Heaven

Went for a run with the local Classic Porsche Register on Sunday from Cowan on the Old Pacfic Highway,NSW to Laguna in the lower Hunter Valley. We could not have chosen a better day. There was some early morning fog for the first few kilometres but after that it was full sunshine, not too hot and beautiful driving roads with very little traffic.Heaven.
My newly serviced 2.2 T was running beautifully.A new set of plug leads seems to have fixed the random misfires which had been troubling the car for some time. Photo above shows me in the T on a bridge on the Old Pacific Highway in the early morning fog. Photo taken by Rob Scheeren of autofokus911.
I spent my time talking cars and spent very little time taking photos but I had to shoot Ernie Panaioli's Fun 356 which was looking immaculate-as always.

Leica X1 photo.

The racer

 i went to the International Festival of Speed historic motorcycle race meeting at Sydney Motor Sport Park today. This event gets bigger each year. This year they were honouring Giacomo Agostini who was there with his family and a big collection of Italian motorcycles.
The great thing about these meetings is that they are so accessible. You can wander into the pits and wander down pitlane . The historic motorcycle racing fraternity are very laid back. There is always a great atmosphere and a laudable lack of officious officials.
I made a big effort to get there early to try and catch some sparkling light for some pitlane photos. In previous years I have come away with some worthwhile pitlane shots of riders and bikes.
No such luck this year. The light was not cooperating so I did not take many photos and with two exceptions I was not at all happy with the photos I took. They were just ordinary. No point in keeping ordinary photos. So I junked them all except two -the one above which I really like-as for me it exudes the atmosphere of the event-and the shot of Agostini below.

Photos taken with the Leica Q

The Sony a7-not a good idea

I've, at last, just sold the Sony a7 camera which I acquired nearly three years ago.  At the time the Sony a7 was the "in" camera and friend Roger, whose opinion and expertise I respect, had just bought one and he was very enthusiastic about it-and as far as I know he still is.
Now over the years I've owned a few cameras and I've always bonded with them. I loved my original Leica, the Olympus OM2 and all the film Leicas-they were gorgeous. I was never so keen on the big clunky Canon EOS SLRs but they were great tools. I did handle a few Sony a7's before I took the plunge but as soon as I unpacked the camera I knew something was amiss. It just did not feel right. It felt like a piece of plastic electronics-not a camera. The haptics were all wrong. But it got worse when I came to use it. The menu system is a total nightmare as are the controls. Knobs and buttons everywhere and the knobs did not have a nice mechanical feel when used. To put it bluntly I hated it but I thought that I have it so I will persevere.
The camera came with the Sony kit zoom lens which is like most kit zooms nothing special. At the time Sony's selection of a7 lenses was pretty thin so I bought some adapters and used legacy lenses which I had in my cupboard. Using these was not much fun. All the forums and fan sites carry on about the joys of using legacy lenses but for the most part they are a pain.
It was not all bad news as I did get some good action photos and photos of my grandchildren with it.  But it was hard work. After a few months I put the a7 up on eBay but only got silly offers so it stayed on the shelf -unloved and largely unused. A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was silly leaving it there - the batteries would go off and cameras do not improve through lack of use. So this time I put it on Gumtree. There were quite a few a7's on offer on the local Gumtree and most were the higher resolution later models. It was a crowded market but in the end I took a fair offer and it has gone. Thank goodness. A lesson learnt.  I have only myself to blame. I had this gut feeling that I just wasn't going to like the camera but then I thought "look at the enthusiastic reviews- this is the way forward". I should have gone with my instinct.
Now apart from the film Hasselblad-which is another issue- I am back to being 100% Leica and it is going to stay that way going forward. You can only have one Sony a7 in your life.

The way we were

I stumbled across a few ancient strips of negatives a few days ago and I scanned them in and found a couple of intriguing photographs both of which are good reminders of what "the good old days" were really like for all those who constantly yearn for them.
The first photo below was taken by me in Bulgaria in 1971. Going to a Black Sea resort was very popular in those days for British as well as German,Dutch and Scandinavian tourists. The resorts were just fine but when you ventured inland you saw the real Bulgaria which was a hardline communist state. It was grim and this street scene is typical.  I just cannot believe reports that many Hungarians and Estonians apparently yearn for the good old communist days. Be careful what you wish for.
The second photo was also taken by me in a street market in London in the early 1960s. The photo is very evocative and conveys how grim it was in that period.
Out of curiosity I Goggled Marie's Cafe and much to my surprise find that it is still in business as a smart Thai restaurant in exactly the same location. See  Marie's Cafe . Lower Marsh St, Lambeth where the photo was taken is now an "up and coming area" and the street market is still going. Below is a photo from Google streetview of the location today. What is it about British streets and betting shops?  Many of the buildings remain the same. Little did I know when I went out on that wet and cold day all those years ago that I would be able "revisit" the location on a computer screen whilst sitting on the other side of the planet 50 years later. And some people want to go back to the good old days? Give me a break.

