In the woods.
Impressions of the little AirBnB cottage my brother, my father and I got during our trip to the Cotswolds, England in March.
A trip to the Cotswolds
Mid-March, it was time for yet another trip: my brother, my father, and I met for our annual “men’s weekend”. We started this tradition 2 years ago. This was our 3rd meeting, and it was my brother’s job to organise the event this year. And since he’s in London, my dad and I flew over to Heathrow, where Alex picked us up with a rental car. And off we went to the Cotswolds in western England.
Arriving in Heathrow.
Alex preparing prawns for our first dinner at the cottage.
Good morning!
The main event was a hike from our little AirBnB cottage to the Broadway tower. Altogether, it was a 23 km round trip, with a afternoon tea stop in the neat and beautiful (and a little creepy, to be honest) little Chipping Campden.
Ah, forgot to advance the frame. Let’s redo this…
Lots of sheep along the way. I really like the look of this photo.
Towards Chipping Campden.
The bro during afternoon tea.
After dinner at a local pub. It wasn’t so easy to find a spot at any restaurant that week. It was “racing week”, the biggest event of the year in the area. (In this case “racing” means “horse races”.)
Cottage romantic.
Morning coffee.
Rental car.
Since we only spent two nights, it was already time to drive back towards London the next day. On the way, we decided to stop by at Blenheim Palace. But we ended up not visiting it, since the £25 entry fee each seemed a little steep to us, given we only had 2 hours or so.
Instead, we decided to visit the adjacent gardens which had an interesting (and warm!) butterfly house and a pretty good maze. We definitely enjoyed it!
Labyrinth fun:
Richard of http://lovewine.me. We had a good chat with him about wine, local spirits and old film cameras.
Random dog.
As Alex put it: Airplanes sucked into arms.
Time to fly back to D again.
Gebäckstreet Boys. Ofen Air Tour. Back For Food. Lecker!!! Lecker!!! Lecker!!!
Eat Nazis Now!
Elevator.
Back in Germany: snow happened!
Leica M-D
Leica M-D A step back to the future
Via dpreview:
German camera manufacturer Leica has announced a new M digital rangefinder that has no LCD panel. The Leica M-D (Typ 262) will be almost exactly the same as the existing M (Typ 262) but without a rear screen for reviewing images and working the menu. The company says it has produced a camera with only the ‘essentials of photography’, or ‘Das Wescentliche’, and that it will help photographers concentrate on the important elements of image making rather than getting distracted with the camera functions.
Now, this is an interesting digital camera! Seriously!
I currently really enjoy shooting film, and a huge appeal is the simplicity and enjoyment of shooting these old cameras. No screens. No menus. No chimping. Just the essential buttons and dials.
If Leica wasn’t so expensive, I’d be seriously tempted. Why can’t Fuji make such a camera?
Hello, Rolleiflex!
So, it was my birthday in March. And with a €100 voucher for Foto Leistenschneider, which Nicole gave me as a present, it was an easy choice what to spoil myself with this year: a beautiful Rolleiflex 3.5B (also called the MX-EVS).
Leistenschneider had a few used Rolleiflexes on sale and I eventually settled on the 3.5B for €270. This one has the 75mm f/3.5 Tessar lens.
I was enjoying my Lomo Lubitel TLR very much, and I knew I wanted a TLR camera with a more high quality lens and easier operation eventually. And the Rolleis are just amazing for that. Apart from a little sticky shutter button, this one seems to work flawlessly. Not at all bad for a camera that is now 60 years old.
Of course, I immediately went out and shot a test roll with it. Here are a few shots from this test run. All shot on Fuji Acros 100 film, developed in 1+50 Rodinal, and scanned with the Canon CanoScan 9000F MKII.
Ok, holding this cam still with slow shutter speeds obviously isn’t something I’ve mastered, yet. But otherwise, it’s great fun to shoot! And certainly of a lot higher quality than the plastic Lomo Lubitel.
More Rolleiflex photos to come…
Nomad!
As you might have noticed, Nicole and I recently bought a campervan. And for just more than a week, we’ve been travelling with this thing already.
We don’t have a flat anymore and are living in the camper full time now. Since we’re both self-employed/freelancers and have been working from home for the last year, we thought we could do the work from a mobile home just as well – at least in theory. In practice, time will tell, but so far it has worked out.
We’re planning to evenly split our time for work and play and dedicate approx. 50% to each on average. I guess this percentage will vary, though, depending on each of our workloads at any given time.
Our plan for the rest of this year is to travel mostly in Norway and Sweden. If you’d like to follow us, you can do so, on our reactivated German travel blog over at danielandnicole.net. There you’ll get the latest infos on our whereabouts and travel experiences etc.
And here, I’ll probably simply continue with the regular flow of not-so-recent (film) photos and other miscellaneous posts.
Exciting times!
Band-shot after our gig on Saturday.
Photo by @herrfreitag.
Hong Kong Panorama
Back in Düsseldorf together with some not-so-light travellers.
Hong Kong, January 2016.
Early morning train. Hong Kong, January 2016.