Well, it’s been a while, sorry. I’ve had a cold in the past few weeks that hung on and on, but I seem to have finally beaten it. That’s the first cold I’ve had in years, maybe five. I don’t catch things very easily, thank goodness.

And what amazing weather we’re having. I think we’re up to around 20 days straight of daily max temps of 25degC or above, a new all time record for WA. It’s very pleasant, but the problem is, we need rain! It’s so dry that our native forests in this South West part of the state are dying for lack of rain. Even the street trees in the suburbs are dying. And when you factor in the shot-hole borer infestation that’s attacking some of the magnificent old trees in our parks, necessitating their removal, it’s tragic.

This is climate change in action, folks. It’s something I hadn’t thought about. There’s not much can be done about it. We can hardly set up reticulation sprinklers to keep the forests alive. I’m very pessimistic, I’m afraid.

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I haven’t been doing much except worrying about my cars. I had a full service done on the Honda MDX a few weeks ago and it’s running sweet as a nut, as they say. It feels great to drive. Out of my three cars (Honda, Peugeot 407 coupe, Mitsubishi Verada), if I had to choose just one to keep it would have to be the Honda. I like all three and don’t want to part with any of them, but the Japanese car takes the prize (the Mitsi Verada is technically Japanese too, but it was built in Australia).

But the Verada’s let me down again – it keeps stalling. Plus the power steering rack is leaking oil as fast as you can put it in. It’s undriveable at the moment. It’s a lovely car to drive and I miss it.

I’m not sure if I mentioned – I’ve been having work done by a mobile mechanic, Darren Jarvis, trading as Daz Auto. It’s not often you come away smiling after having work done by a tradesman, but this guy is good. (He’s a Kiwi, if that says anything.) I’m pleased with his work and I’m getting him here again on Monday. After getting the new battery installed in the Peugeot, the damn gear shift lever is stuck in Park. I’ve read all the You Tube stuff and tried the “foot on brake, ignition on”, but it doesn’t work. Nothing I try works. There seems to be a secret button somewhere but I can’t find it.

Or else being without a battery for so long has buggered up the car’s computer. I’ll get Darren to try disconnecting, then reconnecting the battery to see if that will reset the computer. Dammit, cars are so complex these days in terms of computer modules and re-learning.

Thursday 23 May: OK, he came on Monday and the Peugeot is back in action. The gear shift is now working (so he tells me, I haven’t tried it myself yet) and he took it away for further tests. But, oh my goodness, it needs a lot more work. He’s showed me pictures of carbon buildup around the cylinders and fuel injectors, and he found a broken hose (don’t know which one). He says it needs more work.

I think I’ll get a good clean, polish and detail job done and sell it.

Similarly, I told him I want to get the Verada off my hands and he seems to think that can be done fairly easily. That will be a load off my mind.

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Anyway, back to cameras. Around 2001 I had a bit od spare cash and went to Singapore to do my favourite pastime, looking at second hand cameras. Singapore is Mecca for people like me. Once, I asked the guy behind the counter why it is that Sinapore has so much second hhand gear. “It’s because there are many people here who have enough money that they buy anything new that they like, use it for a while, then sell it after only a few months or a couple of years.” That’s OK by me. It makes Singapore a gold mine for someone like me. Especially as there’s no import duty on used goods.

Anyway, I decided that I would buy (second hand) a camera I had always wanted, a Contax G2. It’s a film camera as I wasn’t interested in digital at that early stage.

It’s a German brand, with the body and electronics made by Yashica in Kyoto, Japan, and the lenses made by Zeiss, that legendary company in Germany. To me, it’s one of the most handsome cameras ever designed.

This is from a review by Ken Rockwell, a photography writer in the USA: “The Contax G2 is the world’s most advanced rangefinder camera. It is a superbly refined electronic, autofocus 35mm camera with the world’s best optics. It also offers auto exposure, auto loading, advance and rewind, and TTL metering for both flash and ambient light.”

Top view © Ken Rockwell.

Of course, I couldn’t have only the body, so I bought the 35mm f2 Planar (Zeiss’s name) and the 90mm f2.8 Sonnar. This lens is legendary for sharpness.

So that made one body, a 35mm, a 90mm and a couple of lens hoods and caps. But I couldn’t stop there and after some browsing around, I found a TLA200 flash (flash was important in film days) and a G1 body (or was it the other way around, G1 first and G2 second? Can’t remember.) So my system was looking like this:

Except with two bodies, the G1 and G2. I knew I had a very nice aluminium case, even better than this one, in brown, at home just waiting for this system.

Then I found a 28mm f2.8 Biogon for a reasonable price, so I grabbed that too. Wow, what a haul!

All this had cost a fair bit, probably around $2,000, but I reasoned that even if I grew tired of my haul, I’d be able to sell it in Perth for possibly double that. This was a well-off guy’s dream and there are some of those in Perth.

I soon discovered, in my hotel room, that the 35mm lens didn’t auto-focus on the G1. Uh oh. So I took it back to the shop where I bought it. “Oh, you need the modification”, he said. What modification? Well, once I read up on it, he was correct and he pointed me to a place in Singapore that would do it for me, for a fee. It was out in the industrial suburbs, so I took a taxi out there. No problem and it was done in about half an hour, with a green sticker in the film chamber of the G1 body denoting the mod had been done. It’s still there. It cost about $50, I think.

So wow, was I pleased. And the fact is, I’ve still got all this Contax gear, complete. I’ve never worked out how to cut the foam in my aluminium case to fit it, but it’s all there.

However, in use, I was never happy with the system. It’s “quirky” to use, shall we say. The main problem, for me, is the autofocus. It only autofocusses on a small rectangle in the centre of the viewfinder, so you have to centre that rectangle on the thing you want sharp, press and hold the AF button, then recompose and press the shutter button. I allways found this very hard to do and I got very, very few sharp images. I never mastered the technique.

More to come!