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Ikoflex II (851/16)

The Ikoflex II (851/16) medium format TLR from the front

Well, whilst I am in the path of retracting from virtual tech, I have to say that manual tech I am still very much interested in, with the Zeiss Ikoflex II (851/16) being case in point.

Having initially bought an Olympus AZ-200 Super Zoom for my first foray into carryable film cameras ( I actually started at the deep end with an Large Format Sinar Norma 5×7), I soon lusted after larger again, as if this was something important. It hurt to think that I was taking pictures that could have been larger. Thus, I began medium format research. I knew from large format that handheld should be kind of possible with medium format, but my funds were limited. I eventually settled on TLRs, which combined portability with decent but fixed lenses. Rolleiflex are of course the kings here, but they were way out of my budget. However, a little bit of research led me on to the Zeiss Ikoflex. Now, these come in a variety of forms. I opted for the 1936/37 Ikoflex II. The reason for this is I wanted a pre war model as potentially the parts used may have been more durable. Whether this is the case, I am unsure, but it is still working well after a year and a half. 

Appearances for this model are nothing short of spectacular, with a deco design that includes an aesthetically wonderful focus lever. It really is quite special to take out and about, and gain curious glances, if that is what you are after.

More importantly (hopefully), how does it use? Well, having not used any other TLR’s so far, it’s hard to make comparisons, but these are my feelings. Shutter and aperture dials work fine, as expected, with a max shutter speed of 500 (not had to use this yet). Aperture on the lens goes from 3.5 to 22, more than reasonable. 

The lens is a Tessar. My impressions are from it that it is very nice, if you are after the look it gives, which I am. It is not the sharpest, but I’m really not after that. Colours render nice. However, please keep in mind that I am not a “technical” photographer. I prefer “feel” and “looks” to pixel peeping, which is one of the reasons I moved to film in the first place.

Now, onto the not so good. The focussing lever, which I love from an aesthetic point of view, would really be better served with a focussing dial for faster, more accurate focussing. Perhaps I still need to practice more, but I find focussing of close subjects hard.

Secondly, to fire the shutter, there is another lever, rather than a button. I find that this makes the shooting process a little more intense, and I don’t dare shoot anything lower than 1/60. So that means I’m almost always walking round with Portra 800.

Other issues? Well it’s manual wind. This means you can shoot double exposures if you want, and also means you accidentally shoot double exposures when you don’t want. Eek. Only happened once so far, but disappointing not the less. Also, the lack of an auto wind after each frame means that there is sometimes a little overlap between frames. Also annoying, but also one of those quirks that almost makes you smile, particularly if you hate how easy it is to attain a picture through digital.

Getting your film aligned is a little heart stopping on the first roll. You need to use the red circle underneath the camera, and wind till you reach the first frame. You need good light for this, as it is hard to see. I actually missed my first frame on my first roll, as I skipped past Portra’s 800’s one digit, which kind of looks just like a line. But this is less the cameras fault.

So with these attributes in mind, how has my shooting developed? Well, for landscapes, the camera is brilliant. The square format opens up a whole new way of looking at the world, and the results with the Tessar are dreamy. But people shots are a lot harder. Firstly, with no built in light meter, you need to use an exterior one. I’ve just been using the Android app, Lightmeter, which provides a close-ish match with the camera, even if the focal length is a little different. This immediately slows things down. Then I have to manually set aperture and shutter based on one of the pairs the light meter app gives me (meaning no mental arithmetic – I highly recommend this app). Then I have to use the dreaded focussing lever whilst looking through a mirror that is supposedly one of the brightest as far as TLRs go (I dread to think of using something dimmer). Finally, I cock the shutter, and then slowly pull down the shutter release lever. I can say I have some very nice people results, but I can also quite categorically state that this camera is not for the sport or candid shooter. Due to this, people shots have gradually made way for a lot more landscape shots, as the frustrations of keeping impatient people in place has taken its toll.

Finally, with regards to the camera itself, it is bulky, and slightly heavy, meaning that although portable, I don’t take it everywhere. There is also the element of fear. What if I lose my impeccably sourced little wonder? What should I take when I am just going round the corner? How many times do I still wish I had taken my camera? Well, it’s quite a lot, which tells me that I need to look smaller again.

