Bumleysaurus Regina

Another thing on hormonal contraception.

Firstly, when speaking to some not so close girlfriends I've noticed that many of them, though sound of mind and intelligence didn't really realise that hormonal contraception works by fooling your body into thinking you are pregnant. They seem to want to say, oh, I understand it's a drug, but it just.... well.... stops your periods, right? It can't really create a false pregnancy state....

Well, er, yes that is exactly what it does. The drug in the pill is not the *actual* hormone (you'd have to harvest it from humans) but it is a chemically near-identical substance that acts on the body in the same way as some of the hormones that are released when you are pregnant. No, not all of them and true, you don't actually have a placenta and baby growing in your uterus but your body does for the most part believe pregnancy is occuring and that is why you do not release any eggs from your ovaries, do not build up uterus lining as you would when non-pregnant and cervical mucus thickens, swells and hardens just as in pregnancy.

So that aside, and keeping in mind that science only has vague ideas about what each hormone does, and knows literally nothing about how they react and interact in combination with each other, I have been wondering a few things.

This latest thing I have been wondering is, how does a 'pregnant' body react to physical exercise?

I started kickboxing whilst on the pill and lost lots of weight etc. for about a year at which point I came off the pill. We are now approaching a second year of kickboxing. So I have had one year kickboxing on the pill and one year off.

My body shape has changed very much during the two years, but I wonder how much between year one and year two. During year one, despite losing a fair amount of weight (a total misnomer as I am now as heavy as before I started kickboxing but look at my thinnest ever because I have lost fat and gained muscle - I have not lost "weight" but fat) however I developed a fat face:



that persisted for months, certainly all summer/autumn.

I came off the pill in November and now (a year later) I notice I do not have a fat face.

In some ways kickboxing is hard and gruelling on the body - how was my 'pregnant' body responding to this? Do pregnant bodies build muscle in the same way as non-pregnant? Is it possible that hormones are released that divert energy away from building muscle into storing of fat? Was my fat face a side effect of hormonal reactions? I wonder if anyone has made a pregnant woman exercise for one hour to the point of exhaustion and then monitored hormone levels? Somehow I doubt it.

For about a month before stopping the pill I also cycled long distance to work, meaning three times a week I was burning about 3,000 calories rather than the "average" 2,000 for a woman. Have pregnant or chemically pregnant women ever been monitored against a control group for what happens to them when they exercise?

If being chemically pregnant has an effect on exercise whereby it is less "successful" in some way ie muscle is built more slowly, fat lost more slowly, muscle tone improved more slowly, or even cardio-vascular improvements are possibly slower since these depend just as much on renewed/grown muscle mass, for example in the intercostal muscles, then are vast numbers of women, possibly some athletes too, being held back in their physical fitness by hormonal contraception?

At the very least this may inadvertently contribute to the myth that women are all weaker than men. Could it be holding female athletes back?

I personally believe that there is no need to have a gender divide in the majority of sports and athletics yet mixed teams at the moment only exist in tennis, despite world-class women competing and winning in sports that pay them a tiny percentage (if at all) of the male super-stars salaries of the sports, regardless of achievement.

This is why it is still true to say that the effects of the pill and all forms of hormonal contraception which includes the jab/implant/hormonal coil have not been in operation long enough to study the long term effects of such treatments.

I finally need new pants and I've finally decided to get men's boxers rather than women's pants because anyone who has ever had a boyfriend and some who haven't will know that men's boxers are a million times more comfortable than women's pants. So when I wear them at all I want to be comfy, thank you very much.

I'm also going to buy men's clothes from now on but this is a slow process as I try to buy as little as possible but my jaunt for boxers gave me an excuse to look and I noticed something I've noticed before but not explicitly as a feminist and that is the difference between the way men's and women's clothes are labelled.