The smiling photographer

Because Terrigal is such an attractive location it attracts photographers. On my early morning walk I often see a photography group-usually from a camera club - with their tripods and Nikon and Canon DSLRs-everyone of them earnestly staring at glowing LCD screens in the twilight as they try and capture a totally boring scene of moving water over rocks by the rockpool at the end of the beach. Inevitably the camera club groups are nerdy types - male and female - with big Lowepro backpacks and very serious demeanours.
I have never had any interest in joining a camera club and my recent exposure to these club members in Terrigal has done nothing to change my mind. I have also experienced camera snobbery whilst talking to these groups. When I show them the little Leica X1 in my hand they can barely conceal their contempt. They almost say out loud " you can't take real photos with that toy". One actually said to me that "you can only take the sort of photos we take with a serious DSLR". I thought about this and concluded that he is probably right but not in quite the way he intended.
I believe that photography is a solitary pursuit and you cannot practice creative photography in a group. Even if I go for a bushwalk with my good photographer friend Peter I rarely ever come back with a good photograph although this maybe more down to the fact that I don't do landscape photography than being with someone.
Anyway it was a delight to meet a solitary photographer earlier in the week on my early morning walk . She is not quite a local she comes from Wyoming about 14kms away so she was dedicated to get up early. She has a great smile. I hope her photographic excursion was worthwhile.
Leica X1 photo.

Vale John Surtees

John Surtees died on 10th March at the age of 83. He was one of motor sport's greats. The only ever F1 and 500cc motorcycle world champion. He was a great engineer and a brilliant driver and rider. I was very fortunate to have seen him race in Ferraris, Hondas and Lolas. Photo above taken at, I think, Silverstone showing him looking on whilst the Honda engineers work on his car. All so different to today's F1 paddock scenes. A giant from another age.

Surf days

In the last two months I have been looking at a book of photographs- A lifetime of Looking- by the British photographer Jane Bown who died in 2014. Jane worked for the Observer newspaper and was best known for her superb portraits of celebrities but she also photographed many of the newsworthy events in the UK in the post war era. She was a master of her craft.
On the back cover of the book is a quote by her-"Some people take photographs.I find them." This really hits a chord with me. I guess that it is something I have known for many years but not always applied .
 Our long very hot summer has drawn to a close-it is not cold but it has been wet and very stormy. Yesterday I went out to nearby Avoca Beach between the showers and the storms seeking to follow Jane's axiom and look for pictures.  The strong winds had whipped up the sea and the surf was big. I came back with some good photos. Today the storms had passed but the surf is still high and at Avoca there is a big surf competition. I drew an almost total photo blank. The one  shot I did get was of one of the pro surf photographers in action on the beach. He was using an enormous Canon lens and the latest Canon pro DSLR body. He said the total kit was worth over  $25000. No point in trying to compete with that.
Here's my photo haul from the two days. I am particularly pleased with the photo of the young surfer on the rock against the big storm out at sea-above. This one just came together for a couple of seconds. It was not staged. The sun broke through right on cue, a big wave came and he turned in my direction. Eureka. Sheer luck.

All photos taken with the Leica XV

On the road again

Warren's car is on the road again-after two and a half years and a big spend. It sounds great and he seems very happy with the performance and the gearchange from the rebuilt gearbox. I hope that he does not now regret his personal customisation of the car. Top photo shows Simon of Autowerks (right) doing the handover to Warren on Friday afternoon.

The yellow car is my 2.7 which is still grounded at Autowerks with starting maladies . It was not a good week for me and my Porsches as I had to replace both batteries of the 2.2 on Monday at a cost of $360. I should not really complain as they had been in the car for just over 9 years-is this a record? The early cars have two batteries housed in boxes behind the headlamps in both wings. This setup was adopted for weight distribution reasons. Getting the batteries in and out is not a simple task. I am glad that they started to fail whilst the car was at home. The NRMA or any roadside assistance battery supplier would not carry the unusual size batteries and they certainly would not have been prepared to spend the time changing the batteries over.