I noticed in Polyester today that The Bats' new album The Guilty Office is getting a local release in the next couple of weeks - I'd already ordered one from smokecds.com a month or two back, since I hadn't seen any sight of it here (it came out last year in NZ). Oh well. It's a lovely album, so listen out for it. There's a free track up on last.fm - The Orchard - and they're playing at the Northcote Social Club on August 7th.

Via The Online Photographer comes this teaser for something vaguely related to the "half-frame" Olympus Pen series that I hold rather dear to my heart - I currently have three, an EE-2, a D2 and an old EE somebody gave me recently (I'm still trying to finish a roll in this last one to find out if it works). The presumption is that this new model is related to the proof-of-concept Micro 4/3 camera that appeared at trade shows last year - as Matt points out, though, the thrill of being able to get an M-mount adapter for Micro 4/3 cameras in order to use our Leica or Voigtländer lenses is tempered somewhat(!) by the realization that the focal length gets multiplied by 2, so a lovely ultra-wide 15mm lens ends up as a rather pedestrian 30mm equivalent.

In any case, we'll find out tomorrow!

I had an idea or two to generate (and encourage further generation of) some content for the Melbourne Silver Mine blog, which had been a little too quiet so far for a group that's doing great things in Melbourne. We're starting off by interviewing various members of the group - our first is with Jacqueline van Zetten - and we have an article by Barbara Fischer coming up next.

I joined the Ektar craze and bought myself a pack of five rolls in 120 format to try out in the beloved Kiev 60. I went for a wander with Ross, who got a particularly nice shot. Mine weren't quite as impressive but even so, here's two I was happy with:

International Commie Camera Day 2009 seems to have been extended into the weekend, though I didn't manage to capitalize on the extra time - I did manage to shoot a whole roll on the main day (Friday), though.

[ see all my photos from ICCD 2009. ]

I tried developing my first roll of 120 film from the Kiev 60, but accidentally opened the whole lid of the developing tank instead of the smaller one where you pour in the developer. As might be expected, this made the film a bit unhappy. It's still drying off, but I don't think there's a whole salvageable photo like there was with last week's roll.

Instead, here's two photos I took last Wednesday with the Zeiss folder on Ilford XP2 Super, which is chromogenic film - black and white that's developed using the C41 process, normally used for colour film - hence I didn't (try to) develop it myself.

Coming next? I just picked up a bunch of expired B&W 35mm film to home-develop, so I suspect I oughta go and shoot some.

So, I've finally developed a roll of film at home.

I need, um, a lot more more practice with spooling it onto the metal reel, as you might notice - there are plenty of blotches of undeveloped areas on the roll, so it must've been touching in places. But there were a few salvageable (for some values of "salvageable") photos amongst the messed up and/or "let's just finish the damn roll" test shots.

Hopefully you won't notice (much), but I've refreshed the RSS and ATOM templates to match what's current in Movable Type land, mostly so categories/tags show up in the feeds. I've done this so things work better for Brian's hyperlocal news aggregation(s) that he's invited me to participate in. Also, I've removed feedburner from both here and the journal.

Easter's a good time for introspective walks on the quietest mornings you'll get all year - there are very few people around. I went out on friday morning while my wife slept in, starting by hopping off at Victoria Park station:

Before long, I found myself down by the river, heading toward and through the (closed) Collingwood Children's Farm:

...and towards Victoria Street, where I figured I'd be able to find somewhere open for breakfast (even on Good Friday).

[ see all photos from my Good Friday morning walk. ]

In case you hadn't noticed from my flickr stream lately, I'm completely in love with my Kiev 60 (or, perhaps, the lens on it). Using it's a rather different process to the kind of "shoot and run" stuff you can do with a 35mm (or digital) camera, but the results are frequently worth the effort of hauling it around - more often than not, so far, as shown by this roll (I've never uploaded an entire roll to flickr before).

I must say, I'm becoming quite fond of Fuji Provia film (as used in 5 of the 6 photos shown here), having picked up a few rolls of expired stuff from the Camberwell Camera Market the other week. I'm a little scared to try Velvia in this thing, I figure it might burn my eyes.

The other thing I promised I'd try this year was developing my own B&W film - I've recently acquired enough bits and bobs to try this out, and once I finish a roll of "expendable" film in my camera (I'm about 2/3 of the way there, honest) we'll see how it goes.