Firstly, men's are always labelled in the S,M, L, XL range or given an explicit measurement in inches (normally waist or chest) whereas women's use S,M, L or the "size" guide known as 6, 8, 12, 14 etc. in this country and others in other countries (0-10ish in the US and 34-48ish in Europe)

There are benefits and drawbacks of each system, for example using real inches is handy in keeping similar standards across the industry and you can know your size with a good old tape measure, however "real" sizes take up too much space if you are trying to express more than one length, eg waist and leg and butt room etc hence presumably the invention of general "sizes" whereby you can know a general number and hopefully the leg, waist, butt room, bust room, cuff etc will all fit you. Of course neither is a good way to have clothes that fit because everyone is different and both ways of expressing sizes inevitably means only a certain size/shape person can fit into any of the clothes comfortably.

But what does it say when the "real inches" is used mainly on men's clothes and the "general sizes" is used on women's clothes?

My most striking observation though was that when the S,M, L etc was used, firstly it is used on men's clothes more than women's but when used on men's clothes the sizes are always M, L, XL, XXL and even XXXL (there is an occasional S but they are rare) whereas on women's it is always XXS, XS, S, M and sometimes L but it never goes above L.

This reinforces the erroneous concept that men are just plain and simple bigger than women. It excludes the possibility of both tall/large women and small/slight men.

You might even say that in general the size difference is true, so it is obvious that men's would be nearer the L end of the spectrum and women's nearer the S end of the spectrum but that presupposes that the men's and women's clothes are using the same measuring system, which they are clearly not.

If you take a generic t-shirt (hard to do as even these are gendered - men's are generous but women's are "skinny" or shaped with smaller sleeves etc.) and you found an M size, no way would a man who is normally M fit into a t-shirt that is labelled women's M and vice versa. All the supposedly "generic" sizes are totally different in men's clothes to women's.

So given a men's M is bigger than a women's M, this tendency towards S or L is a subtle reinforcing of the gender stereotype that men should be big and women should be small.

In fact, since the women's scale is a smaller version than the men's scale, the fact that it tends toward the XS and S and the men's tends toward the L and XL creates an enormous difference in size expectations that I would argue does not exist - average height of women and men is only six inches apart but the difference between XXS by women's measuring and XXL by men's measuring would be the difference between a tea towel and a tent.

Until I read about a sociology tutor who encourages her students to try swapping clothes with a similar sized person of the other gender to look at the effect did I even consider that our clothes are manufactured to emphasise gender differences. Apparently in that sociology class the effect is that the men looked like women in the women's clothes and vice versa. The women's clothes are tight around the bum and legs, also riding low exposing the midriff and the tops are also tight and expose skin.

I thought about whether the clothes would fit well or not well in that experiment. But then I think of all the problems I have trying to get clothes to fit me from the women's department, yet my boyfriend's clothes - including his trousers - are loose enough to be comfortable and at most just require a belt.

I would go so far as to say that clothes can actually create gender differences that beyond one or two curves here and there versus one or two slightly straighter lines here or there actually do not exist.

Other blogs have talked some more about this, including the New Humanist blog. The ads follow the format of "Rhetorical question?" and three tick boxes labelled "yes", "no" and "probably".

The one in London reads "Does God exist?" and people have been arrested for defacing the adverts by ticking "No". Many people have complained that two out of the three options are in favour of God existing and there should at least be four options, for example a "probably not" box.

But there is another version that reads "Is this it?" and I laugh every time because the phrasing of this one means that two out of three options are in favour of there not being a God and we can all go about our business.

The power of language.

Having a job in a library on a Sunday means I can't fail to come across all the sections of most of the Sunday Papers as I stamp them with the "please, please don't nick this paper" stamp and while doing so I was extremely vexed yet unsurprised by the Observer Woman magazine this month. Leading titles in bold this month:

My cheating husband
breast reduction
failed relationships
shopping addiction
unrequited love
designer lifestyle
eating disorder
youth obsession
sexless marriage
self-imposed exile



This, apparently, is what women's lives boil down to. FAIL

Was in Marks and Spencer the other day looking for a handbag for a wedding (don't say anything - it's a wedding! I have to have a handbag apparently) and came across the delightful Marks and Spencer

Personal Safety Alarm

in the jewelry section. This product to me seems all kinds of wrong, so much so that I'm almost speechless. When I went to the product page online I was further amazed by the copy explaining that "This small alarm emits an extremely loud female scream" designed to scare your attacker and give you a chance to flee. Because we all know that a) attackers are pretty shocked when they hear a female scream - it's the last thing they expect and b) passers-by are well known to come a-running when such a scream is heard.

