Happy birthday to this (again).

Seven years 2,438 posts 697,544 views 5,477 comments

The management and staff of Pattaya Days thanks you for your continued patronage. We are taking the day off to celebrate. There may be cake.

Comments 🔗

2015-03-23 | subroto mukerji says

Watch it ! Yul Brynner might just stop by…

2015-03-23 | genuinej says

Congratulations and thanks. Here’s to the next seven. Don’t overdo the cake.

Being an anti-social sort of guy I tend to avoid anything that could in any way be described as a club. The Pattaya Expats Club for example; wouldn’t get me there in a thousand years. It could of course be full of interesting and stimulating people and nothing at all like my perception, which is based on no evidence, that it is full of overweight Americans braying on about the myriad failings of Thailand and the Thais. As my grandmother used to say; fuck that for a game of soldiers.

Let’s have a dispute about it.

Once you dip even a casual toe into the arcane world of Leica, you realise that apart from producing some of the world’s most expensive cameras, they have also manufactured shitloads of accessories over the years. Almost all of these are given five character names, a standard that was set when “Leitz” was mashed up with “camera” to produce LEICA.

Feeble camera history geek that I am, I found all this to be fascinating and have delved lightly into the subject, and deeply into the requirement for one particular accessory. My Leica IIIC is in factory fresh condition having had a CLA; the only weak point being a feeble rangefinder image. This could be resolved by replacing the beam splitter in the rangefinder unit; but Leica don’t make them any more (their parts service for sixty year old products is a little limited); and even if I could find one it would mean sending my camera overseas for an expensive repair.

Fortunately, there is a much cheaper alternative; place an orange filter over one of the viewfinders to accentuate the difference between the two images. Of course Leica had an accessory that carried out this function, in fact it had two. For the earlier cameras there was the ORAKO (orange Kolor?) filter, and for my IIIC and later cameras which have a bigger viewfinder window there was the OKARO (fuck knows). They both looked similar and seemed to come in a variety of slightly different designs, so I had to rely on the expertise of the seller to ensure I purchased the right model.

So I went onto eBay and bought an OKARO. After a couple of weeks it arrived and with my little face shiny with anticipation I tore open the package and installed the filter on my camera. Except I didn’t, because it was too small. It perched neatly on top of the viewfinder window such that I could use it if I lay on my back; but it was not suitable for any other positions.

She who must be obeyed’s latest hobby is making jewelry. Little packets of stones and fittings arrive daily from all over the world (actually, China) and she spends many happy hours creating bracelets which I universally admire; because that is what husbands do.

This morning her collection of worthless semi-precious precious stones were laid out in the garden under the sun. I had to ask why.

Been a bit quiet over the past week, because I have been busy. Some time has been spent firing off abusive emails at courier companies who have spectacularly failed to process a shipment through Bangkok airport; more on that later. But most effort has been expended on that most noble of human pursuits, computer gaming.

Two culprits; least time consuming first, but only because I only discovered it yesterday.

Besiege is a physics-based game where you are given a a wide assortment of components and have to construct machines to blow up buildings and kill things. The things include troops and sheep; that latter mentioned as a game highlight in the publicity material as “combustible livestock”.

A full frame digital camera is the aspiration of many photographers, but I expect most do not know the history of “full frame” which can be traced back to the work of a very clever German chap called Oskar Barnack.

“Full frame” refers to the size of the sensor which matches the size of 35mm film. As the world moved to digital photography, it made sense for camera manufacturers to offer models withe same size sensor as the film in their increasingly obsolete cameras, so they could continue to flog the same lenses on the new models. So the full frame digital has its history in 35mm, which in turn is the bastard love child of cine film.

There were various sizes of cine film developed in the early days of the industry; but it was the 35mm size which came to dominate. The film stock was produced by George Eastman of Kodak fame and William Dickson, working for Thomas Edison, developed the cine cameras. Such was the success of 35mm cine film, there was soon miles of the stuff lying around just waiting for some bright spark to think up another use for it. So it didn’t take too long for people to start building stills cameras based around the format. Although patents were issued as early as 1905, it wasn’t until 1913 that the first commercially produced 35mm camera became available, the Tourist Multiple:

Not everyone wanted a suitcase with a lens on it and it sold less than 100 units. Plus, it only shot half frame images, and the world would have to wait another year for the first ever full frame camera, the Simplex:

About 27 of these were produced of which six still exist and if you have one you could sell it and buy a house.

Around the same time, Oskar Barnack, working for Leitz produced his first attempt at a 35mm camera, the UR-Leica:

Unlike previous 35mm cameras, it was small and actually looked like it had been manufactured rather than thrown together in a shed in the dark using drift wood. Unfortunately, Barnack’s promising start was put on hold while lots of people had a war, but then in 1921-23 he produced the 0 Series prototypes:

Between 25 and 31 of these were produced of which 12 survive. The one above was sold in 2012 for 2.16 million Euros, making it the most expensive camera ever sold. And it doesn’t even have a selfie feature…

Finally, in 1925, came the world’s first mass production 35mm camera, the Leica I (or Leica A):

Ninety years on, it’s easy not to appreciate just how advanced this camera was for its time. Gone were the rather bizarre operating procedures of the Leica prototype and other cameras. With the Leica I, you wound on the film, set the shutter speed and aperture, squinted through the little viewfinder and pressed the gorgeous little shutter button. Just what you would do today; only slower. The camera was constructed in black-painted brass with nickel fittings and Oskar no doubt thought to himself “in ninety years time the paint will be rubbing off to show the brass and this will look fucking cool”; except he would think it in German.

Stuck on the front of this mini-masterpiece was a lens designed by Max Berek who also worked at Leitz and it set the standard for the quality of Leica lenses that continues today. The combined skills of Barack and Berek resulted in a small camera that could take wonderful photos; just what the world was waiting for.

The Leica I sold well and turned Leitz into a serious camera manufacturer that dominated news, street and reportage photography for many years. It also established the 35mm format as the standard for photography for the future.

So I decided I had to add one to the Spike museum:

I have a love/hate relationship with the Thai Visa website. It can be a useful source of answers to questions about everyday life in Thailand; and the photography area can be quite fun. The downside is the preponderance of whining, racist farangs who populate most of the site, and the aggressive levels of moderation which become evident at times.

Worst of all is the obscene amount of advertising which dominates every visit. I appreciate that these sites need to earn money to survive, or in this case prosper, but Thai Visa goes way over the top.