photo: hand tinted Grand Canal Dock

 

Here’s a Rolleicord image that I’ve hand tinted – I’ve taken a bit of liberty with the colours of the poles, but I like it all the same. It started off life as a BW 120 neg which was scanned and then taken into Photoshop. I roughly matted out the shapes of some of the poles and selectively coloured them.

GraCanDo is a concatenation* of Gra[nd] Can[al] Do[ck] like TriBeca in New York, and I’m claiming it!

*concatenation is the wrong word but you know what I mean ...

Actually it’s a syllabic abbreviation. But there again, maybe it’s a neologism in which case I might have some issues next time I see my psychiatrist …

photo: the new old camera, Rolleicord V


I’m not sure where I got the sudden impulse to go out and buy a medium format camera, but wherever it came from, that’s precisely what I did. I went out and searched eBay, bid and bought one last week. It arrived nicely wrapped and reeking of cigarette smoke and ready for its new owner.

The first thing that struck me was the heft of the thing, it’s a Rolleicord V and weighs in at nearly a kilo, precision German engineering at its best. As for its age, it was probably made in about 1956 (or not long after the Coronation for the queenophiles out there), so a shade over 50. It’s in immaculate cosmetic condition and seems to have been owned by a careful or sporadic photographer.

Here’s hoping I can do it some justice, the first two rolls out of it have shown some promise and that beautiful large negative has great detail.