All this AND you get to look stylish for only £19.50?

My four weeks of kickboxing class seems to appreciate in value every minute.

so we were half teasing a friend about how Nelson has dressed up as a girl, in a little dress with tights and everything, and how he got honked and he was pleased and felt sexy and our male friend replied, "I'd hate that, because then I'd have to dress as a girl all the time just to feel like I look nice..."

... and I said "welcome to life as a girl"

and it was true.

people have started reading my blog, because it is linked to from articles I've written, so I'll see about posting more often and in more detail. Watch this space...

Having, for another purpose, read a few definitions of feminism on blogs, followed by the "what feminism is to me" paragraph that most blogs have, I thought I'd stick my thoughts down about what it is to me.

First, I think it is both right and inevitable that feminism has no definition, in the sense implied by that word: definitive. It is many things to many people, it changes, it has principles but it is not a definable thing and keeping that in mind you will no doubt realise how personal the following passages are.

I sum up my feminist aspirations in one phrase, that I happened to utter in relation to a minor feminist point:

"If men have it, I want it."

Now, this doesn't do justice to the complexities associated with my feminism, but actually it is an interesting concept to apply to things to see if we've reached equality. It also doesn't fall into the trap of sounding like women want to be treated the same. Equality is not about being treated the same. You wouldn't treat a child the same as an adult, a (dis)abled person the same as an abled person. We are all people, we all have similarities, we all have essentially the same needs, but being treated the same is not the appropriate action. A blind person is entitled to have access to literature, the same literature as everyone else, but handing that person a standard paperback, because that's what we all have, is not appropriate. So sometimes we have to change what my local council love to call the "service delivery" and sometimes we have to change our attitude.

But if men have it, I want it. Simple.

 This is an extract from an e-mail I sent to my sister when she told me she got dreadlocks instead of being a slave to the hairdresser.  I thought its a good summing up of the issues with the beauty industry:

 

[Firstly,

"my mum forced me to get my hair cut because it was looking "unstyled""

 

That is the issue right there!!!  What is wrong with "unstyled" hair?  It's just hair!  When I saw you last I thought it looked really nice so surely by now it just looks (looked) a bit longer...  This is a HUGE issue because there's the fact that women's magazines, the media, fucking L'Oreal Elvive, Toni & Guy and Boots are all in this giant consumerist conspiracy to find (and invent!) anything and everything that can be wrong with you, *to sell you shit you don't need*.  

 

And it's not everything that's wrong with you, they don't help you out with your mental health, it's what is wrong with your "appearance", the surface of you, the bit that has nothing to do with your personality or values or interests.  And there's actually nothing wrong with it either, they just invent things to be wrong which become warped into *social conventions* and suddenly you're abnormal if you refuse to buy all their stupid products and services.

 

And this is a huge feminist issue because it is (still) disproportionately applied to women.  Not only does this force them into unwanted ways of dressing/appearing and put too much pressure on appearance (which can affect if you get a job or not, a promotion or not, your research published or not) but it also takes away a woman's time and her hard earned cash from her (newly allowed to have) job.  After pushing these standards down her throat for her whole life, a woman's life, and all women are trivialised when it comes to important matters:

"Women don't need the vote; what do they know about politics? All they do all day is primp up their hair!"

 

So yeah, that first bit about your mum saying you look unstyled, that's the main point here for me.  Our Mums were raised this way and think you're abnormal for not following all these things and they will argue "people will treat you differently if you look a certain way" (unstyled???) and yes, they will, but someone has to start challenging beliefs about the way a woman should look or the whole fucked up business will just continue.  And of course our mums would never rock the boat like that.

