I now have a disabled toilet key!

On the advice of a friend, I have been online and bought a disabled toilet key - see https://shop.disabilityrightsuk.org/products/radar-key - so that I can use one of those locked toilets for disabled people.  

I am not of course officially disabled. The aches and pains of my advancing years don't really count. Nor does my bad right knee, especially on a good day. But more than once I've wished that I could get into a disabled toilet when ordinary ones have been shut, usually in the evenings, or perhaps all day in winter. Of course, large supermarkets have toilets, but it feels wrong to pop in and out without buying anything. And you definitely shouldn't misuse a pub or hotel like that. But surely even cash-strapped councils, who close ordinary public toilets in the winter if they can, keep locked toilets available for disabled folk who need to go. You just need a key to get in. 

Obviously, using a disabled toilet is a way of jumping any queue outside an ordinary public loo. Even so, I'd have no qualms about doing that if my need were pressing. But in principle my new key will be an emergency standby, not to be routinely or frivolously used, and I must be sure that I don't keep a properly-disabled person waiting outside while I'm doing my stuff inside. Although, as they say, not every disability shows. Maybe that's a line I can trot out if I emerge and encounter somebody in a wheelchair who has got soaked in the rain. Maybe I'd better carry my stick around more often, to suggest a degree of impairment. I imagine that truly disabled persons get very annoyed if their special facilities are usurped by sprightly types who could easily go somewhere else.

The key itself looks like this:

It's not really pocket-friendly. You could certainly carry it around in a bag, but it's just a little too long and substantial to attach to a keyring. I'm going to keep mine in the car, for use when away from home and out and about. 

I'm a bit sceptical about one key opening all disabled doors, all over the country. I suppose it will. Well, I'll be trying it out as soon as possible. 

The little Leica finally takes its 100,000th shot

It's been a long time coming, but my long-term favourite camera has finally taken its 100,000th shot. This happened yesterday evening. When transferring the day's haul to the laptop for processing, I saw with delight that the camera's shot counter stood at '2030435'. This meant 'shot 435 of folder 203'. The first folder was numbered 100, and a new folder got created after every 999th shot. So the camera was actually saying 'I've reached shot number 103,435'. 

But there were some adjustments to be made. On three occasions in the past I'd accidentally or deliberately reset the shot total, increasing it, and I knew by how much. Besides this, the camera skipped one shot every time it opened a new folder, so it gradually overcounted. I've maintained a spreadsheet to keep track of all this from the very beginning in June 2009, and it let me deduce the correct current total. 

Above, two extracts from that spreadsheet. Yesterday evening I nudged past the 100,000 shot milestone by two shots. Hurrah!

I'm very proud of the little Leica for doing this. Here is the wee beastie, taken recently with my phone. It's no longer pristine, but it's wearing well for a sixteen year old device that has been handled multiple times a day for much of its life.

It has its limitations. The main snag is the small ten-megapixel CCD sensor, which limits its tonal range and ability to record fine detail at a distance. Nor does it perform well after sunset, unless the subject is brightly lit. I've never found any of this much of a problem though. The little Leica is good for nearly everything I want to do with it. And although the rendering is not the very last word in sharpness, I do like it, whether for colour or black and white work. Here's a selection of recent pictures which, I think, show what this small and versatile camera can do.

The little Leica is particularly good for close-up work. 

Despite the low interior light in the shot above, the lit-up glass of prosecco comes out sharply, bubbles and all. If you click on the shot, you can see the effervescence just above the rim of the glass.

I'd never really looked closely at the riverside artwork above. Looking into the serrated grooves, I could see tunnels in the metal. I carefully inserted the little Leica and took a series of black-and-white shots. Here's two of them.

Just like full-sized caves! Or perhaps one's sinus passages. Not many cameras are small enough to manoeuvre into cracks like these.

A lot of my camera outings take place in the Golden Hour in the evening. And why not? It makes colours glow with extra radiance. The little Leica's CCD sensor does strong colour well.

I especially like this camera for food shots.

As I said, the little Leica's vintage sensor can't cope well after dark. The pictures look noisy. And yet that can be used for effect. Here are some 2022 shots taken in Cirencester. The church tower was lit up in amber and blue light, and to my mind the noise has given a couple of these photos an attractively distressed appearance. 

I've never been able to produce anything similar with LXV. Or at least, not without a lot of post-processing to create the same look.

And now the little Leica D-Lux 4 has shown definitive longevity. Sixteen years old, so many shots taken, and it's still a great tool for image-making. It seems that age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety. It mustn't go back in the cupboard again, in semi-retirement, as merely a standby camera. It doesn't deserve that. So I am promoting it over LXV's head. Assuming the latter makes a full recovery. 

