Fun with a dental camera

It was only a few weeks ago that I vowed never to try using a vintage camera again. But then I bought this new one and I couldn’t resist it. It’s called a Yashica Dental-Eye camera, and here’s a picture of it.

The Dental-Eye is actually a Yashica FX-3, which was sold for dentists and opticians to photograph teeth and eyes in 1:1 close-up. The camera has a fixed 55mm f/4 lens, surrounded by a ringflash, which incorporates a small modelling lamp in the shape of a torch bulb. The batteries to run it all are in a compartment on the bottom of the body, which looks like a motor drive, but isn’t. The only control is a dial where you would normally expect the shutter speed dial to be. On this you set the film speed. Then you turn on the flash with a switch on the back of the camera and the modelling light with a switch on the front, and you’re ready to shoot.

What appears to be the focusing ring around the lens is actually a control to vary the magnification from 1:1 to 1:10. You focus by simply moving the camera back and forth in front of the subject, and because the light is supplied by flash, there’s no worry about camera shake at such close distances. I haven't shot any teeth or eyeballs, but had great fun wandering around the garden with it.

Below are a couple of pictures I took with this weird camera. Incidentally, having been dedicated to digital photography for a few years now, I was horrified to find I had to pay over a fiver for the film and the same again to have it processed, and I didn’t even have any prints made from it! I just scanned the negatives so that I could get digital images you see here. 

Busy, busy, busy...

Well, it’s been a time since I added anything new to this blog, and the reason is that I’ve been a bit busy. Never a bad thing when you’re a freelance writer of course. So what have I been up to?

First off I landed a new job with a software company who want me to do all their media and publicity writing for a nice little retainer every month. It’s not the sort of thing many freelance writers aspire to, but there’s a nice little retainer attached and we can’t all be the next Stephen King – and I’ve tried to be, believe me, I’ve tried. And failed.

So I’m jogging along nicely, filling my days with writing about software and trying my best to be creative about it when an email arrives from the new Editor of Photography Monthly magazine, a chap I was in contact with a few years back when he worked at Amateur Photographer. It seems they are running a special issue on retro cameras in December and he invited me to write something on a 1950s camera called the Wrayflex, a subject dear to my heart because I have already written a book on the subject as well as several previous features for magazines ranging from Kent Life here in the UK (the Wray factory was in Kent) to Shutterbug in the States. What’s more, the Editor suggested tying in a special offer for readers on the book, which incidentally is called TheWrayflex Story. Here’s a pic of the cover if you’re interested.

Problem was he gave me a very tight deadline, but never mind because, having written so much about this subject in the past I can do it in my sleep. So it was just a matter of combining the best of the Kent Life and Shutterbug features, to meet a rather tough the deadline. Don’t you just love word processors?

I was in fact half-way through doing just this and dozing nicely (while still trying to write creatively about software for my new client) when the phone rang. It was the Editor of Writing Magazine to say could I write a couple of features for the December issue on self-publishing. Well, about a year ago, I tried to get a book off the ground on this very subject, based on my experiences of publishing The Wrayflex Story. I couldn’t find a publisher for it then. I did, however, have much of the preliminary work done for the project, so what never saw the light of day as a book was easily adaptable and is now staring over quite a few pages in the December issue of Writing Magazine. And guess what? Since The Wrayflex Story was self-published, it gave me a great excuse to plug the book all over again.

Looks like it might be a good Christmas after all.

By the way, if you’re interested, you can find all the details you need on The Wrayflex Story and another self-published book called Clockwork Cameras on my website. Click here for a link.

Oh, and another thought has just occured to me. Having taken on this job for the software company, maybe there's a feature to be written on corporate writing that Writing Magazine might be interested in. Funny how different projects tie themselves together sometimes.

How to be a novelist (and get published)

Over the course of many years, people who know that writing is one of the ways I earn my living, have asked me if I’ve ever written a novel. The answer is yes, I’ve written three. Most people are suitably impressed by this, until I add: “Written yes, published no.”