 

I don't wear makeup for this reason.  On the day of my graduation I was a bit ill with a cold and had panda eyes and everything and mum and kezz gently suggested that I wear make up and I said I didn't want to and they just couldn't believe it, couldn't understand how anyone would not want to look just a little bit better, just to cover the fact you look a bit ill.  I couldn't be arsed to go into it but I said, "it's just not me" and they looked at me like I was literally insane, like I was out of my tree.  But of course, in the pictures, I look fine!!  Who gives a shit?  And I looked like me, and felt like me!  I had not compromised my values.

 

ANYway,

 

Dreads, yes!  Hurrah...
 

In case you don't have them forever, you should know that a really large number of people just cut their own hair, or get a friend to do it.  And not shave it, just cut it a bit. I mean, this is how powerful "society" and the media are, because if your hair needs a cut, why not get someone to just cut a little bit off the bottom?  Because there's this terrible fear that it will look "bad".  But really, what could happen?  It's not perfectly straight?  OH no, what a disaster!  My hair goes wrong all the time but firstly, no-one says anything (if they even notice at all) and secondly you can't see any mistakes after a week because strangely, hair isn't perfectly straight anyway!]

So girls, that's why not to buy women's magazines, get your hair styled, wear make-up, shave your legs, or basically do anything at all to your body that you don't want to, and I include in that wearing sanitary towels and even antipersperant.  I am serious.

If your bullet or egg type vibrator takes an "n" size battery, a search on the internet in places you would expect to stock such batteries such as argos, homebase, maplin etc. will turn up nada.

I've just found out that many of the "n" type batteries are actually marked as alkaline "LR1" batteries. I'v noticed both Philips and Energizer make these batteries and they are available from many electronics shops. In my town I know both Currys digital and Maplin have them in stock for about £1.70 each. Make sure it's 1.5 volts and the battery itself should be marked "size N".

Et voila!!

Coming up in 20 days!! Get your pinholes out now (remembering how feminist they are!) The website includes instructions on how to make pinhole cameras.

Well, it was after being on Cerazette for about 9 months that I started cruising the internet to see if anyone else had been having problems with this pill as I was suspicious that what there was of my libido had ground away into nothingness.

I have to say I desperately wanted it to be the pill because I was getting really depressed about my lack of sexual feelings. On the internet there seemed to be almost a 50/50 split between women who were ok with it and actually liked it for its lack of symptoms compared to other brands they had tried, and women who had problems.

But the women who had problems seemed to me to have big problems. It's true Cerazette doesn't really make you gain weight or give you bad acne like other brands but I noticed women reporting a huge drop in libido, down to zero and now that I've come off it for 20 weeks I can say for definite that this pill not only reduced my libido to zero it also leveled out all of my moods so that I felt like a character from THX 1138. I also believe it had a small part to play in my bout of 9 months of anxiety.

Further effects (which prompted me to stop taking it) were extreme vaginal dryness causing itchiness and very painful sex. Though I went to be checked at the local sexual health clinic and had two appointments (negative results) no-one asked me about or suggested it might be to do with my contraception.

Later I timidly raised the issue with the nurse at my doctor's surgery and she declared there was not really any other alternative for me, except condoms, which she didn't sound very approving of.

The attitude of doctors in general about this pill are worrying. It is clearly the drug du jour because I've noticed half my friends have also been switched to this brand. I myself was switched when I complained of a headache and mentioned my history of migraines. The fact that I wasn't switched 6 years ago when I had my first serious migraine that caused a numb hand and temporary blindness is anybody's guess. I'd also like to say that it was a male doctor who I've never seen before who made this decision.

As I said, many women find this pill wonderful and many can take it because it is a Progesterone only (or mini) pill yet it is effective for up to 12 extra hours if you forget it, like the combined pill. But what this drug's marketing department I'm sure don't mention are the serious and emotionally damaging side effects that a significant number of women are finding on this pill - myself being one of them. The fact that doctors and nurses are blowing off concerns or saying there's no other option is demoralising and dangerous, if you weigh emotional and mental wellbeing as equally important as physical wellbeing.

For me, the itchiness and dryness was caused by a lack of periods (or hormones that lead to periods?) because I noticed that if I had a "breakthrough" bleed, the itchiness was temporarily eased.

So if you are in doubt:

1) Doctors do not get to tell you about your reproductive health - you do! You can stop the pill at any time and you don't have to tell them. You can always go back on it or another one if you like.

