it seems that i have been asleep at the wheel for the past 8 months but i assure you i haven’t !

its been a really strange new year ( to say the least ) and i have handfuls of stories to tell  …

i bought another ancient rolleicord ( i never can afford rolleiflexes ).  i had one for a while years ago

but sold it to a friend and regretted selling it almost as soon as i dropped it off.  its funny, my first MF camera

was an old kodak reflex that was my uncles, i used it in high school and when my cousin needed it i sent it back …

then in college i scraped my $$ and went to an old camera shop a few miles away called “king arthur’s camera shop”

and bought a used yashica mat 124G  and LOVED it.  well i loved it until i ran out of money a few years later and sold it to

a good friend along with armloads of 120 film.  yup i regretted it soon after she drove off! fast worard a few months ago

and the MF bug bit me again …  i got another ancient triotar lensed rolleicord but IDK it didn’t have a flash sync so i sold it to

someone in NYC for the exact price i paid ( i tend to do that ) and found me another rolleicord through the

photrio classifides …  it had a flash sync and has been a lot of fun to use.  its a rollicord V   as much fun as it is,

i LOVE not having to look DOWN all the time.  left is right , right is left  its not hard to figure out but i’d rather just look and not have to think..

i was bitten by the keiv bug…

well, not really the keiv bug but the ARAX bug.

keiv cameras have a rich history in the soviet union.  based on western or eastern europen brands they did their own thing

and they were OK ..  but here in the west i guess OK isn’t good enough !

then there is ARAX …  these guys got the best of the keiv cameras and rebuilt them …  fixed the light leaks, fixed the mechanisms

that might have been flawed …

i had my sights on an arax cm, basically refered to as a “hasselbladski” because it is a russian copy of a early hasselblad. i scoured ebay

and for sale listings and eventually realized thatwhile it is a great camera, well, with something that sophisticated,

there are usually things that go wrong,  so instead  … i settled on a arax 60  and to be honest i couldn’t be happier !

i was sooo close to ordering it right from the arax factory, but i found a seller here in the states who i knew and he was as excited

to sell it to me as i was to buy it !  he sold it to me with the original standard lens and some close up “tubes” … but i had heard about

the mythical qualities of the sonar lenses …  so i ended up getting some nice deals on a pair of sonar portrait lenses …  not sure

if i can say they are mythic, but they are nice and do the trick !

i’ve made some portriats with the camera and some general photographs and can’t be happier with the results.

not to say i won’t use my rolleicord from time to time but for now the arax 60 is doing the trick !