Braun Paxette II 35mm camera, results

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Braun Paxette II 35mm camera. Photograph gallery.

Vietnamese building bricks

I've long had a slight preoccupation with Vietnamese brick piles, it's that repetitive pattern. They also have a lovely sound to them when you put one down. Weird, I know. These were photographed in late December 2019 in Ho Chi Minh City.

The Paxette has always been a little odd in the way it treats colours, often a little washed out or warmer when saturated.

Four penguins of the Apocalypse

Four insane 2 metre high polystyrene penguins. My sister in law had her husband carve these from polystyrene for the annual party in January 2020, and then I painted two of them. I couldn't resist waving the flag, but not wanting to be too serious about it, put a sting in the tail. I recorded these with the Paxette, as they await their fate after the end of the party. The right hand image was actually taken with a mobile phone and the colours are spot on, serving to illustrate the Paxette's warmer colour rendering here.

Fairground ride

The Paxette is able to render colours about right when down sun, this image was taken at 1/25th to get the movement and dates from 2006. The shutter helps here, as the release is exceptionally smooth and light. All told the Paxette has much to recommend it and will produce pleasing images in challenging conditions. It does have a couple of downsides, the aperture setting is a bit of a fiddle without any detents so you need to visually confirm the aperture, it also turns within the focus barrel - so you need to make sure the focus stays were you want if you change the aperture. The film counter won't reset itself - so remember to do this after loading. Finally, and this may be a quirk of this example, the transport clutch will allow slip at the end of the film, so you can happily keep winding past the end of the film thinking you are creating photographic masterpieces.

Steelwork bridge in Vienna

A nice bit of Austrian steelwork in Vienna. February 2020.

Vuchetych

Detail from The Ukrainian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War, originally sculpted in Soviet times by Vuchetych. This monumental sculpture is one of the best examples of this socialist art, the message is bold, unrelenting, it's visual power striking. When viewed in the whole it tells a story as if fluid, it bursts from it's concrete bunker as an unstoppable force, as was the intention. In view of more recent politics it may be a bit problematical for Ukrainians in the 21st century, but as a piece of art it's hard not to appreciate it.

In fact I wanted a much higher contrast image than this when I took the photograph, I was imagining the image in monochrome. The image appears a little hazy, as if the lens needed a clean, but I suspect the lens would benefit from a hood as it's only very lightly recessed into the focus barrel.

A further detail from the same sculpture and part of the brutalist concrete structure that forms part of the whole. Again there is noticeable flare near the top centre.

Church roof adornment

orthodox church roof fittings

Near the Kiev Perchersk Lavra is a workshop that makes roof adornments for Orthodox churches, details of which are photographed here in March 2020. This basic Paxette II camera doesn't have a rangefinder, so focus is the age old guess and hope method. The right hand image was at the Pointikar's limit of 30inches (76cm).

St. Andrews at the top of Andrewskaya Descent in Kyiv. A favourite haunt as there is often a flea market there with many vintage cameras beckoning, although asking prices are way too high, but it's fun to look. This image was taken in July 2020 during my last ride out on the bicycle early in the morning during one of the Covid lockdowns, making the street unusually quiet, I subsequently returned to the UK to sit out the pandemic.

Water weed swaying lazily in the River Itchen near my Hampshire home in August 2020.