2) The reason this pill is effective for 36 hours may also be the reason it stops your periods completely and also desensitises your emotions as well as your libido. Not to mention changing the regulation of fluids in your vagina, leading to painful sex.

3)This drug has been implicated in contributing to anxiety/depression (it's in the side effects leaflet)

4)Trust your body. I knew something was up xmas 2007 but I didn't come off this pill until November 2008, I needed my partner to really support me in stopping. And I'm a feminist. I did it the hard way. If you think your pill is doing something bad for you, stop it. You can always go back on.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

I'm currently trying to wade through the literature/theory on photography so I admit I don't know it all but I'm surprised to find little on feminism and photography.

One bit I've found (and others I've heard of) are interested in 'reading' photography in a feminist way, and especially like to tackle the (male) gaze implied by photography.

But what about a feminist practitioner of photography?

I've been coming up against existential difficulties concerning photography because firstly, the most obvious thing about photography is you get to grasp an enormous phallus all day in the pursuit of your (second) favourite hobby!


Indeed, it seems the "lengths" one can go to are limitless.

So that's one problem. Should I enjoy my phallus-bellybutton or seek to disengage it? Of course it's attached to a machine analogous to a gun, it shoots and kills everything it sets its baleful eye on (see Susan Sontag for why photographs are all pictures of death).

There's also the difficulty of "truth" that a photograph apparently conveys - truth being something critiqued by feminist thought along with patriarchy, science, monotheism etc.

Having thought about this for quite a while I've come to think that the pinhole camera is much more feminist friendly. It has no phallus-lens but rather an opening, which is revealed to the light coming from the subject with no need for a mechanism (and therefore has no gun-click). The pinhole also needs more time to receive enough light from the scene to create a sufficient chemical reaction on the film. Holding up a flap for between 1 second to several hours seems more personal than shooting a shutter at fractions of a second.

It's still a bit fraught, however, since it still involves lifting a flap to "expose" a hole, but at least both camera and subject have to expose themselves to each other rather than the subject being murdered and the camera getting away scot-free.

Also, maybe since pinholes can give varying results and are affected by camera shake, portions that are out of focus and so-on, the photograph produced by a pinhole might not be forced to represent "truth" or "reality" but simply be what it is - an image.

Thanks to my sister I have a pinhole camera ready to go.

Does anybody else have these thoughts?

Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.


"The perennial surreal subject is How The Other Half Lives, to cite the innocently explicit title that Jacob Riis gave to the book of photographs of the New York poor that he brought out in 1890."


Page 56, fifth sentence of On Photography by Susan Sontag

and just to let you all know, this has little if anything to do with our current "downturn" (ha!) in the United Kingdom but rather to do with a slow accretion of differing sensibilities that I have become aware of over time.

My previous posts will  show you that in the last few years I've started to form the opinion that we should stop buying things.  Having this sensibility is useful as a student after all.  At first it was to do with feminism.

The other day my significant other wanted to buy a pack of mints.  Being near a certain large pharmaceutical/beauty/appliances/photo/food establishment, we popped in to get our mints.   As we crossed the threshold I suddenly realised why I had some weird niggling aversion to even setting foot in this particular shop.  Arrayed in an irregular pattern so as to obscure any clear route through them were the cosmetics counters.  10, 20, maybe a hundred different counters offering hundreds of different products with backlit brand logos and very shiny packages complete with very stylishly dressed, primped, straightened, bleached, coiffeured, whitened, ironed and be-masked assistants staring hungrily in my direction for the next poor sap who might succumb to being cooed over and sprayed so that they might part with three figure amounts of cash to boost via commision the miserable minimum wages these assistants earn.

Luckily their gaze slides over me and Nelson to more likely customers behind or to the side of us, streaming in to define their lifestyle by their purchases, because we look like what we are - people who dont give a shit about how we look.  Or not.  We look, well, just different.  There are no hair straighteners in our house and you can see it on our faces (though not by our hair because we both have dead straight hair already - a boon apparently).