Where does this leave me? Well, I feel I now need to support my Ikoflex II in some way, with something tiny, that won’t weigh much. Something I can really put in a pocket. That will be the next chapter.

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Freedom comes with work and belief in God

Work. Nobody likes it. Sometimes we classify it as doing what we love, but for most people, work is doing what we don’t want to do. However, there is something deeper at stake here. Not only does work carry with it value – both to ourselves and others – the removal of it, sometimes through “technological innovation”, is often the path to both our manipulation and the fragmentation of society.

Firstly, lets be extremely clear. Working is still a formality in the lives of most. We need money; rentiers need labour. We hope that within this socio-economic relationship that people are being treated fairly. But what of our “free-time”; our “relax time”? It is here that a war of sorts is being waged. After a hard day’s work, should we not have available to us a time for relaxing? Certainly, rest is important. God himself rested and designated a whole day for us to do so too. Rest, and family and friends time. A period where we can strengthen our relationships with others, grow spiritually, slow life down. Except, that’s not happening, is it? Instead we are locked into screens and virtual communities, while our local communities flounder. We are becoming strangers to each other. Relationships are not being strengthened.

What has happened is that our relax time has been hijacked in a fashion. The issue is that even in our relax time, we should be working on our relationships, and perhaps working to improve ourselves spiritually through activities like book reading. This should in fact be pleasurable, and not like work at all. However, in the modern day, a plethora of distractions assail us, such as access to mindless, continuous social media reels. These other activities seem like less work, coming with plenty of small dopamine releases, which bring with them addictive behaviour. What is happening is a rewiring of our brains. We are being taught to seek the path of least resistance, taught to seek shallow goals, particularly through social media’s combination of bitesize information, and infinite content (think doom scrolling). This rewiring also has the effect of increasing perceived labour costs for other activities, such as socialising and reading, activities that in the past would have been viewed as pleasure, but are now deemed “work”. Yet, if we can avoid the social media bitesize dopamine addiction process, if we can leave it for good, we will find that reading a book, and strengthening a relationship becomes easier with practice. We need to exit from a process that is dumbing down our mental faculties, creating addiction to the irrelevant, and destroying our relationships. How can we begin to find God if we cannot even find each other?

So, certainly if you are reading this, then perhaps you have made a decision to begin to claw back your independence and free thought. Perhaps you will exit from social media, perhaps even the internet at large. But how do we help others to also make the exit? Everything is being transitioned to the online space. Our phones are starting to become indispensable to our infrastructure, as well as our social interactions. The people are online. They are not there spiritually in physical communities any more. How can we begin to transition away from bringing technology, and temptation, with us everywhere? How can we convince others to do the same?

In freeing ourselves, we also need to be careful to not create a war. Those individuals making the choice to target our dopamine structures are themselves at the behest of internal conflicting forces as well. Their dopamine also needs balance; needs direction. We must also remember that even an article is written in such a fashion to keep your attention through dopamine, and rhythm based structures,capturing not only your imagination, but also your physiological processes. This body-spirit axis works together as long as we are directing it in the right fashion.

Well, what is this direction? St. Mary’s Press has released a document of ethics in business which is illuminating, revolving around Catholic Social Teaching. In implementing business practice, we must keep at the forefront of our minds the wellbeing of the other. When we think on this, we can begin to see all of the irrelevant and detrimental industries we have around us. Spiritual growth of the individual and their communities should be paramount. People need to be given the opportunity to grow, and hopefully this will naturally lead to God, and also peace in their lives.

But this will take work at an individual level – we need to break the addiction. Then at a community level, we need to rebuild. Let’s remember and remind ourselves how to work effectively again, and reclaim our relax time.

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The New Newspeak

A man with brain exposed stands chained

As we begin to enter the new age of Artificial Intelligence, we can perhaps make a few observations:

  • Artificial Intelligence is incredibly useful
  • Artificial General Intelligence, where the AI can match or better any human output, is a long way off.
  • People may not need AGI to manipulate a populace.

