First time out with the shiny new
Baldessa camera and I’m already a huge fan. As a test roll I loaded the camera with a full '36' of
Fujicolour 200, my film of choice from the pre-digital days when it seemed to have a bit more colour than the
Kodak equivalent, I’m not sure that’s true now, or ever was to be honest.
As predicted, the camera was a total pleasure to use. Fully manual of course, so everything that's required to operate the FED, just that little bit easier. The aperture and shutter speed rings are a bit fiddly it's true, the push button to lock the two together isn’t really necessary in my view, but once these are set you’re ready to focus, shoot, and wind-on with ease. The viewfinder is big and bright, and the Rangefinder works well although the vertical images don’t quite line up so may need adjusting if that's possible.
When focussing, the front mounted wheel is just where your index finger sits naturally, ready to move down to the shutter release, and the wind-on mechanism feels so well engineered and satisfying to use you’ll be itching to take way more photos than strictly necessary. I started off taking way more photos than necessary in Leicester, in some cases re-taking shots I'd tried with the infamous 'already exposed' film. There used to be a nice modern sculpture called
The Clicker outside the
IBM Building (
below) on the city's historic
New Walk, sadly that's gone with just the example shown above by
John Atkin, which overlooks the
Midland Mainline (
left), to excite us modernists. The IBM building itself, whilst appearing totally out of place on the New Walk, is an exciting enough subject for fans of
C20 buildings and photographers alike.
The garden is always a good place for photographic subjects, albeit these 45/50mm vintage cameras are not ideal for the kind of closeup '
macro' shots that gardening magazines and websites demand. On a bright day though, a garden offers plenty in the way of colour and contrast, excellent for seeing what a lens can deliver with a decent low-grain colour film.
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| Oakham's most notable modern sculpture is a bronze of the Queen with her Corgis. I'm not a fan it must be said, much preferring this tiled relief by Martin Minshall on the wall of what is now a B&M store. |
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| Atychodracon fossil, nicknamed The Barrow Kipper, displayed at Leicester New Walk Museum. This was as much of the beast as I could frame at 45mm, but I'm pleased with the result. This and the scan below have been 'monochromed' in the edit. |
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| Class 50 Locomotive 50008 'Thunderer', long evening exposure at Leicester Rail Station |