But here's the niggle.  Navigating through those counters (that support up to four staff each) I feel the same dread as when I'm snaking through slow pedestrians on the high street trying to avoid the gaze of charity canvassers.  And yet the pressure of ignoring a make-up message is a huge one.  Don't you want to smell nicer? have straighter hair?  Cover those spots? Define those eyelashes?  Highlight those eyes? Colour those cheeks? Whiten those teeth?  The underlying message: don't you know that you are positively ugly?

I have never worn make-up, even now I don't know how to apply it.  And I am confident in my opinion that I never want to and never will, but still I felt a pressure in my chest rather like bathing in the mineral-rich water of the new baths - crushing.

Women constantly yet halfheartedly call for sanitary towels to be tax-free.  This thinking is wrong headed in the first place.  Like the make-up, perfume, magic ointment etc. they are a luxury commercial item subject to taxes just like everything else.  The only answer is to stop buying it all.  Stop buying make-up. (yes, and sanitary towels - don't look at me like that!) Its sole purpose is to make you buy shit you don't need.  It doesn't make you feel better - it stops you from feeling worse.  If no-one in the west, or even your workplace, or town, wore make-up and instead pale untanned skin was valorised, wrinkles were a mark of the older woman and therefore something which gained one respect and deferance, if spots were a sign of youth and signified extra care and support from elders plus as marks of beauty due to only being present on the young - who would wear make-up then?  Who would use anti-wrinkle cream?  Who would spend hours on a sunbed?

Incidentally, if wrinkles are undesirable in beauty terms, why are tans so fashionable?  Not only does UV damage cause cancer but it directly causes wrinkles.  (Not only that but studies suggest that pale skin is more attractive to men because it indicates youth and therefore fertility).  Why tans then?  Because if we didn't have wrinkles they would lose money on anti-wrinkle cream.  And tans make more money than being pale - sunbeds, spray-on tan, tinted moisturiser, anti-wrinkle cream.... what could they sell us to look pale?  Parasols? 
Your self esteem, how beautiful you are, how fashionable you look is all, ALL about the money.

And it's not just the money, it's the control.  Your life is being controlled from the outside by make-up.  It sounds funny.  But lets substitute make-up, for anything else, I dunno, cucumber.

Little Jessica is obsessed with cucumber.  She spends around 20-30 hours per month studying different brands and types of cucumber in the shops.  She smells, tastes, and applies different types of cucumber for hours on end in order to get the right one for her.  Even though she has no direct need for cucumber to maintain her health or wellbeing, she spends between £50- £300 on cucumber per month.  She applies cucumber every day and spends a further £30 per month on products to remove the cucumber at the end of the day.  She can't leave the house without cucumber on her face.  She certainly can't attend her workplace without quite a lot of cucumber adhering to her.  Does Jessica have an anxiety disorder over cucumber?  It seems that way to me.

We have to stop buying, and stop buying into, this bizarre and powerful form of mass societal control.

I haven't posted for a while due to my gradually running out financial situation, which came to an ultimate low of having to sign on. Most depressing thing I've ever done. But to cut a long story short I found out today I've got a job! So screw you job seekers!

And, I'm participating in the Zero Waste Challenge next week! Part of the challenge is measuring the previous week's rubbish, thinking about what you've thrown away and planning for the week to come. Since being all "recycling is good" switched on in the summer I've reduced the amount of waste we make, however it is still not enough.

Here is a short list of things I know I throw away at least once a week off the top of my head:
leftover rice, pasta, veg (peelings and rotten), coffee grinds, teabags, egg shells, fruit skins

Lots of gone bad food especially :veg, cheese, yoghurt & the other half of the tin..

Packaging for:
fresh chicken, pasta, rice, cous-cous, noodles, chocolate bars, yoghurt, butter, inner bag on cereal/porridge, cheese, deodorant, toothpaste (tube), bottle lids, jar lids.

Also, tin foil with grease on it having grilled chicken/sausages, store receipts, plastic carrier bags, tissues.

Juice cartons was on the list but recently found out that tetrapak have finally sorted out recycling facilities: www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk hurrah! So far they can only recycle 80% of the carton (ie the paper part) but that's better than nothing.

