I have the Ultron 28mm f1.9, a 28mm viewfinder as well as the R3A.
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I fell asleep last night wondering what the first images were that I could remember. Of course I once told my mother that I remembered little blue birds and butterflys when I was crib-bound.. She told me there was one of those circling mobile things over my crib with birds and butterflys but she tried to convince me that I must have seen it on my younger sister's crib.
Oh no - hers were pink - I insisted.
After that, it must be a jump of a few years - and I remembered the labels on the 78 rpm records they used to play to put me to sleep: mostly the lives of famous musicians: Chopin, Franz Liszt, Beethovan. There were black paper cutouts portraits of the musicians...
Oh - it was all black and white alright. I dream in color, but I see in black and white.
Newspapers - obviously hadn't discovered how to print those smeary mis-aligned color shots.
Color television - just around the corner.
Manual typewriters. Black on white. No screens. White paper. Carbon paper. White-out.
The world may have been in color, but the information tunnel came through in black and white.
The movies - there were already color movies - but most were still black and white.
I can't remember any color on the streets where I grew up. You had concrete; gray-looking buildings. Whether there was a tree or a bush anywhere - I can't recall any.
The world was rectangular, with sharp edges; mostly gray - with daubs of black and white.
The men wore gray hats with dark suits over white shirts. Gray hats to top them off.
Color only arrived with women, food and the occassional sports car which spun down the boulevard.
Sure, there was some color. My bedroom walls were blue, but a thin watery blue painted over chalky white.
And there was the tropical fish tank. Neon fish. Vivid orange guys who kept losing their tails to the zebra fish. This was our home entertainment center. But every few months they'd all die off of some mysterious disease. The tropical fish must have sensed that they had landed in the wrong black and white world.
Colorful creatures always died off ahead of their time: the rabbit with the pink eyes; the brilliant green turtles never lived through a winter. My loud neighbors - flashes of color you met in the hallway - I think they were from New Orleans - they moved after two years.
My father - I have some pictures of him age 30 and my mother - wore severe black rimmed glasses...
It was - at best - a desaturated world I grew up in: popping flash bulbs creating harsh shadows. Burning your fingertips as you popped them from the dish. Later, blue cube flashes for the instamatic.
That spinning cube flash was a tremendous leap since you could fire it off four times and it would revolve to a fresh bulb for each shot. Though you did have to remember how many times you had used it.
And, if I'm not mistaken, you stuck a cartridge in the instamatic. I don't think you had to actually touch any film.
I always took the family pictures. I was deemed to be technical because I knew how to load the film and advance it. There are the pictures of my parents and sisters in Washington on the steps of the Capitol. I'm nowhere to be found. I was seven when we went. The pictures from that trip are hanging on my sister's wall...
