Quote of the day

Regarding the Voigtlander Bessamatic:

Should one of these cameras ever jam on you then they leave the shutter blades half open. Don't touch those blades. Instead, whack the camera on top of the prism housing with the base of your hand as hard as you can and it will unjam. Don't worry about breaking the camera. Worry about breaking your hand. [Advice for buying old medium-format cameras on eBay]

Other camera stuff

I picked up my YashicaMat from the shop today--it appears to work fine mechanically, although I haven't developed the roll of test film I put through it. Certainly the shutter works considerably better than it used to, and there's no fungus in the lens any more. And layah even managed to take a picture with it, albeit after extensive instruction. Only major problem is some of the coating came off, and so it's going to be flare prone. It might be flare prone in an interesting way, which is the only reason why I haven't had that fixed yet.

I also picked up some photographic supplies, including what I thought was a flash cord, but turned out to be a cord where one end of it was fitted for a flash and the other was fitted for what appears to be a wall plug. The merit of this eludes me. It will get exchanged for something that is not likely to send 120 V AC into my poor flash pronto.