The fact is that I started writing novels way back in the 1970s. I’ve tried my hand at a crime novel, a science fiction novel and a paranormal horror novel. Over the years, all three have done the rounds of various publishers. Some have attracted nice comments. But at the end of the day none of them has been published.

For publishers, novels are not like non-fiction books. People buy non-fiction books because of the subject without always knowing who the author is. Novels, on the other hand, are more often bought by people who like a particular author. Which is why publishers are loath to take on a novel by an unknown writer. So when the umpteenth rejection letter arrives for my latest masterpiece I consol myself in two ways: I remember that my non-fiction books do get published. And I remind myself that Jaws was turned down over and over again until one publisher took a chance on it. Even Harry Potter was rejected at first.

All of which leads me to the wonderful world of eBooks. The great thing about an eBook is that there is no risk. Publishers don’t have to pay money to publish it. You do it yourself and, in a very short time indeed it’s up for sale. So now those three novels that have been languishing on my hard disc for years are on sale as eBooks. And you know what? People are buying them! Not in great numbers, it’s true. But they are selling at the rate of one or two a day. And if what I hear about eBooks is true, they should gather momentum.

If you reckon you’ve got a novel in you, I recommend you to give it a go. You can find all the details you need about how to do it by clicking here. 

Meanwhile, if you feel like reading any of my books, click on the title links below the cover illustrations.

 Breakthrough

 Timeflight

A Model for Murder

My new eBook - it's a crime

 

About 150 years ago – at least that’s the way it seems –  I worked on various local newspapers and, over the years, I met a lot of amazing characters. I also got to witness first hand, stories that had to be seen to be believed.

Now I’ve rolled some of the characters and many of the stories into an eBook crime novel, called A Model for Murder. Here’s the cover and a quick synopsis…  

When a beautiful glamour model – one of three booked to pose for a computer company’s calendar – is found in her bath with her wrists slashed, everything points to suicide – including a suicide note written in what is proven to be the model’s distinctive handwriting. But Samantha Trewin had everything to live for. And Octavia Lord, a reporter on the local newspaper who interviewed her the day before her death, reckons it’s murder. Dragging in her news editor Jack Fallowfield she sets out to prove it. At first, Jack goes along with it against his better nature. But when a second of the trio of models dies, and then a third, he finds himself caught up in a story that takes him and Octavia from the south coast of England to the west coast of America, as they follow a trail of unexpected twists and turns that finally lead them to the killer.

And here’s an excerpt from the book that uses one of the true stories from my local newspaper days…

‘Why so many different jobs?’ Octavia asked.

‘Force of circumstance,” said Jack. ‘Got the sack from most of them.’

‘Why?’

‘Lots of reasons. Booze. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Saying the wrong thing at the right time. Saying the right thing at the wrong time. The mayor’s balls.’

‘I’m loathe to ask, but what exactly did a mayor’s balls have to do with your getting the sack?’

‘It was a headline I wrote the one and only time I worked on a subs’ desk. The mayor of this particular town – somewhere up north, it was – had two civic balls every year, and the ratepayers’ association thought that was at least one too many. So they brought up a resolution at a meeting of the finance committee, recommending that the policy should be changed. The points for and against having one or two civic balls were debated at length and when the story came before me on the subs’ desk, I wrote a headline that said MAYOR’S BALLS HANG IN BALANCE.’

Octavia choked over her wine. ‘And that got you the sack?’

 ‘No, what happened was that the finance committee referred the matter to a full meeting of the council which, being predominantly of the same political party as the mayor, agreed that of course he should have his two civic balls every year. When that story came onto my desk, I wrote a headline that said MAYOR’S SECOND BALL COMES OFF. That’s what got me the sack.’

If you fancy reading the rest, you can download part of the first chapter free or the whole book from Amazon by clicking here.

