6cm x 6cm

Saw a website mentioned in Amateur Photographer recently: bunnypix.co.uk. This fabulous site, which includes some prize-winning photos, contains photos taken in London and elsewhere in the 1970s. Looking at these photos is a whole tutorial in wide angle photography and makes me want to run out the door right now with my recently-bought Carl Zeiss Jena 2.8/20. But as I'm doing this during ads between sections of The West Wing, no chance of that. (Sigh. I am really going to miss The West Wing).

The photos on Bunnypix are all monochrome and were all shot on a Horizont camera - a Russian-made 35mm camera. So how's that medium format? 35mm film negative is generally 36mm wide x 24mm high. The Horizont goes a little further: 58mm wide x 24mm high. That's bigger than small format 35mm negatives!

There's more more about the Horizont here and here. And you can still buy them. These days they're called the Horizon 202. Google it. I've seen them online new for around GBP380 or around the EUR/US$500 mark. You can buy them on the Lomography site or elsewhere.

Weirdly, there's also a medium format version too. Search for a Horizon 205pc. That's pc for panoramic camera. It's not cheap, but it looks amazing. Well, it ought to be - makes the 35mm version look cheap.

But don't forget to visit Bunnypix. It's fabulous.

Two more from the harbour on the Flexaret, both from the same roll as the "Litter" photo below. Both show the same vignetting on the top corners as that one. Light leak, maybe... Hm. Might need some Holga tape on this one.

Well, I went to Prague as everyone knows by now and as ever, I ended up looking thoughtfully in camera shop windows. The full story will come later. The main thing is that I now have a second twin-lens - a Flexaret IV. There's a gallery of Flexarets on Meopta's website (the Flexaret uses Meopta lenses). More about the camera later. What gets me most at the moment is that I took it out to play in Folkestone harbour in the hope that it might even work. I guessed the exposures. And it... just... worked. I love this pic. I took it at about f4 or f5.6 - the lens itself is an f3.5, so this was close enough to wide open if it was at f4. There's very slight vignetting on this scan (shadows in the corners) - which isn't that obvious in the print. The textures of the stone and in whatever the bin is made of are very pleasant - especially on the print. For twenty pounds, it was a bargain.



Folkestone Harbour