The iPad continues to amaze and frustrate but having now become the local library for one of us it becomes unavailable for frequently lengthy periods of time although usually relinquished when it's so late as to be of no interest whatsoever.
Just as well it's not (yet) become an essential accoutrement of modern life. Not like a camera.
Half a century ago, pretty much to the day if I could remember that long ago, my mum and dad gave me an Olympus Pen EES, a tiny jewel of a camera. Zooms had yet to be invented but built in light meters had just made an appearance and this had one. It had a 30mm 2.8 lens with the tiniest UV filter I've ever seen fitted. It also had a red disc in the lower right hand corner of the viewfinder which alerted you to a sub optimal light reading. I learned how to overcome that. It was also a half frame camera, it took 72 shots from a 36 exposure roll of 35mm film, each frame was half a 35mm frame which meant that the natural view through the viewfinder was in portrait. Not landscape. It took me years to realise why most of my favourite photos were, or are in portrait orientation.
In recent years I've carried a digital SLR and a bag of lenses around cities, towns, coasts and countryside. I have the shoulders to prove it, too. Recently, in the heat of Rome, where you think you'll need every lens in the bag you end up returning to the hotel, dumping the bag and taking the camera with one zoom. Later you repeat the process and put on a 40/2.8 pancake lens because it is small and light.
The next day you do the same.
I have a Canon G12 which is a brilliant taker of photos for modern man or woman but I'm not modern. I need a viewfinder. I can't stand around with outstretched arms trying to see what's in a LCD screen. The G12 does have a viewfinder but it's a viewfinder in name only. It doesn't show the view that you're about to capture nor does it show any other information whatsoever.
Yesterday I was allowed to buy a modern EES. A camera without a zoom, a fixed 35mm 1:2 lens, a ring around the lens to set the aperture, a wheel on top to set the shutter speed, a viewfinder that is just unreal in its clarity and selection of camera information shown. It's like a jewel to operate and it is big enough for my hands to hold easily and, more importantly, steadily. It even has a pop up disc in the lower right hand corner of that magnificent viewfinder.
It just feels so "right" to me.
It is very light.
It has an app for the iPad.
It is very light.
It eats batteries.
It is very light.
My shoulders are so relieved because it is very light.
I may even need to read the manual.
One day.