Welcome to BFP members

 

If you are a BFP member, you probably read about this blog in your newsletter this morning. So welcome. Take a look at some of my previous posts to see how I earn my daily crust as a freelance writer and photographer – and my slight obsession with antique and classic cameras.

One of the ways I’ve been earning cash recently is with the launch of some eBooks – a science fiction novel, a horror novel and a classic camera book. There’s also a crime novel on the way. If you’re interested in any of these, click on the links below, which will take you to the Amazon Kindle pages from where you can download a free sample of each book. Hopefully, having done that you might be enticed to then download the whole thing for a very modest fee!

SF book: Timeflight

Horror book: Breakthrough

Classic camera book: Clockwork Cameras

By the way, if you are not aware of the BFP, the initials stand for Bureau of Freelance Photographers, an organisation that runs a monthly newsletter telling freelance photographers how, where and when they can sell their pictures. They also offer an advice service and a correspondence course in photo journalism. Actually they do lot more than that as well. Click here to go to their website. I think they’re great. But I’m biased because I work as a freelance tutor for the BFP Correspondence Course.

Bit of a problem

Having a bit of a problem writing my blog today...

Why I collect, not use, old cameras

 

I realised today why I collect old cameras rather than using them. As a collector, I love vintage equipment, the different types of camera, the way they work, their individual eccentricities. But for my day-to-day photographic work, I went digital years ago – and if my experiences of this afternoon are anything to go by, that’s the way it’s going to stay.

A few weeks ago I acquired a Zenith 80. It’s a copy of one of the first Hasselblads and, for a collector, it’s great. You can sit there winding it on, cocking the shutter, firing the shutter, changing the lenses, changing the film backs, screwing on filters, screwing them off again, winding and firing again. It’s what camera collecting is all about. Where I made my mistake was thinking it might be a good idea to use it.

First I had to find a few rolls of 120 black and white film. Not the sort of thing you buy off the shelf at Boots anymore. Eventually I got some old out-dated stuff from a mate who runs a market stall. Then I had to load it. I had two film backs for the purpose, and when I opened one, it already had film in it. Trouble was the previous owner had managed to load it back to front, so the backing paper was facing the lens and the film was facing the window in the back of the body where you should read the frame numbers. I should have taken that as an omen.

I downloaded an instruction book from the internet and got loading. It took me half an hour to load the first film, due to the way it had to be threaded through various guides that I kept missing, pushing the backing paper into a slot on the take-up spool, then doing it again when I wound it and it popped out again. Eventually I got it loaded and onto the camera. But when I turned the film wind knob the film did not advance. So I took it out and loaded it into the other film back – only five minutes this time, since I now had the knack. That one wound okay, so I set out to take some pictures.

Arriving outside a nice old church, I took the camera out of its case and the film back fell off. Luckily it had a dark slide over the film, so the film wasn’t ruined. I fitted it back on, removed the dark slide, measured the exposure with my digital Nikon (cheating I know) and took the picture. I put the dark slide back in and the back fell off again. I re-attached it and went onto to my next location, a lovely little village green with beautiful trees, a duck pond and ancient cottages around the outside. Lovely.

I removed the slide and took the picture and, miraculously the back stayed on. Then I wound the film and it fell off again, this time without the slide in place. One roll of film ruined.

I loaded my second roll of film into the other back. This one fitted tightly to the camera, but the film still wouldn't wind. I swapped the internal mechanism from one back with that of the other. The back that stayed on the camera wouldn’t wind. The one that wound the film okay kept falling off the camera.

I gave up, packed everything away and went home. But I forgot to latch the lid of the case securely. As I got out of the car and lifted out the case, the lid flew open and the camera fell out. It’s only a little dented and really doesn’t notice when you put the camera on a shelf and look at it from a distance. Which, in my book, is what old cameras are for.

I like old cameras. I like playing with them and displaying them, fondling them and polishing them, researching them and writing articles and books about them. But what I won't be doing anytime in the near future is taking pictures with them.