I was reading an AI discussion on a prominent tech forum recently, and came across the following quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune:

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

Firstly, I was taken aback at how far ahead of its time that quote was. Secondly, I wanted to analyse why men turned their thinking over to machines in the first place.

Why are we using AI (which is a different question to why create AI)? 

I think that what is happening here is something of a vicious cycle, whereby our brains are locked into a diminishing process.

Firstly, human beings, by and large, have an aversion to performing tasks that they do not want to do. Human history, then, has been full of inventions to automate the mundane. But it has also been full of inventions to automate the inefficient. Here’s where the lines start to blur, though. In the modern world, are we beginning to confuse the two?

It is mundane to repeat a thoughtless task when an automated solution is available, unless there is something in the outcome that you seek (eg. the gym). However, I believe a mistake in the current age is that, as consumers, we are grouping into the mundane some tasks that have outcomes that we should be seeking. For instance, I could spew out this blog post a lot faster if I used AI to prompt me on topics to use, style to write, well, lets just even say write the article itself. But in that, something human is lost. We lose authentic reflection on reality. Not only may we miss something that is useful to others, we also miss individual human progress in the contemplation of one’s own and others’ existence. I would say, the path to God. If we can’t reflect on our own existence, and that of others, then contemplation of the higher spiritual topics is also neglected, being replaced by rampant consumerism.

Writing a blog is just one example of a creative output that we are relegating to the mundane. There are surely many others. 

But why are we doing this? Here’s where things begin to get tricky. It’s not just an aversion to work, but is also reflected in how we are grouping and organising data sources, as well as how we are forming/disbanding groups in the real, physical world.

Firstly, the data sources. Globalisation, spurred on by the internet, and particularly the centralisation within the internet (think social media) is resulting in a mass saturation of content. This results in competition for time, which leads to more and more sensationalist content as all the providers compete with each other. What is potentially happening physically is a rewiring of our brains, as it adapts to consuming what we can call bitty information. This consumption of bite-sized information over time also increases the perceived labour cost to reading a whole article. It also prevents us from finishing the whole article, since we are already seeking our next dopamine firing sensationalist headline.  It also gives the illusion of knowledge, as we have all consumed a great many headlines by the end of our day, so much so, that we feel we can confidently categorise our fellow human beings into this camp or that camp, when really we are more or less all unknowledgeable idiots now. Furthermore, I would say this allows for some modern perspectives to form which haven’t undergone the rigour that perspectives might have had in the past, where people had more time to consider things, had more time and inclination to investigate and attain knowledge from their local environment to see if these claims were verified or useful. In fact, people’s local environments are becoming their screens, with the centralised information they consume completely abstracted from their local environment, whilst  at the same time also forming it a few steps down the line.  This is very dangerous, as it means that ideas can be implanted more easily, bringing us into an Orwellian state if malevolent actors decide to get involved. It is something similar to Newspeak, but instead of reducing the language in order to reduce expression, it is reducing the capacity of the brain to be able to think at depth, which in the end affects our ability to think critically and also express ourselves.

These global, centralised, social media outlets then, are not just rewiring our minds, but are also rewiring the local environments.

And so, going back to the original point, we don’t even need AGI to control a populace (to its detriment), we just need The New Newspeak, which rewires our brain into consuming bitty information, and normal AI, the tool which prompts the brain into classifying into mundane, those works that were previously seen as gratifying, both for the human populace, and for an individual’s personal development.

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MyPhotobook Retro Prints

A collection of polaroid-style images from myphotobook.ch

As a photographer who is trying to utilize physical media (working against the rise of AI, and the saturation of images on the internet due to globalisation), photographic prints are very important. But what I have found in the past is that framed pictures become boring very fast. Looking at the same picture everyday soon diminishes its value in the eye of the beholder, which is why I have become interested in the smaller print format, which I can chop and change frequently.  With this in mind, I recently ordered and received some retro prints from MyPhotobook CH, as I was looking for something similar to the Polaroid look (mainly the format with white border). I expected something like a white bordered print with the square photo, and some writing underneath. What I actually received far surpassed my expectations.

