A Mirror On Your Christmas Tree

I came up with a fun thing to do with my pocket mirrors this Christmas...hang them on your Christmas tree! Here's the front and back of one that's my original design:





I've saved a few special, one of a kind, images I'm recycling from vintage magazines published around Christmas and they'll be perfect for these. Here' my first two:





I have more vintage Christmas ones still to come, as well as something special for collectors of vintage cameras or guitars, or for you favorite computer geek (because I like those things, too). Here's one I made with a picture I took of the Miranda G 35mm slr I got years ago from my dad (I blogged about this camera rehere):



I'll be happy to make you some custom pocket mirror ornaments to hang on your tree. I can make you one that says Merry Christmas to someone special or use your photo to make one. Just leave me a comment here or a convo on Etsy and I'll fix you right up!

Vintage Camera: Miranda G

In my last post I mentioned that I collect vintage cameras. I thought I'd share one of them with you. It's the one that really got me started on this kick.

When I was in college, my dad gave me his old Miranda G outfit. A fully mechanical 35mm SLR, with a 50 f1.9 lens, a 135 f3.5 lens and a 2x teleconverter. Having only used Kodak Instamatics up to this point, I was eager to try it out. He also gave me a small hand-held light meter...a necessity with this camera, since it had no meter built in.

I would point the meter at the palm of my hand in bright sunlight (or the brightest part of a room), then again in the shadows (or the darkest part of a room) and that would give me my range of F-stops and shutter speeds. Then I'd tuck the light meter in the back pocket of my jeans and wouldn't need to take it out again unless the light changed. Shooting this way forced me to be aware of how the light fell on my subject...or didn't...and adjust my settings accordingly. Of course, back then, I wouldn't know if I'd done it right until days later when I'd get my prints back from the lab. That was before the invention of the 1-hour labs!

I discovered that those old Miranda lenses were pretty sharp. Later when I decided it would be nice if I could get another lens or two to add to this outfit, I started doing some research about Miranda cameras. No internet access then, so I got most of my information from Shutterbug magazine. I found out that the Miranda camera company had been out of business for awhile, but back in the 1960's they had a good reputation and were used by some pros. They were one of the camera companies, along with Nikon, to come out of Japan and catch the attention of the working pros of the time.

But the camera I had, the Miranda G, was a professional model. It had mirror lock-up, a feature considered a necessity for doing good copy work. It also had a removable pentaprism with several different versions available, including a couple with light meters, one with a flip up viewer (like you'd find on the Rolleiflex), and one with a flip-up magnifying viewfinder. It also had interchangeable focusing screens so you could pick your preference.

But what really set the Miranda apart was the lens mount. It was a dual mount, with an external bayonet and and internal screw mount. With these two mounts and a variety of adapters Miranda made, you could use your Miranda SLR with just about any lens on the market, including Nikon, Pentax, and even Leica lenses.

I always thought this was a very elegant looking camera, with some distinctive features. The front-mounted shutter release was one of them. I found that I could easily take pictures at slower shutter speeds with this camera that with others because the placement of the shutter release allowed me to gently squeeze it between my finger on the front of the camera and my thumb on the back, making camera-shake much less likely.

You can read more about Miranda Cameras here.

Now here are a few photos of my Miranda G:

My Dad's Cameras

A few posts back I mentioned my dad and all the pictures he took of my family when I was a kid. As Father's Day approached this year I wanted to make something special for him. I'd been combing through all my old photography magazines I'd collected, looking for small images of cameras and other paraphenalia that I could use to make buttons, magnets and thumb tacks for my etsy site. So I went digging again to see if I could find the cameras Dad used.

I found them.

A beautiful full page ad for the Yashica 44.

A smaller image of the Leicaflex SLR and an even smaller one of the Miranda G from old annual buyer's guides included in the magazines.

Not wanting to take a chance on ruining my only copies of these images during the construction of my projects, I opted to scan these into my computer, tweak the brightness and contrast and sharpen them up a bit. Then I used printouts of them instead of the originals.

For each camera, I carefully cut out the entire image, leaving only the camera itself and no background. I glued these to green cardstock and cut mats for each out of black matboard. The Yashica 44, matted, is 5 x 7 inches and each of the others are the standard ACEO size of 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches, like others I've posted on my Etsy site.

I had called Dad to warn him that his Father's Day present would be arriving late, but he said he didn't mind. We've been spreading out our holidays lately, making them last a long time after letting the dates slip up on us too late for gifts and cards to arrive on time. Mom was the one who always remembered such things and since her death a little over a year ago the rest of us have been trying to play catch-up. Oh, well...it makes those special occasions last a little longer.

I finally mailed these today.

I hope he likes them. I think he will.