Filter jam

No it’s not something you buy in a jar and spread on your toast. It’s a predicament I’ve been in for the past week.

I bought this camera for my collection. It’s called a Zenith 80 and it’s a Russian copy of the first Hasselblad cameras. It’s lovely piece of kit, but when it arrived, it had a filter stuck on the front of the lens. I tried everything to get it off – rubber gloves, pliers, etc. Someone suggested I use a hacksaw to cut two small grooves in it, then slot a steel rule into the grooves and use that to twist it off. Even that didn't work. I reckon the previous owner must have superglued it on the lens.

In the end, in desperation, I resorted to eBay and, to my delight, found someone selling a standard lens for the camera. I reckon I must have been the only one in the world with a Zenith 80 body looking for a standard lens. I was the sole bidder and got it for £19. It arrived this morning and it fits and works a treat. Also I now have a rather fetching paperweight in the shape of another 80mm f/2.8 lens with a stuck filter on it.

Did I mention that the camera came in an outfit case with spare back, collapsible rubber lens hood and some filters? Also with it came a 65mm wide-angle lens with two whopping great filters in their own little compartment in the lid of the lens case.

I confess that, when it comes to old cameras, as opposed to the digital camera I used for my work, I'm a collector first and a user second, but this is an outfit crying out to be used. Watch this space. Meanwhile, here’s a pic of the outfit.

It pays to publicise yourself

It’s been a busy day today, trying to drum up sales for my eBooks. Time was when a writer could give his words and pictures to a publisher, then sit back and let that publisher worry about getting it all together, designed, promoted and sold. But times change. It’s okay if you are a big name author with a lot of followers. Publishers will fall over themselves to publish your books if they think there are enough people out there waiting for your latest words of wisdom. In the specialist field that I work in it’s a bit different.

I’ve come to believe that for writers like me the way forward is to self publish, and the cheapest way to do that is as an eBook. It’s relatively simple to do that if you have a few basic design skills. My latest tome is a classic camera book called Clockwork Cameras. It’s all about the way manufacturers of the past used clockwork in their designs. I’d already self-published it with a print on demand service, but the unit cost, and therefore the price I was forced to sell it for, was a bit high. So now I've converted it to an eBook. Click here to see the way it appears on Amazon.

So it’s up there on Amazon waiting to be sold. But I have to find buyers. That’s the tricky bit, and here’s what I’ve been doing today.

• Written press releases which will go out tomorrow to photographic magazines with a picture of the cover.

• Written a news story for the newsletter of the BFP, for whom I freelance

• Put an announcement on the Internet Directory of Camera Collectors, which is received by email by camera collectors around the world.

• Prepared artwork for a small advertisement in the newsletter of the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain.

• Announced the publication on Twitter.

• Announced the publication on Kindleboards, which is read by people who contribute to, or buy from, the Kindle store.

• Oh yes, and mentioned on this blog.

These days, if you want to be a successful writer, you have to be prepared to also be a strong self-publicist as well – and to know where to aim your publicity. The big question, of course, is will it generate sales? Watch this space.

Suddenly I'm an ebook author

I read a few weeks ago that Kindles are selling like hot cakes and all sorts of authors, both famous and not-so-famous have been making a killing by self-publishing their own ebooks that can be read on these little devices. So I thought I’d give it a go.

Started out with two novels that a couple of ‘proper’ publishers have shown interest in but which at the end of the day, got turned down. I still had them all in a Word format, though, so I turned them into ebooks and now they’re up on the Amazon Kindle Books website.

The first one is called Timeflight and it’s a science fiction novel. Imagine my delight when, 15 minutes after it went live as an ebook on Amazon, someone in America bought it. Wow, I thought, I’m on my way. My first sale in 15 minutes. That was a week ago, and no one has bought a copy since.

My second one is called Breakthrough and this one is a paranormal horror story. I’m still waiting for my first sale on that.