Upon opening the prints, I was immediately greeted by a wonderful sheen to the photos. I next noticed the back to the photos, which with the black square and numbering, certainly looked like some form of instant film. Also, there are faint rivulets underneath the photo. Quite frankly, with the level of detail, I am wondering whether this is instant film. Either way, the price for something as elaborate as this is very, very good.

Next, on to the images themselves. They are certainly impactful to the eye, but I wonder if they are a little too saturated. I believe my monitor is calibrated, so for future prints I’ll have to desaturate my files ever so slightly, but this is really a minor quibble – the prints are great. I wonder whether the increased saturation is part of a process to replicate the Polaroid look, or, if they are instant film, then this is just a result of the formula on the photo paper.

I’ll certainly use this lab again if they are still offering the retro prints. That’s unless I buy myself a Polaroid Lab for personal printing.

Here are the prints in their easy-to-swap photo-holders.

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Community T-Shirt Project

A picture of a neon architectural structure with the words: INCOMING new community t-shirt project

Hello to all Neo-luddites and Tech Enthusiasts. I am here to bring you a new Community T-Shirt Project. Perhaps you feel like I shouldn’t be grouping you together, but it is a strange world we now find ourselves in. Grounded quite literally in the physical, but with the virtual world at our fingertips, what are we to make of reality and existence? Artificial Intelligence has almost (or perhaps already has) reached a point where we are unable to separate fact from fiction; reality and the imagination. We are presented with a dichotomy by those in both camps. For physical or virtual. But is this not missing the point? We have always travelled alongside technology throughout history. Big changes have come and gone, like industrialisation and manufacturing. How, then, are we to weather this massive change? We have global internet communication at our fingertips, and now the powers of virtual production are just a sentence away with AI. The ability to express ourselves has never been greater.

This, though, comes with a cost. Reality and truth are now at stake. Consumption of information through the internet comes with the peril of disinformation and manufactured reality. As our virtual worlds increase, and brain interface chips come to market, there is a real possibility that people will lose their grip on both physical reality, and also truth. The virtual world is morphing into one of imagination, whilst the physical world, and the people within it, remain our only route to the real.

Therefore, we must fashion a path with both virtual and physical either side of each other, balancing these seemingly competing worlds.

Yet already, the physical world, and people, are being neglected. We are holed up in our houses and apartments, glued to screens. When we venture outside, we are looking down into our phones, or taking selfies. We are forgetting how to interact with each other, make relationships, form physical groups, and have physical meetups. Our mental health is suffering, along with our physical health. 

So what can we do about this? 

There needs to be a rebalance in our lives between the physical and virtual. The virtual should be confined to the status of tool, rather than a mode of existence. Let’s begin to celebrate the physical.

I will soon release details of a Community T-Shirt Project that is just one way we can begin to reconnect with the physical, whilst communicating and interacting with others.

Stay tuned for more information, and join our mailing list below for more info.

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The New Real of the Unreal

A spherical picture of the earth written in code

As you may have gathered from previous posts, I am in the process of semi-rejecting The New Real of the Unreal. Artificial intelligence has arrived, and if we are not careful, then we stand to lose much, perhaps even our sanity.

For what is sanity apart from a firm connection to what is real? What is “real”, but surely that which is firmly believed to be the truth, firmly believed, that is, across the shared collective.

Of course, we can argue that our relationship with “truth” has always been fairly circumspect. Since the printing press, our “shared reality” has been a pushed reality that reflects the thoughts and observations (potentially) of a relatively small proportion of the population. Without adequate safeguards in place, if they are indeed possible, the idea of “truth” can be warped.

Which is why locality is so important. Can we really experience, or believe, truth without verification? If something is local, eg. a newspaper, then we can verify the stories with the environment to an extent. We can talk to people, we can visit localities.

And so what we find is that truth itself doesn’t travel long distances well. In fact, we are taught this from a young age through the game (rather inappropriately named) “Chinese Whispers”. Of course, not many consider the massive implications of this game, what this itself means about reality. And this is just in the physical realm. What are the implications for the digital realm?

Concentrating a little more on the physical, we could be ignorant individuals, and focus our efforts entirely within a very local sphere, but the issue with this is that we live within an interconnected world, where events in far off places can affect our little localities. We need trade, we need security, we need to look after those who are less fortunate. With this in mind, there needs to be a trust handover to those who are in control. To those who control the information.