They are in fact quite similar in what they can do. LXV is the better option for faithfully capturing the details of a scene, the better for recording an occasion. Its pictures are sharp and clear. But I think the little Leica has more creative possibilities, simply because it is old and imperfect, and the pictures sometimes bleary. 

I'm most certainly looking at 200,000 shots with it now. Who knows, it may be immortal and will outlast me!

Actually, how long should a small camera like this last? Large, heavily-used professional cameras are built to go on to 500,000 shots and more, with a lifespan of quite possibly a decade. The Nikon D700 I bought in 2008 would have been one example. I sold it for wedding use, and I'm certain that it was busy for many years, and is likely to be active, or at least on standby duty, even today. But a little point-and-shoot for the consumer market? Even if meant to be an 'enthusiast's camera', and carrying the Leica logo to boot? 

Sixteen years without major component failure, or multiple dents and scrapes, or some little-used part becoming gummed up, or something vital breaking in an unlucky fall...it does seem that my little Leica has been exceptionally durable, and perhaps exceptionally fortunate. Well, I do look after my possessions, as my cars will testify, but even so, a device that has braved wind, rain, sun, snow, sand, windy clifftops and steamy kitchens without coming to harm is a device that is beloved by the gods and protected by them - as possibly I am too, as the owner. Policy dictates that I'm not going to give offence by spurning their gift!  

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LXV is in hospital, and may yet recover

Almost two months ago I reported with sadness the terminal illness of LXV, my Leica X Vario. I suspected an irreparable electronic fault. Well, since then there have been hopeful developments. Perhaps LXV will cheat the Grim Reaper after all.

I dip into a Leica blog - Macfilos - almost daily. It's just one of several photo websites I look at, to keep abreast of the latest news, and to learn about other photographers' approaches to this absorbing, addictive, technical, creative, and useful pastime. Another reader, who had seen one of my recent blog posts about LXV's malaise, put me in touch with David Slater in Middlesex, who undertakes the repair and servicing of those older Leica cameras that Leica itself no longer handles. After a preliminary exchange of emails on what the problem seemed to be, and the likely cost of a fix, I posted LXV of to Mr Slater on 24th June. 

His initial thinking about what might be amiss proved mistaken. I had an email from him late last week: it seems that the shutter may be the culprit, not the rear screen. I don't know yet whether he can deal with that. A necessary part may no longer be available. But it's not necessarily bad news, and I hope to hear more before I set off for the West Country in a few days' time.

If a repair is still possible, I will surely want to go ahead with it. It's almost a no-brainer; any repair cost must be much cheaper than buying a replacement camera of the same calibre. (I will of course have to request that he defers return of the camera until I get home again)

LXV will however find that back at home things have changed. The little Leica D-Lux 4 has become my main day-to-day camera. The next post will reveal one big reason why it has been promoted from semi-retirement to the top job. But setting that aside, the little Leica's small size and weight are decisive factors. LXV has a larger sensor, and produces sharper, better-toned pictures with truer colour, and it performs better in low-light. But, compared to the D-Lux 4, it's decidedly bulky and hefty. It's still OK for carrying around all day long, but only just. 

LXV is a fine camera; but I won't be surprised to find that henceforth it gets used mainly in the evenings, and in the darker winter months, leaving the little Leica for those long bright summer days.

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The Dwarfie Stane

Gosh, I'd better write a post before midnight, or June will slip by without a single addition to my blog! 

I plead a busy social life since returning from my long holiday on 5th June - plus the slog of catching up on the arrears of photo-processing.  

In the end, I'd taken 2,153 pictures on my Scottish holiday with LXV, my Leica X Vario, before its apparently terminal malaise. My phone Olivia, a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, then took over and augmented the tally with a further 4,343 shots. So 6,496 altogether. That's a lot for five and a half weeks, and of course I couldn't keep up with the processing on the laptop. Despite all the late nights I spent doing so, I was still sixteen days behind by the end of the holiday. I have since then made herculean efforts to clear the backlog. (And no shortcuts! No slip in standards, no captions skimped) It's all done now. The Photo Archive has swollen by some 5,000 shots, the ones I kept. 

I should also perhaps mention that once home again I continued shooting with my little Leica D-Lux 4, and have somehow found time to process the 1,873 shots taken with that camera since 5th June. I imagine that any reader who only takes a dozen pictures each year, if that, must be mystified as to what my subjects can possibly be. But then I see pictures everywhere, and I'm never slow to use whatever camera I have with me. 

