sexy red Fed!

being as excited as i am now, i just had to blog about this the soonest. see, for quite some time now, i wanted to get me a rangefinder camera. i even went and joined an online forum called rangefinderfilipinas.com some years back to learn more about these cameras although i wasn't exactly an active member. (in most of the forums i am on, i am mostly a lurker anyway.) being the constantly distracted creature that i am, it's been years since then but i still haven't got around to getting one... till now.

it was several weeks ago when it just occurred to me to look in again on that sinful, tempting website called eBay, and i came upon this red Fed 2. the color caught my attention first. then, i looked closer and saw that the lens attached to it had a really cool-looking flanged focusing ring, and it wasn't black. (the lens is an Industar 26m.) i pooled some opinions from the RF group - who recently went on Facebook, hence was more accessible to me - and asked them what rangefinder was good for starters. a few guys recommended a Fed 2. perfect.

long story short, i hit the Buy It Now button and set down for the wait. the rangefinder was shipping from Ukraine which was closer to me than the US so i thought it might come in sooner, but it did not. but hey, it finally arrived yesterday! and goshdarnit!... it looked even better than the seller's photos! heck, it was love at first sight! isn't that camera just, oh so, vintage sexy? or is it just me?

a member from the RF forum, Martin, called that beautiful color oxblood red (which incidentally is a bakelite finish according to him). a girlfriend who also thinks it is lovely called color, wine... i thought it is an interesting example of how men and women...uhmm... grasp things :-)

please pardon the dust, but i got too excited.

i'm sorry but i think those knobs are just beyond cool... they're... well... hot!

it even comes with the leather case which was, well, a tad bit smelly, but i can live with it. just probably needs some airing. it's still a plus for me.

i've loaded it up with Neopan 400, a black and white film, just to test how everything works with the camera and that there are no problems with it. it also gives me good reason to try my hand again at developing film, something i have not had practice with since the photography classes i took a couple of years ago. hopefully i won't mess that up. will post on how that goes next.

here are some nice Fed 2 (and other Russian rangefinders) info links on the net:
Jay Javier's Fed and Zorki Survival Guide
Matt's Classic Cameras
Soviet and Russian Cameras
Fed 2 - The Fabulous 35mm Rangefinder Camera
Fed 2 - Penultimate Rangefinder

my one other analog passion...

... is scrapbooking! you know, the paper-photo-scissors-and-glue kind of crafting. these days, there is also digital scrapbooking but i usually sit all day in front of the computer being all digital at work, just like most everyone, and doing some personal designing with good old scissors and glue is just it for me. digital just doesn't turn me on the way traditional scrapbooking does when it comes to archiving my memories. perhaps this is because scrapbooking equates to playtime for me and digital would just feel too much like work. (that statement excludes social networking and blogging, of course :-))

crafting is something that i have always loved doing since my college days but scrapbooking is one of those things that have bitten me hard since around 2003. i have a separate blog for my scrapbooking thingamajigs, but i just thought i'd share these pages on this blog too. here's a couple of layouts about a two of my most intense analog obsessions: typewriters and vinyl records. these are 12" by 12" pages. i used the Olympia SG-1 to type the short journaling for these so they probably qualify as a typecast too :-)



they're supposed to be part of a series of 4, fountain pens and cameras are the other two, but i haven't gotten around to doing those yet.

so there... just thought you might like it. you can click on the photo to enlarge them for more detail. thanks for viewing!