dhwe news you can use: Now is the winter of our discontent.

Does discontent mean cold?

Two blog months on, two months off, I think I can safely recalibrate from here forward and just blog when I have something to blog about.

So, to catch up, my brother got married, our family marked the unhappy first anniversary of dad's death, we had a pleasantly snowy Xmas in Minnesota, and there were also excursions nearer our homebasebasecamp to Providence, Boston, and NYC.

I was at breakfast with family over Thanksgiving and my aunt asked if my cousin or I were interested in MorFar's (Morfar=mother's father in Swedish) trusty Voigtländer camera that she had possession of. Cousin Anne politely deferred saying I would probably use it more than she ever would, so a few weeks later I received the camera in the mail. The case was clearly well traveled.

The case had done it's job, along with a little help from a beat up skylight filter, all the moving parts seemed to be in working order and still movable.

I was thankfully able to find a manual online, as the original one that came with the camera had been misplaced and was also in German. My late eighties German skills are not up to the challenge of comprehending a late fifties instruction manual, even if said manual had been present. The camera has some very unique features, and I would have been at a loss to understand them. The film advance plunger, for one.

There is no winder, but there is that silly looking antenna thingie there up on top. I shredded some film sprockets on the initial roll I attempted to load, but eventually it made sense. Still looks funny. Next to set the film speed and interpret the meter...

Once you have those numbers, you have to set one of the many rings on the lens to the corresponding number from the meter, and the lens then allows you only certain shutter speed and aperture settings appropriate for the meter reading.

All in all, it is an incredibly well made brick of a camera, and the fact that it still functions as well as it does after 50+ years of existence (at least half of that unused, I'm guessing) is testament to that. And best of all, I got some nice photos out of the two test rolls I've run through the camera so far.