jayneandmarty.com

In a nutshell, we flew into Hobart, hired a little manual Nissan (I specified a manual because I knew the roads would be fun), and drove around the State in four-and-a-half days.

• Day 1: Hobart to St Helens via the Freycinet Peninsula.
• Day 2: St Helens to Wynyard via Scottsdale, Launceston, Burnie and Somerset.
• Day 3: Wynyard to Strahan via Cradle Mountain.
• Day 4: Strahan to Hobart via Queenstown and Lake St Clair.
• Day 5: Hobart, Richmond and the airport.

It was a superb trip. We missed heaps due to our tight schedule, but we’ll be back.

Enjoy the photos. The slideshow below goes a bit too fast for my liking. To slow things down and see in full screen, go here.

I’ve neglected this blog in the last few months. Simply, I haven’t felt like sitting down to write posts and share stuff – it takes time and my attention has been on other things. The wonders of modern technology may change that.

My new iPhone 3GS shoots video as well as photos, and the clever people at the various web services I use (i.e. Flickr, Wordpress, Picasa etc) offer all sorts of ways to use them together.

The iPhone video app includes basic editing functionality (simple trimming of the start and finish of your clip, not cut and paste editing), and because I can email that clip to Flickr, which is set to autopost to this blog, the process from my end has changed significantly.

No longer do I have to shoot the video on our “real” video camera, go home, connect the camera to the laptop, edit the footage, export it and upload it to YouTube. To share simple video updates with you I can shoot the video on the iPhone, trim it, email it to Flickr, and Flickr will autopost it here. Straight away. Pretty cool.

The video in the previous post is the level of visual and aural quality you can expect. What do you think?

Even though we asked the question before Christmas and decided to keep this blog going, we’ve decided it needs a bit of a change. I’ve lost the motivation to write stuff. For now.

So from this weekend expect to see only photo posts here. But not the way we’ve done it in the past, with albums of our trips posted to Picasa. Instead, we’ll be posting one photo per day for the next 365 days. A visual diary instead of a written one, I guess.

There’ll be some variety, as we have six seven cameras (a Polaroid SX-70, a Polaroid 645CL, a Nikon D40 DSLR, a waterproof Pentax W20, a Lomo ActionSampler, my Sony Ericsson T650i mobile and Jayne’s Nokia E65 mobile).

I’ll post each photo to the martinjy Flickr account, which automagically tells my Facebook newsfeed that there’s something new and also creates a new post here. If you want to comment you can on Flickr, Facebook or here.

Starts tomorrow – Saturday 24th.

I think the Polaroid died today. I cleaned the mirror (on the inside) to get rid of a couple of dirty spots but when I finished I found I couldn’t close the camera down. Closer inspection revealed the mirror to be in the ‘up’ position rather than horizontal, and although I managed to hook it down (with a crochet hook – Jayne’s idea) and get it to the flat position it wouldn’t stay there, it just springs back up.

(I doubt that description will help any of you to visualise the problem, but it makes me feel better to write it down.)

It’s like there’s a catch missing, or broken. A few other people in the Flickr SX-70 group have had the same problem but none of the solutions suggested there have worked for me. Some people say take the camera to bits but I have no confidence that I’ll get it back together again.

I think I’ll wait a day or two and then try again. If that fails then I guess it’s a museum piece and I’ll be back on eBay to find another one…:-(

Clearly I’m hooked on the Polaroid photography right now, but good as the fixed focus 645CL is, I’ve wanted to buy one of these SX-70s for a while. They’re SLRs (folding, no less), and the quality of image is supposed to be far superior to the non-SLR Polaroid cameras like the 645CL.

I’ve been watching eBay like a hawk for one at the right price, and last week this one came up for $50, which is $40-$60 cheaper than the others I’ve seen. I’m not sure why it was cheaper, but I suspect it might be because the photo of the original box in the eBay listing was for a model 3 SX-70, which is less desirable because it’s not an SLR. I was almost certain, though, that the picture of the camera was of an earlier model – and I was right.

