January 2024

After the ritual intoxication of Hogmanay, the new year continued with more indulgence. Grace returned from her festive pilgrimage to the US, and we celebrated by getting pizza and cocktails; staying up too late; and nursing the hangover the following day.

After that, I pledged to lay low for a bit, and turned my attention to the myriad of outstanding musical projects that I have on the go. One of these was to rip out a dodgy logic board from my MPC 2500, and install a brand new, extra large, beautiful LCD screen.

Despite any best efforts to detox, this was always going to be short lived. January is our anniversary after all, and this year it was a big one. It seems to always fall on a Monday (or does it? I have no idea how days work). That day, coupled with this time of year, means that it can be difficult to find decent places that are open. As a result, we decided to head through to Edinburgh for cocktails and fancy eats.

It was cold, and Edinburgh was un-characteristically quiet. You get so used to seeing it packed with people, and forget that so much of the population is ‘transient’ (for want of a better word). The students aren’t back yet; the tourists haven’t arrived; and the rest of the city is in a post-Hogmanay hibernation.

I kinda liked it.

I took my trusty old Leica M Typ 240, and the Voigtlander 50mm f1.1 – a new purchase. I picked this up recently after getting sick of how often I had to clean haze off of the internals of my Canon 50mm f1.2. The Voigty is a fair bit bigger, but its focus ring is smooth and quick; it is sharp where it needs to be; and most importantly – still has a lot of character. I am really pleased with the results. As convenient as the Lumix GX9 is, nothing beats the pictures I get from the M240. They feel like home.

The hedonism continued once the dam fell, largely because I was trying to find space to see folks that I hadn’t been able to over the madness of the festive period.

I was glad to find something of a rekindled drive to make stuff, and experimented with new mediums. I got a cool new studio light from Zhiyun called the G200, which is this powerful COB LED thing. It is so much better than any of the other lights I’ve used in the past, and the big lantern diffuser makes a real difference to how diffuse the light is – it just chucks it out all over the place. I put together a video on it here for those that are curious.

I also sunk a lot of time into other formats… playing about with tape cassette and even picked up an old Reel to Reel machine. I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with that… though we’ve now reached the end of January, so that’ll need to wait for another month.