Next step is a non-fiction book for camera collectors, one of my specialities. It’s called Clockwork Cameras and it’s about how camera makers of the past used clockwork in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. This one was a bit more difficult to convert into an ebook because it contains a lot of pictures. But after a bit of trial and error, it’s now up there with the other two. Here's a picture of the cover...

Next step is to send out press releases on the camera collecting book to all the photo magazines. 

If anyone is interested, clicking on the titles above will take you to the books on Amazon.

Three’s company

You see, the thing is, we never meant to have three dogs. We only started off with one. He was a lovely little Shih Tsu called Benji. This is Benji…

Anyway, when he got to about four years old, my wife suggested it would be nice to get him a little friend. To be honest, I wasn’t keen on the idea, but she started looking at a website where people advertise dogs for sale. Every so often she’d say, “Oh look, isn’t he cute”, and I’d say, “He’s too expensive”, or “He’s too far away” etc...

Then one day she saw these two Llasa Apsos called Teddy and Tilly and I had to admit they did look nice. Over the next few days, she kept going back to the website and so, one evening, when she was out, and I’d had a couple of glasses of vino collapso, I rung up the woman who was advertising Teddy and Tilly for sale.

“Sorry,” she said. “Teddy is already spoken for. Someone is coming to pick him up on Sunday.”

That was the point when I should have said, “Okay. Sorry to have bothered you. Goodbye.” What I actually said was, “If you can persuade this other person that they would be better off if they weren’t separated, I’ll have them both.”

I left her my name and phone number. Ten minutes later, she called back to say the other buyer quite understood and it would be so much better if they weren’t separated, and so if I wanted them and didn’t mind driving three hours to get them and three hours back, I could have them.

Two dogs? To add to one we already had and who might not get along with them? Three hours drive away? I should have said no way. What I said was, “See you Saturday.”

And this is Teddy and Tilly…

They all get on fine and I really don’t know how anyone would ever want just the one dog. Mind you, taking three for a walk at the same time is a bit of a do. You remember maypole dancing, the way kids used to dance around a pole holding ribbons, in and out of each other so that the ribbons made a pattern? Well, think of it like that, but with leads instead of ribbons and with a dog on the end of each one.

Writing is a matter of application

Okay, the funny start to the day has now abated, so I can talk about what I’m up to. As it says in my profile, I’m a freelance writer and photographer. I mostly write and illustrate artcles for magazines here in the UK and in America. I also sell pictures through the Alamy website as well as direct to markets such as greetings card companies.

I used to write a lot for photographic magazines here in the UK, until I discovered that American photo mags pay a lot more. I also write nostalgic stuff for magazines like Best of British and have found an American magazine called British Heritage that has started to accept work from me. I also write about writing in a magazine called Writing Magazine. I write corporate copy for a couple of big-names companies, which is lucrative, but boring. (That's why I haven't mentioned the company names!)

It’s easy this freelance writing lark, isn’t it? No, actually it isn’t. It took three months of rejected proposals to that American magazine before I got accepted, and it took nearly four months to find the right time to be able to get the pictures, not to mention the research on the internet to find the words. Freelance writing is actually a matter of application – in essence, the application of your bum to a chair and getting going. It’s something I find a lot of people can’t bring themselves to do.

“I could write a book,” they say, “if only I had the time.” It’s not like that. If you have writing in your blood, you simply make time, and you get on with it. That’s how I make my living. Stick with me and if you are interested, I might give away a few secrets.

Got to go now, the dogs need a walk. Did I mention I have dogs? Two Llasa Apsos and a Shih Tzu. They’re wonderful. I’ve also got a burning interest in antique and classic cameras. No doubt they’ll crop up a bit in future blogs. Must go. Keep watching this space.

Morning all

Okay, I've only just launched this blog. The title tells you something about the bloke I am and how I live my life. Trouble is I'm having a bity of a funny day today, so I'll have to come back later to expand and expound.