It's been a long time coming, last summer was the first mention of it but momentum seemed to fade away. Then I was in Brisbane at the same time as a tournament and my interest was re-sparked. As usual, it took a combination of factors, mostly Steve showing interest and shouldering a lot of the burden, to get things going again.

There was a meeting, a mallet building get together, then it was ON!

Many purpose built bikes and a few daily rides showed up for the big game. Rules weren't really important to us, we just wanted to get the ball rolling and make sure we were set up for the summer, I had an absolute ball! More news to come!

Rach, Megs , Jeff and I jumped in the adventure mobile for a jaunt to the snow today. We were pretty unsure of how we'd go finding some easily accessible powder, and the weather in the morning wasn't looking promising, but within a couple of hours of leaving town snow was bouncing off the windscreen.

Took the Yashica Mat 124g up with me too.

Just goes to show how lucky we are to live in Canberra, considering after a short drive in the opposite direction I could be sitting at a pristine beach watching the waves roll in. Looking forward to heading back up with the bike when the snow starts disappearing.

Today was a happy day for me, the day I became a medium formatist!

My first ever medium format camera arrived in the mail, a Yashica Mat 124g; manufactured some time between 1970 and 1986. One of the most intriguing things about this camera is the fact that even though medium format TLRs seemed to be obsolete at the time of its appearence, it was a success. The other intriguing thing is the fact that, for a three hundred dollar camera, it will record images of the detail only a multi-thousand dollar professional SLR will. My kind of thing really.

So, armed with my new photographic smugness I will now be on a journey of discovery; firstly, discovering how to use it.......

It uses big rolls of film, you look through a massive viewfinder on the top of the camera and the image is reversed.........hmmmm.

So it's lucky my other recently purchased Yashica, the 35mm Electro 35 GS Rangefinder, is far easier to use; as it's been going everywhere with me lately.

Edit 15 Aug 2010:
Spent yesterday out and about with the 124g and can't believe this camera, mostly can't believe the dynamic range of film coupled with amount of detail captured on the medium format negs. I was using Ilford HP5 Plus 400ASA and with my limited experience didn't even stuff up a single exposure setting (waiting for a battery for the metre). Only downside is that these negs have so much info in them that it well and truly pushes me into the realm of purchasing the scanner I've been eyeing off.

Have recently put together a couple of bikes for people and had a fun time doing it.

Firstly was the Niner Jet 9 for Jeff.

Then it was Todd and his Colossi, talk about tight geometry!!

There really is nothing like seeing a happy new parent......except jealousy........

Two previous posts have described my regression into primitive photography techniques. The first being my purchase of many old cameras and the second my creative effort to avoid paying over $400 for a film scanner.

Today the region has been busy getting drowned and blown away so I decided to spend a portion of my day inside developing my film.

It all started in the dark room (read: toilet) where I spent five minutes on my knees in complete darkness, tools set out on the work bench (read: toilet seat), fumbling around trying to get two rolls of film onto reels and into the developing tank. I'd been practicing with my eyes closed so it wasn't a huge deal. The astute of you will notice that there is a camera there; the reason for this is that I forgot that the Fujica had a 24 shot film installed rather than a 36, so when it reached 24 I over exerted the wind mechanism and tore the film from the roll. My only option was to remove the film from the camera in complete darkness. It worked and only a few photos are over exposed.

Next was preparing the laboratory (read: kitchen). Deadly chemicals sorted in order of requirement and reminders written on the back of old photos (timings are the key to developing so I had to make sure everything would run smoothly). I found that the best instructions were on Fecal Face, they worked and were simple so I think I'll stick with them from now on.

In simple terms it involved - filling the tank with developer and shaking for 7mins (developing the film), emptying the tank and filling it with stop bath for a minute or so (stopping the developing process); emptying again and filling with fixer for 4 minutes (fixing the image on the film), then lastly opening the tank, rinsing the reels and film (cleaning chemicals off), and processing the film in anti static (applying a protective layer to the film).

I thought it'd be a lot more difficult than it actually was, but as long as you have everything set out and prepared it's actually quite a therapeutic activity. Once I was done I hung the film out to dry and took a creative photo with a rainy backdrop. I did the dishes as usual, only with the aim of removing deadly chemicals instead of food scraps.

Then the DIY scanner came into play again and this is what resulted.

From the Voigtlander Vito B:

And from the Fujica ST605n (and no, I haven't tried to be super artistic, the weird ones are the end result of my aforementioned accident):

I'm prepared to say I'm well and truly fixed on film photography and home development. To me it feels a little like each roll of film is a tiny time capsule, a chemical imprint of what your eye saw through the lense, to be released only through manual labour and a few dangerous chemicals. It's another past time I'll never be able to describe, much like my other afflictions: prime lenses,  singlespeeding, fixed gear bikes, manual coffee machines, ukuleles, singlemalt, Land Rovers, the fact I've never been to Ikea........maybe I'm just a bit simple.