I delight in recording unique visits to places not easy to get to. One such was The Dwarfie Stane. This is a hollowed-out rock in the northern part of the island of Hoy, which is the second-largest of the Orkney archipelago: the mountainous one. Most Orkney islands have a high hill or cliff, but Hoy is altogether higher. Here's a location map (click on it to enlarge it; the same for the pictures to come):

There are few roads on the island. The main one goes from Longhope in the south to Moaness in the north, keeping to the east coast. None cross over to the west except the Rackwick road. This passes near The Dwarfie Stane. It isn't hard to find. There's a road sign, an obvious car park, and an information board or two. The blue one tells of a visit by Sir Walter Scott, no less, in 1814. He considered Hoy most romantic.

I say 'passes near' but you still have to follow a rough path for half a mile or so to get to the Stane. You can see it across the valley, but it takes a little effort (and properly stout shoes) to actually stand before it.

That looks like a good, dry, easy path - but it soon gets very stony, and in one place rather boggy.

Yes, some bits have been improved with wooden boarding; but only a few stretches. 

Now it's getting pretty rock-strewn, and to avoid turned ankles care is needed! Geologists will see the signs of a U-shaped valley scoured by a glacier in the last Ice Age, and many erratics (rocks from elsewhere that were once picked up by the ice, carried some distance, and left stranded when the glacier retreated). The Stane is in fact one of the larger erratics that litter the valley. 

In the next shot, I was looking back towards the car park, and had spied two humanoids following me. It spurred me on, as I wanted some time alone at the Stane.

Ah, finally getting closer. And some boarding to enable a final sprint!

Click on the above shot to read the text and see the pictures more clearly. It's a Neolithic tomb, with two small chambers hollowed out inside it, and the entrance plugged by the large stone that now sits outside. This must have been pulled clear at some time in the past. The 'roof' of the hollowed-out part was damaged long ago - presumably by folk seeking the pot of gold they thought must lie within. 

No dwarf greeted me. Tsk. Rather disappointing. 

The Neolithic locals who made this large rock into a tomb must have laboured long and drearily to create the chambers. But of course, if driven by beliefs, people will do extraordinary things. 

Considering its position and appearance, the Stane was bound to become a focus for legend and superstition.  It would seem perfectly natural, if you believed in trolls and other such things - remember that Orkney was long a Norwegian possession, with Old Norse thinking predominant - to assume that a dwarf with semi-magical powers lived here (hence 'Dwarfie Stane'). The small chambers inside would seem ample accommodation for somebody of very short stature. I rather fancied (though this personal belief is probably quite wrong) that in historic times a hermit lived here for a while. The Stane definitely had the right appeal for a holy man intent on finding spiritual purity through privation. It was essentially a remote, draughty, hard-floored cave, doubtless plagued in the summer by midges, all wanting some carnal refreshment. Mind you, from the entrance to his tiny cell he'd enjoy a wonderful view across and along the valley. But I hope there was a system for bringing him food and water, or he would have perished. Well, he obviously did. Not only was there no dwarf, there was no crazed mystic in residence, covered in midge-bites. I had the place entirely to myself, at least for the moment.

I took in the view.

Those humanoids were out of sight, in a dip, but must be getting closer. About time I had a look inside! The entrance really was very low. 

I didn't crawl inside on hands and knees. I sat down on the threshold, facing the view, and then shuffled backwards on my bottom, leaning backwards because I couldn't sit upright inside. There just wasn't the headroom. So I studied the interior lying down. It was at least dry. To my right (left, if looking in from outside), a smoothly-carved chamber about the size of a very small tent for one, lined with straw. If there really had been a hermit, he could certainly have curled up to sleep here - provided he was short. A tall hermit wouldn't have fitted.

To my left (right, if looking in from outside) a separate space behind a lip, like a large cupboard. It had a shelf. In the context of a latter-day hermit, it might have been a shrine for his devotions; but originally it would have been an inner burial chamber for the Neolithic VIP for whom this tomb was made.

Easing myself up onto one elbow, and stretching out a leg thoughtfully, I considered what kind of hideaway the Dwarfie Stane made, hermit or no hermit.

Hmm. No doubt about it. The Stane was quite impractical as a home, unless one stayed outside most of the time and merely slept in it at night. All the same, a great place for deep and peaceful close-to-nature contemplation - if you were the sort to whom discomfort meant nothing. (Not me!)

It was a cheerless place really, but I was glad I'd made the effort to trek here. I kicked the air in delight. It was a definite achievement.

Getting upright again wasn't so easy, with my dodgy knees, but I managed it. The humanoids were approaching. They turned out to be an Australian couple from Adelaide, the second pair of Australians I'd met that day. (And there was me, thinking that it was remarkable, my coming here all the way from Sussex) I hoped they wouldn't both try to get inside the Stane at the same time. There was hardly the room for one, and they were not dwarves. (Or is it dwarfs?)

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