centre for something.

It was a glorious day, the sun was out, and so was my Pentax ME Super, another of those cameras I don’t use nearly enough. This was a test of sorts. I’ve found a Pentax 40mm pancake lens. It was cheap but had some dust, and the start of a bit of fungus. I have the equivalent lens for my Canon EOS set up and it’s become my favourite lens to use on it. I’ve been on the look out for one for a while for my Pentax, and this is the first I’ve come across, at a price I wanted to pay! My excitement was dented by the fungus, but the front and back element cleaned up OK, the dust won’t effect the results much if at all. The slight fungus will get worse and I’ll end up dumping it I suspect, but I may get several years out of it before then!

I developed this roll of my out-of-date Ilford FP4 movie film in D23, made a couple of high-rez scans and I can’t see any image problems. The rest I scanned as normal. I will give the lens a few “blasts of sunlight” in the hope that it will halt the fungus in it’s tracks!

I walked on just past the pier, (above) to the site that is now a crazy golf course (below) this occupies what a few years ago was an ill fated Imax theatre. In this case I was looking for a small flight of steps that led back down to the promenade. They once led up to the car park, but now seem to have gone. As a family we didn’t come to Bournemouth much, but one occasion I do remember, we were walking up said steps, as a man walking down asked my dad if he’d heard the news – Elvis had died! It was August 1977, I was 8!

Chatter: Pentax ME Super with the 40mm pancake lens. 26 year out-of-date Ilford FP4 Movie Film, developed in D23.