Even though I have given up plastic bags for around a year they still find their way into my house! (Nelson's fault) And I haven't got anywhere near through all the ones collected under my sink.

My biggest thing is food waste, so I will do all the tips of reusing leftovers, check sell by dates and starting a love affair with my freezer but I have no composting facilities and this whole area is flats with very few garden space... it says on the website "just ask a neighbour to let you use their compost" - easier said than done.

At the end of the week I'll let you know what my rubbish weighed!

Just a post to show more pics taken with the Halina.

While in London (last image was taken on "B" setting)

Alive giraffes:



Stuffed giraffe:










Here's an example of the what the ole pink tights trick does...





Here is a double exposure that I can't remember where I took it.. well one image is some ship near London Bridge tube on the way to the Tate Modern, but I don't where the sunburst patterns are from... also used the pink tights :-)



More pink tight goodness... The Tate and Christchurch Spitalfields by Nicholas Hawksmoor.







And next is just what the "B" setting can do. All the books will tell you to use a tripod and take elaborate images of the moon etc. but "B" is much more flexible than that. Whilst in the Dino exhibit of the natural history museum I got my little cheapo digital camera (pentax optio e35) and listened to the length of the shutter speed it used to take a pic, then simply set up my Halina to a largish aperture (f4 probably) stuck shutter speed on "B" and tried to hold it for as long as my digicam was doing (sounded about 1 sec.) I was expecting blurry but cool shots, but thanks to my little Halina here are the results:









Rockin'

I have purchased a scanner and scanned some pics then laboriously transferred them to my pc and then resized them and then waited ten milion hours while they uploaded to my website via a 36,600bps connection (yes, that's BITS per second) but they're finally here!! Pics from my trash cams, so check out my previous posts.... now.

I got this off ebay for £3 plus postage, in a classic case of "my uncle left me his camera collection and I know nothing about cameras so I'm selling it on ebay".  I've since heard that this camera introduced many people into the world of photography sometime in the 70's-80's (sans the "Electric" bit for earlier models) because of its ease of use and good results.

The Halina is not a compact, or automatic, though it is quite small for a manual camera and comes with an inbuilt lightmeter.  Not knowing how it operates I shot a roll through and was super-pleased with the results.

The light meter is still functioning accurately (allowing for the fact it is affected by tilting the camera), there are no light leaks whatsoever and the focus guide is both easy to use and accurate. 

This camera is not an SLR and therefore does not allow you to focus through the viewfinder, it has little parallax lines and thats it.  However the focus ring comes with little marks on telling you where to focus according to how many feet away the subject is (3,4,5,7,10,15,30 and inf.) but it also has markings showing you the range of distance that will be in focus for each aperture.  So for example, if you are at f5.6 and focusing about 7 feet away, the markings tell you that, due to depth of field, objects between 6 and 9 feet will be in focus. Similarly if at f16 focusing at 15 feet, the markings line up the focus ring and let you know you are in focus from 7-35 feet.

The light meter gives you a number between 7 and 17 and as you twist the shutter speed and aperture rings a little number is revealed in a window.  In this way you can get the right exposure, or, deliberately subvert it, or, have a different combination of fstop and shutter speed to achieve different results.

I think this camera turned people on so much because a)it's very simple yet gives very accurate pictures and b) you can't help but learn about how cameras and photography works.

The pics I took were all correctly exposed and perfectly focussed and the colour saturation was fab.  The lens is such that what you see in the view finder is what you get, except possibly needing to adjust a degree or two to allow for the fact that the viewfinder is physically a little higher on the camera than the lens.

The Halina also has a "B" setting, allowing for more experimental photography if desired. Below is a pic:

I used this camera to tryout a soft focus trick which is to pull some nylon tights over the lens.  Black tights give the effect with no colour cast however I decided pink tights would look great if it worked and it did indeed - the few shots I took look dreamy and as if they are cross-processed!  I made sure I pulled the tights over the lightmeter to check the effect (stopping down two stops seems to do it) and erred on the side of extra light.  The pics were in overcast conditions too and still looked fab. See below:

Halina, my little gem.