She tells all.

Psychic, baby.

Sandwiched between Vets & Pets and a Valero gas station on El Camino at Pomeroy, this was one of a handful of neon signs behind windows of a Psychic Readings shop that was very near our old Santa Clara home. Pretty cool.

I’ve taken shots of a few of those signs over the years, but this one is my fave. I found it again digging through the archive back in May. Digital, made with the Pentax 330GS.

A quick check of Google maps and it looks like the building’s still there.

I wonder if she knew about 2020… hmmmm.

Offbeat.

Fun and funky lenses.

It must be my love of toy cameras that compels me to experiment with offbeat lenses on my mirrorless cameras.

I have a good collection of weird add-ons, from Lensbabies to C-mount CCTV lenses and I recently added an Olympus M.Zuiko 9mm ƒ/8.0 Fisheye Body Cap Lens to use on my m43 boxes. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but reviews and sample images I found were convincing.

Pictured above are are four from my stash of curious and weird lenses… Olympus 9mm ƒ/8 Fisheye Body Cap, Thingyfy Pinhole Pro S, Pentax 25mm ƒ/1.4 CCTV, Lensbaby Composer Pro/Sweet 35.

New Old Stock.

Quirky new addition.

This little guy arrived in the mail last week. It’s a Smena 8M. A Russian viewfinder camera.

An eBay purchase, it’s New Old Stock. Seriously. The box that showed up in the mail was sealed and unopened. They were manufactured from 1952 until the late 80s, but a little internet research reveals this one’s likely closer to the late 80s.

To call this thing quirky would be an understatement.

Full manual. 35mm. No battery. The shutter needs to be cocked before each shot.

The aperture ring – ƒ/16 to ƒ/4 – is inconvenient as hell, and loading and unloading film will be interesting because the rewind is a smaller-than-a-dime button with a serrated edge on top of the camera. No crank. The film take-up spool is loose.

It has shutter speeds from 1/8 to 1/250 second, or one can go by sunny to cloudy icons at the top of the lens barrel.

There are videos aplenty on YouTube, if you’re the curious type.

So, besides the Smena 8M, I’m down to about 20 cameras to document:

• Fujifilm Instax Square SQ6
• Diana Mini
• Shen-Hao HZX45-II
• Polaroid Land Camera Model 180
• Voigtlander Bessa I
• Minolta XG-1
• Minolta XG-7
• Polaroid Colorpack II
• Argus 520
• Debonair 120
• Pinholaroid (hacked Polaroid Colorpack II pinhole)
• Sprocket Rocket
• 8Banners Mc (pinhole)
• Zero Image 2000 (pinhole)
• Ondu 6×12 Multiformat (pinhole)
• Fujifilm XQ1
• Spartus Fullview
• Argus Argoflex
• Yashica-Mat 66

It’ll take a while to go through them all since they’re mostly old film cameras, but it’ll give me a chance – and excuse – to use up my film stash.

I’m pretty sure I’ll keep adding cameras to the list – because GAS – but putting these cameras through their paces will be my main focus for 2020-2021.

Take a few seconds and check out what I’ve put together so far over on @rustyshutters.