But can we indeed trust those in control of the information? For that, we need to analyse what is valuable to those in control. This is perhaps too broad a topic to consider in this post. We could say that each individual is valued for the unique person that they are, existing in a potentially infinite universe. Could say… Or we could be a little more pessimistic, and say that each individual is really a measure of economic potential. And this is where, in our current climate, things can start to get a little tricky. Because with AI, that economic potential is starting to look like it is a lot less than it was maybe 10 years ago.

But where does this all fit in with reality? This is the area I would like to explore a little more of over the next series of posts. I’ll start by saying that the digital world seems to be morphing into a product of imagination, rather than a reflection of the real, physical world. This is a problem, because people seem to have the idea that it is the latter, taking at face value what they read and see on the internet. With the advent of AI, there will soon be literally no way to discern fact from fiction online. The technological pace is frightening. The ability to manufacture “reality” is so profound, that we must also ask ourselves some very serious questions, such as, how long has this technology really been in existence?; how much of the internet has always been fabricated?; could a technological hegemony appear, or have already been in existence for a very long time?. We can see that there are multiple avenues for “reality” and our sanities to become frayed.

As an artist (although just a photographer), I am keen to begin to explore modern reality. What I like about photography, particularly film, is that at least I can be reasonably certain (bar some metaphysical internal discussions on whether matter really exists) that I have a snapshot of what is real, through the negative. But how, as an artist, can I begin to share this reality with others? How can we prove reality? Because I think that the future is going to bring with it a need for physicality. People are going to need to hold onto a physical item in their house whilst repeating, “This is real. This is real…”. How are we going to help people stay grounded, and encourage them to embrace physicality?

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Exclusive Architecture-Inspired T-Shirts

Kalimetric Architecture T-Shirts coming soon

Launching Soon – Discover Wearable Art Like Never Before!

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Welcome to Kalimetric, where architecture meets fashion! We are thrilled to announce the upcoming launch of our exclusive architecture-inspired t-shirts, meticulously crafted by our resident artist. This unique collection blends the intricate beauty of architectural designs with the comfort and style of premium apparel, offering you wearable art that stands out in any crowd.

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Architecture is not just about structures; it’s an art form that captures the essence of design, functionality, and aesthetics. Our architecture t-shirts are a tribute to this timeless art, transforming stunning architectural photographs and designs into fashionable, limited edition apparel. Whether you’re an architecture enthusiast, a design aficionado, or someone who appreciates unique fashion statements, our t-shirts are designed to resonate with your passion.

Meet Our Resident Artist

At the heart of our collection is Kalimetric, our talented resident artist. With a background in architectural and landscape photography, and also design, Kalimetric brings a unique perspective to each design, ensuring that every t-shirt is a masterpiece in its own right. Their dedication to capturing the finest details of architectural marvels translates into high-quality, visually stunning t-shirts that are both comfortable and stylish.

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At Kalimetric, we believe that fashion is an extension of your personality and passions. Our exclusive architecture t-shirts are designed to reflect the beauty and complexity of architectural art, offering you a unique way to express your love for design and aesthetics. Join our waitlist today and be among the first to experience this fusion of art and fashion.

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Munro Bagging – Stob Binnein

There is always a strange mix of trepidation and excitement before attempting to bag a munro. Unlike in some other countries, there is usually no ski lift to take you to near the top. Although, it must be said, the mountains are a little lower than, say, the Swiss Alps. Still, for a middle aged, unfit male, the thought of ascending 2000 metres can be a little daunting.

Stob Binnein is a mountain in the southern Highlands of Scotland. It is attached to Ben More, and so often, hikers will ascend both peaks. However, we were approaching from the South, a steeper, and more difficult ascent, but chosen as we could ignore Ben More. One peak was going to be enough I thought, and I was right. 

