Hi. Bessa L with 25mm Snapshot-Skopar.

Hi there! This reminds me, I once tried to find for you, unsuccessfully, an example clip of one of the Konica Minolta adds they used to run here in Japan for the Alpha D5 (I think that was the model name). They featured attractive young women who apparently had some gender specific inability to press a shutter release without moving the camera down about 2 cm during the shot. Thus they always took blurry photos, until rescued by KM's Anti Shake system. And that now reminds me of a poster I once saw in (I think) the Nikon Salon in Shinjuku, which featured an attractive young woman with something like an FM2 and a caption something like "I can do it myself" (or "I can do manual" ?) And that in turn reminds me, there is a huge (well, significant?) market / sub culture here in Japan of young women photographers. They have their own camera preferences (at least, certain slightly arcane film cameras seem cooler than others) and their own magazines. Just the other day I flicked through one that was filled with fluffy and embroidered camera straps and other accessories. Other magazines feature woman photographers almost exclusively. As someone else mentioned in relation to Flickr, I often find this work more interesting. Yet another, somewhat pervy magazine I saw featured sexed up school girl / young women animé characters touting popular current camera models. Not sure who that was aimed at. John Sypal has an interesting 2 pages on Flickr called Tokyo camera style, with maybe about five shots of what constitutes the 'young woman' camera chic. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tokyocamerastyle/ Peace and all that, Dean

Yeah, the iPhone / iPod Touch aren't quite big enough I feel. I use a PSP now on the train for watching TV, etc. In the super crammed rush hour trains books are no good, cos you can't actually turn the pages. I hold the PSP one handed and navigate with my nose! Not that this has anything to do with photography - sorry. Dean

Hi there! Just went down to the local store, in Mother's town where I'm on holiday, to buy the aforementioned Jimi Hendrix album, and while there I checked out the cookbook section. As a former chef-type person, one thing I noticed was that they seem to be more about photography than cooking. In many (most?) cases I decided the photography was more successful than I suspect the recipes would be. One book in fact seemed to consist mostly of wistful young girls glancing back over their shoulders while strolling through English garden idylls, rather than of recipes. Right, better go and listen to this new album then, seeing as it is the tenuous link for writing about cookbook photography...

Hey! I keep wondering when your next birthday is. You see, if you type "The Online Photographer" into a Google search field, you only get as far as "the onli" before Google suggests The Online Photographer as first choice, exactly one above The Online Bible (and three above The Online Candy Shop). When you follow this, one of the top hits is always "The Online Photographer Turns One." Anyway, enough rambling and happy birthday. Dean

All this reminds me of a fashion / corporate (?) photographer I read about once on the Kodak site. I forget his name and I can't seem to find him on the Kodak site now either. Anyway, I recall he said he freaks art directors out because he arrives at fashion shoots with only a Leica M and two rolls of Tri X in his pockets. He did mention however that he picks the locations and that his choices are based upon always scouting them out beforehand for the light. I also recall that I really liked his photographs. Dean

Hey! Wasn't it also Kyle Cassidy who invented the PAW, when he challenged Leica fondlers on the LUG to take at least one picture a week with their cameras? Dean