THE READING ROOM – NEWS & THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED (WEEK 22: 28TH DEC-3RD JAN 2019)

Happy New Year. The festive season hasn’t stopped the excellent posts out there. There’s tons to recommend this week. I’m steering clear of the annual review ones (Emulsive (numerous), Kosmo Foto and Casual Photophile ones are worth a peak) . Partly ‘cos I’m doing the same myself but also because there tons of worthy posts.

Havana Farewell

AP’s Demond Boylan sadly died in his Beloved Havana on the 29th . Born in Ireland he gre up in Spain where he started working for AP. He covered events from the end of Apatheid to the invasion of Iraq. But much of his legacy is on his work taken on his beloved Cuba. US radio station WLOX picked up his sad passing on its website with several of his Cuban shots cover a historic era for that country.

Rollei above and beyond

Peter Adler does one of the most comprehensive and thourghout review I’ve ever seen. He takes the mini marvel that is the Rollei 35-s through its paces and tests it accuracy to the limit (laser distance measure !!) but without bogging you down in the technical. He also covers that age old mercury battery issue. A masterclass in the easy to read but technically done review. See more over at KosmoFoto

When Leica met Minolta

We tend to think of Leica as the hugely successful, luxury brand camera that has kept top dog slot for decades. But as this great post on Casual Photophile shows in the 1970’s things were not so rosy. They needed help or bankruptcy loomed. Stepping into the breach was Minolta and an unlikely but successful partnership was formed. This covers the SLR and rangefinder developments that it led to although not the Leica/Minolta compacts (arguably wisely)

Back to the Fujica

A New Year and a new camera review by the ever wonderful Random Camera Blog. This week’s topic is the Fujica STX-1, Fujifilm’s attempt to catch up with rivals with its own X-mount. The series would limp into the 80’s with the AX series and the STX-2 before being lost to dust of time. Shame as there’s some likeable features here

Falling back in Love

Marcus Grandon describes his falling back in love with film over at Emulsive. He hadn’t shot film since 2002. That was until he picked up a Nikon FE in second hand shop. The rest as they say is history

XA Marks the Spot

Kosmo Foto dusts down the trusty Olympus XA and takes us in a journey across Europe with it in this neat little review of a neat little rangefinder.

Best in Show

Okay then one best of 2018 list. FSC artists selected best shots from 2018. As always worth a nose

A little nagging voice

Jim Gray of Down the Road opens up about the Minolta AF-Sv, A little 80’s compact that has a neat/annoying feature – it talks to you. as Jim also discovers it isn’t that great. An honest review about a not so great.

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