Birthday Ramble

Today is my birthday and we enjoyed a relaxing day in Suffolk.

I wanted a quiet day without big celebrations and today fitted the bill perfectly.

Richard and I visited RSPB Minsmere and took a steady ramble around the reserve and along Dunwich Beach.

I will admit I have not been myself for a while and this week things came to a head. I don’t normally get to this stage but had to admit my stress and anxiety which came tumbling out this week.

My photography and creative outlets are a great help in tough times. Coupled with the love and support I have from Richard, mean so much to me.

I’m feeling slightly better now and the day at Minsmere was perfect. It blew away the cobwebs.

I took the Pen F with me as we have a trip coming up and I think the Pen F will be the only camera I take with me.

I’d like to take an analogue camera but given the airport security scanner changes in the USA, I am not sure this is worth the hassle as I would have to ask the TSA staff to let me hand hold my film through the human scanner (the new scanners damage undeveloped film). We’ll see, I might change my mind.

I decided to shoot the Pen f with my black and white filter preset and not use any of the RAW files so the seaweed shot here is the JPEG straight out of camera.

I also switched off multi shot and used the manual focus ring on the 17mm lens as much as I could.

This made the photography feel much more organic and relaxed which was nice.

I also got to take out my latest purchase, a Zeiss Nettar II.

I am not sure if the camera works fully, it operates ok but who knows. It’s really back to basics. There are no mechanics. Everything is manual. Manual film advance. No viewfinder. Zone focussing etc.

I think I set it up properly and I believe I loaded it correctly but only the developing will confirm this.

I loaded it with Fomapan which I am familiar with and hoped for the best with the lighting today as the fastest shutter speed is 175!

The Nettar is tiny when packed up and you get 8 shots on each 120 film roll.

Today has been an unusually warm and sunny day for February and it was just what I wanted and needed.

The perfect way to spend my birthday.

Richard and I also managed to visit Hawkins this week as I booked tickets for Secret Cinema. That was an interesting evening!

Here’s to seeing what else my 46th year will bring.

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