I made the ascent with a fitter, more sprightly friend, and 15 mins in, he was already waiting for me. This was going to be tough. I don’t remember much for the next hour, hour and a half, as it was all up steep incline. But finally the trail flattened out a bit, and my legs took on a renewed vigour. The landscape also changed at this point, with the grass taking on a red to mauve colouration. It was quite beautiful, and also motivating. Eventually we were taken to a crest where over the side, we could see the splendour of Loch Voil. A rewarding sight, and we stopped for a number of photos. This is what munro bagging was all about.

Further on, and we were treated to an intimidating view. The mountain began to rise once more, disappearing into billowing mist. The weather was turning up here, and I felt privileged to experience a moment that only the mountain can bring; a feeling of isolation; transportation to a more primitive time; vulnerability mixed with awe. Truly, there is nothing else like it. 

The next passage across the ridge was so pleasurable that I forgot about the incline. We peered down into valleys below, where the height was so great that rivulets and lochans formed abstract patterns on the landscape.

It was then time for the peak. The mist was great, so much so that it was impossible to see more than 5-10 metres into the distance. Mysterious shapes appeared in front, revealing themselves to be hard rock formations, springing out from the mountain. This last stretch was almost too much for me. My energy supply was depleted. However, I managed to wearily summit. Due to the mist, there was no view to speak of, but I was satisfied. I ate my lunch in silence, drained of speech as well.

The drama did not finish there though. Returning back the way we came, we lost the trail. An argument arose, probably due to our fragile states, and we made the mistake of choosing to split up. I went my way, my friend, his. My path eventually took me to a fantastic spectacle that we hadn’t seen on the way in, a tiny lochan on the mountain, with red reeds sprouting out of the surface. It was truly beautiful, hidden away off the trail, and I felt that I was seeing something that perhaps most missed, whether due to the trail being elsewhere, or indeed due to the season being wrong and missing those red reeds. It was a special moment.

My friend and I eventually reconvened, and we made our way to the car park, ready to head home, our need for high vistas satiated, until another day.

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Searching for God in the Machine

“We’re creating God,” an AI engineer working on large language models told Vanity Fair in September. “We’re creating conscious machines.”

This isn’t a quote in isolation. Elon Musk has also has referred to his belief that Larry Page seeks to create a digital god. In fact, the words AI and God are being used increasingly together, so much so that we may ask, “Do engineers really believe they are building God in the Machine?”

Certainly, AI seems to be surpassing our wildest imagination in terms of what it can do. It is a technological leap of astronomical proportions. Proponents say that we are on an upward trajectory of exponential proportions.

But why do we have to equate it to God? If AI tells us anything, it is the unimaginable  distance from God to humans. If a tool can surpass a human so thoroughly in the facet of processing, then how far beyond is God himself?  Infinitely so…

Facets, though, are important. The Christian God is deemed to be perfect in all facets, such that he is infinite and One, rather than a representation of finite sets. What other facets does AI really possess other than processing power? Is it even capable of the limited love that a pet gives?

We need, then, to guard against a shallow search for God. God has already, or is in the process of, giving us what we need to approach him.

So what is the shallow search? 

We should not be searching for a different god because we don’t want to, or are afraid of, committing to a pre-defined set of moral requirements. Is this what is causing the search for a god in AI? The truth is, we all find rules and behavioral adaptations hard, but follow and adapt we must! The path to God is narrow, and we are the ones who need to change. The wish to create a god that reflects humanity, rather than humanity adapting to reflect God, is an inversion.

What, then, can one do regarding this? Well, from my perspective, don’t get too drawn into the digital, virtual world that is being created. Prize physical relationships with physical people, and work on building this up instead.

Life is not about creating distance between each other, but about drawing closer whilst we model ourselves on the Christian God who has already revealed himself to us through the Son, Jesus Christ.

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Swiss Post Free Postcard

I applied for the SwissPost free postcard using their app. I wanted to see what this service could do, so I sent one to myself.

As you can see, the service is pretty good. Okay, so the image doesn’t appear to have been adjusted for print (although, obviously, I can’t confirm this), so the image is a little dark for an indoor setting (although the postman might have got a better view!). But overall, I am super impressed. My message is written on the back too (to myself).

For a free post card, of which you get one per week, you really can’t go wrong. Of course, you can also choose to pay to send postcards too, including internationally. So, there is really is no excuse for not sending that postcard to your mum, now!