Bridlington Comicon

I’ve been to Comicon in Birmingham before. But I’ve never been to the one in Bridlington. Today I fixed that. It was wonderful. I took along a camera (of course) in this case the Mamiya 645. This is a medium format roll film camera that weighs a ton. It weighs even more when you add a large flash gun to it. The good news is that the folks in cosplay were very impressed with the camera. The better news is that some of the pictures came out quite well. I’m really taken with these two heroes of the rebellion.

I also rather like this shot of Gotham’s finest. The whole event was great. There were some lovely stands selling really nice stuff, along with some great artists. It’s obviously very popular, by mid afternoon the Spa Hall in Bridlington was packed. My tip, arrive a little before the start and grab a coffee and “the scone of the day” (so named because it looks like it will take you around a day to eat it). We’ll be there next year. Wonderful stuff.

Broken Mamiya

After watching a few YouTube videos about the Mamiya 645 camera I’d convinced myself that I knew enough about the camera to be able to venture onto eBay and buy a “for spares or repair” camera that came up for sale. It was a nice set of bits, including a waist level finder, a lens and a metered prism. It also included a camera body. Well, the camera arrived last week and I call it my “downstairs” camera as it looks as if it has been thrown downstairs at least once or twice. The lens works fine, but has a bit of a ding in the filter mount. The waist level finder works fine too, even though the mounting on one side has broken. The camera body is a bit of a mess though. By fiddling with it I’ve managed to lock the mechanism up completely. I’ve nothing against the seller here, nothing was sold as working. And I still think it was a great deal for the price. I’m gong to pop it back on eBay and see how much I can get for a properly broken device.