NEX-3 and the Voigtlander Color Skopar 35 F2.5

I am still not over the fact that this beloved setup of mine is gone forever.

The Sony NEX-3 came out more than a decade (13 years!) ago. I was already a Sony digital user with Sony's first A100 DSLR from 2006. But the mirrorless usecase (and hence the future) was obvious to me so I sold my DSLR and got the Nex-3 with it's 18-55 kit lens.

The reason I came to Sony was that my friend Himanshu had a couple of Minolta lenses. So when I earned my first money and ran straight to the JJ Mehta camera shop we naturally gravitated towards the Minolta cameras. I got the Minolta Dynax 5. After a while Minolta got taken over by Konica and they rebranded as Konica-Minolta. After a while apparently Konica sold the camera division to Sony and Sony continued with the same Minolta A mount. Hence the Sony A100 with the A mount.

Coming back to this setup: the NEX-3 was a fantastic camera. Super light weight and compact - hardly larger than a serious point & shoot. But the lens was long and of average quality. So I went in search of used rangefinder lenses on the forums as the new E mount was adaptable to other mounts. I purchased this Voigtlander Color Skopar 35/2.5 lens from a stree photographer in New York city. This lens, even with the adapter, made the overall package exceptionally compact. People did not believe that it was an APS-C setup. The rendering of the lens was endearing and many of my best photos are clicked with it. I miss it.

Sunday Flower

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him”
Voltaire

Sunday Flower

“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true”
Bertrand Russell

Sunday Flower

“Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination”
Immanuel Kant

Sunday Flower

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius

Sunday Flower

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
Marcus Aurelius

Sunday Flower

“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
Francis Bacon

Sunday Flower

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Socrates

Sunday Flower

“All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti

Zdislav Beksinski, Artist

“I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams”
- Zdzisław Beksiński

I came across the work of this Polish artist today. The paintings are so haunting that I was compelled to explore more of his work. He can evoke the dystopian nightmare of our deepest depths.



You can explore this work too here: https://www.wikiart.org/en/zdislav-beksinski/
Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdzisław Beksiński

Sunday Flower

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

– Dalai Lama

Spirituality

Spirituality, originally uploaded by quasi's mobile.

“The mainspring of every race lies in its spirituality, and the death of that race begins the day that spirituality wanes and materialism gains ground”

~ Swami Vivekananda.

Serious Observations of a Funny World

Pensive

Pensive, originally uploaded by quasi's mobile.

Of a punctured tyre and slanting lines.

Serious Observations of a Funny World

High on Music, Listening to the Booze

I started following a very interesting blog recently : High on Music, Listening to the Booze. He inspires me to listen to my music with a little bit more heart. His recent Steely Dan number reminded me of one of those I used to like of Steely.

Past: Vidyanagari Campus

Photo by Vijay Rao

The Vidyanagari Campus of the University of Mumbai in the MID-80's. Photo taken from the water tower by my adventurous father. He had done a similar stunt sometimes in the mid 70's too.

How different was the whole world at that time. I remember the first time I had come to this place (before we actually shifted) was to see the Haley's comet. The program was held on top of the Library building. The campus seemed so huge at that time... or even later when we played chor-poolice all over the place in our summer vacations.

One Rainy Evening.

One Rainy Evening. That is the approach to my bulding. It was past sunset I think. It was a dull rainy evening. 8 second exposure on tripod with me and Mhatre to yap. Mhatre holding the umbrella over me and the camera. Fun. Then that time in Matheran when I mooned near the rock patch were Vishu got stuck. Then the other time on Irshalgad with Percy and Mhatre when we cooked amidst large quantities of red crawly insects. Then that time on Visapur with Percy and Milind running around jumping and the wild buffalos who gave us a scare and how the 4 of us slept in a 2 man tent with all the baggage and equipment and how the dogs pissed all around the tent.

I have had some really good times.