Here it is.

It is pretty amazing the way it folds down, and to be honest it’s a bit bigger than I thought it was going to be. Jayne reckons it looks like a cigar box or a hip flask. I tend to agree. One of Polaroid’s design goals was for it to fit inside a gentleman’s suit pocket. All we can say is, it’d have to be a big suit.

Being almost as old as me, and second (or even third, fourth or fifth) hand off eBay, I didn’t even know if it would work. And by “work”, I mean work in two ways:

• Would it load the film, take a picture and spit out the photo like it should?
• Would the images be horribly over-exposed without an ND filter? (see here)

Well, it took a moment or two for me to open the camera up, but it opened. Good start.

The focus wheel, exposure wheel and viewfinder all looked OK and worked fine. Keep going.

It accepted the 600 film cartridge fine too (I used an unwanted Polaroid to help slide it in). Good, good, good.

And with some whirs and clicks it ejected the blank card OK. Fantastic.

So it was time to take a picture. We set the exposure wheel all the way to ‘dark’ (there’s lots about this on the web – until we get an ND filter of some sort it’s what we’ll have to do), convinced Max to sit still for a moment and gave it a go.

Suffice to say that the first photo we took blew us away.

I’m not sure if the web does that justice, to be honest. The colours are truer than anything we’ve had from our digital cameras or the other Polaroid camera, and somehow the image manages to be amazingly clear and soft at the same time. Just brilliant. Can’t wait to take more.

Georgia and Lindsay came to stay on Saturday night. It was just a short stay this time, but we found time to take the boy to the beach for a swim. He’s strained the cruciate ligament in his right knee somehow (like footy players do), so we’re not supposed to walk him but we can swim him, so he’s been spoilt for the last few weeks with frisbee throwing/swimming in one of the channels near the bridge at Barwon Heads. Lucky boy.

Here are some Polaroids from that afternoon. They’re a bit dark but that’s my fault – I had the exposure setting on the camera set to dark.

Georgia throwing the frisbee.

I like Max’s face in this one. He is not amused.

Max fetching the frisbee for Lindsay.

The sun came out for this one.

A great one by Lindsay.

Max is not amused in this one either.

As usual the girls were very good. They even made their bed properly in the morning!

The Polaroid camera was broken for a while but unexpectedly started working again a few weeks ago. Here are some more shots.

There are others – I’m having a great time playing with the camera even though it’s very basic. Taking a picture with it is so instant and rewarding.

This one sums up the energy and movement required to keep up with him.

And this one is typical of the start of every walk. Hurry up Dad!

I was really, really excited about half an hour ago. Did I win money on this afternoon’s Turnbull Stakes? No. I took my first ever Polaroid photograph. I can’t believe it’s taken me until 2008 to do that, but I am hooked after just one.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with a Polaroid for a few months now, and a few weeks ago Jayne dug out her old Polaroid 645CL, which isn’t quite as sophisticated as the SX-70 folding SLRs that I’ve been watching on eBay, but it looks totally retro and promised to be a good experiment, at worst.

Today I rang some camera places in town to see if they stocked 600 film and got an affirmative from Camera House, so I went down this afternoon and bought some. The film is astronomically expensive compared to the negligible cost of digital (it was $43 for 20 shots) and I didn’t even know if the camera still worked, but I figured it was worth a try. While I was there I bought a roll of 35mm film too for my old Lomo Action Sampler. Clearly I’m in a pre-digital mood.

But back to the Polaroid. Jayne couldn’t remember which way up the film cartridge went in, but we experimented a bit and eventually almost forced it into its slot. Some proper-sounding whirrs and clicks suggested it was in OK, so I went to find some sunlight and a subject (Max), and took my first ever Polaroid. Here it is.

Jayne laughed her head off watching me as I watched it develop. I thought it was broken at first but of course it just takes a few minutes for the photo to start showing. Then as it started to come through I was beside myself with excitement. Like a little kid, seriously. It was magical watching it develop in front of me.

She took one too. Hers is a bit out of focus in the centre – she had it on the macro setting (!!!! – that’s a piece of plastic that slides across the lens) but must have been too close. Still cool though. I love the colour of the sky in hers.

I love it. I’ll be flat broke in 6 months but I think it’ll help me become a better photographer. My theory is that because I have to select a shot and compose it more carefully (because of the high cost of the film), the photos will be a bit more considered. We’ll see. I’m looking forward to taking it to the beach. Should get some great shots down there.

Here’s a (digital) shot of the retro goodies.

Last Thursday night it was freezing cold and *#@%ing down, so Jayne and I decided that you only live once and if we didn’t go to the snow that weekend then we’d be letting ourselves down.

So we did.

On Friday morning I hastily arranged accommodation at Bogong Village, which is halfway between Mount Beauty and Falls Creek (we were lucky to get number 27, the only 2-person house in the village), and late afternoon Friday we were on our way up the Hume. We arrived in time for a couple of beers and some pool at the Bogong pub (small, friendly) but even though it’s impossible to get a hangover at the snow we took it easy and were back at our cabin early, relatively speaking.

We were expecting snow overnight but the stars decided to shine all night long, so we awoke to a frost and clear blue skies instead of 30cm of fresh (never mind). We’d brought no breakfast provisions (mistake), so after a quick shower we drove the 15 minutes up the mountain to the day car park at Falls, geared up, and headed to what used to be the Snowlands cafe for a cooked breakfast.

Gearing up in the car park

With full bellies we were ready to hit the slopes, so we took what used to be the Halley’s Comet chair (now Falls Express) up to Cloud 9 and made our way to Panorama (green) so that Jayne could iron out some of the cobwebs that had formed in the 4 years since she last strapped into a snowboard.

Me near Cloud 9

Ooh she was rusty. Like a 3-day beginner at times. But after three or four runs she started to get it together and was looking good. Her confidence was even built enough to have a crack at the blue stuff through the trees (Milky Way, Last Hoot, Fast Hoot) that she last enjoyed with back in 2004. Sadly, on run #1, she fell twice on her @rse on some sketchy stuff and really hurt herself.

Young, J L. Retired Hurt.

That left me on my own for the rest of the day to sample the resort’s runs. Not what we had in mind, but with JY happy to take her gear back to the car and wander around the village with the camera I was free to carve up the steeper stuff at my own pace, which was OK. I rode most of the south side (Quartz Ridge, Powderkeg, Dark Side, Shadow Ridge, Racecourse, Big Dipper, Father Fosters) before spending an hour or so watching the maniacs tackle the Ruined Castle terrain park, then heading over to the bowl via The Y’s. I had one run down Exhibition and another down Cabbage Patch before lunch at Cafe Max, then another hour or so at Scotty’s and Ruined Castle before calling it a day. Map here (PDF).

Riding the Lakeside poma

Choices, choices

The famous terrain park bus. Yep, it’s a railslide kinda thing

Lunch in Cafe Max (which is where we first laid eyes upon each other back in 1999, so it’s dear to our hearts even though it creates holes in our wallets)

Me (well, my feet) readying myself for a crack at Exhibition. That’s the Village Bowl down below

Cat Track somewhere in the village

Snow shape at unknown lodge (might be Nelse)

Wobbly video I shot of me riding Father Fosters near the Ruined Castle Chair
(to come via YouTube) Quality is terrible, so it’s not worth showing here.

Bogong Village was great: VERY cheap compared to staying on mountain yet only 10 minutes drive down the hill.We went for a small walk on Sunday morning before heading home down the dreaded Hume and the TOTAL NIGHTMARE Ring Road. That has got to be the worst road in Australia. We hate it, completely. If only there was an alternative route.

Anyway. Enough about that. Bogong Village was comfortable, quiet, and the food at the pub was good. We’ll stay there again.

Bogong Village scene

A good weekend even though Jayne hurt herself, and now we can put the snowboards away until next season.

There are a few more photos on our Picasa page.

I enjoyed writing that. I’ll try to make a bigger effort with this blog from now on.