Gakkenflex

Okay I’m going to blog about this because I’m very excited about it.

The Gakkenflex is a DIY TRL toy camera that comes with Vol.25 of Otona no kagaku (大人の科學), a Japanese DIY magazine. Sis brought to my attention that Kino was carrying the mag, and with it being 20% off at Christmas now I got it for around $43, which is quite a bit cheaper than buying it online or from ThirtySix (retails at $56 I think).

It comes in this exciting styrofoam box. Doesn’t it make you feel excited just looking at it? It has “potential” and “opportunity” written all over. *gleaming eyes*

Bought it on Friday and had to wait out the weekend and be a good girl till my exams were over before I came home and happily started fiddling with it yesterday. (I think I pretty much made a beeline for it when I came home after dinnering with Walter.)

So I was too engrossed fiddling with the screws and springs and getting the shutter to work and all that I didn’t take pictures of the process. Took more than an hour, but this included taking it apart and putting it back together again because the shutter was SO fast I was almost convinced it wasn’t shuttering at all. The shutter speed is 1/125, apparently. Aperture at f/11, but there’s an aperture ring inside you that can take out if it’s really cloudy.. a bit fiddly to do that though.

Here’s the completed baby! Maybe I’ll go out tomorrow and shoot some if the weather is good.

And you have a really nice proper ‘viewfinder’ as well. It was late at night so I couldn’t really point at anything bright except my ceiling lights.

The gears on the front of the camera also all you to pull your focus as and when necessary. It’s a really great little camera that uses regular 35mm film. Have popped in an expired roll that Dad conjured up (It’s not that old, expired in 2000) and hope I’ll get some interesting shots from this. :]

Will blog about those again when I get them!

But in the meantime, here are some of the nicer shots from my first roll on the Diana F+ I borrowed from Marcius (someone I met in German class with whom I seem to have a lot of common friends with and who was from my JC but I’d never seen in my life). Meant to get myself through another roll but this Gakkenflex is definitely going to distract me from that. (Also 35mm is a lot cheaper to develop than 120 film!)

The Village of Brè… and cats.

No need for many words, this entry.

The Village of Brè is a teeny little medieval village (population: 300) on the eastern slope of Monte Brè. The architecture is uniquely quaint. The cats are really fat. And I wish I had a house there. For reclusive artistic purposes.

I’ll say it again. I wish I had a house here.

Bellinzona.

So we trained into the neighbouring town of Bellinzona. Our first adventure out of the little, and increasingly nothing-to-do town of Lugano. Train tickets were 5.90CHF after using the half-card. We paid 249CHF for the Swiss Half Card + Track 7 which allows us to buy tickets at half price and travel for free between 7pm and 5am. It’s a yearly card, but we decided we’d have to make it worth it and travel around Switz more then.

On the train, climbing altitude and passing by other small areas.

The main town areas in this part are small but the landscape is just ridiculously pretty every way you look. I haven’t NOT seen a mountain anywhere.

There’s a carnival going on in Bellinzona this week called Rabadan (sounds like Ramadan hor?). Everyone from the teeny little kids to the old folks dress up in costumes and there are loads of bands and parades and stuff. But unlike Ramadan, the festivities include a lot of drinking (at night) and these hilariously hungover sunflowers were one of the first sights that greeted us upon entering the city center.

There were cute little tots EVERYWHERE.
Small, chubby, wide-eyed, pink cheeked European babies are just too adorable.

Then we visited one of the three castles in Bellinzona – Castlegrande. We were too busy being trigger happy and enjoying the sun and lovely grass to bother cheong-ing all the castles.

We didn’t bother paying 5CHF to enter the castle museum, but you’re free to wander around in the outer courts. The castles of Bellinzona aren’t really castles in a sense but more of defense forts.

And here’s the view from the castle. Beautiful ain’t it?

And this is my first Swiss cat! My favourite subjects are a rare find in this country. Generally there are as many dogs here as there are babies. Every other person you meet owns a dog and generally spend lots of time walking them.

After enjoying the castle we strolled back down into town to walk straight into the ongoing parade. Really enjoyable and makes me miss playing the saxophone. These people really know how to have fun.

Friendly t-bonist smiling at me from across the courtyard as his bands heads out to play.

Okay a couple more pics from the castle.

Today we’re going to Ikea, I think. If we ever make it out. We’re all just nuaing in our rooms on this Monday morning because we have no school.

Neighbourhood cats.

Cats here in the Jalan Buloh Perindu area aren’t really all too friendly these days.

They used to be a lot friendlier in my secondary school days and would actually let me go near enough to pet them, but these days they just want to shirk away mostly and are extremely wary of people.

I like cats, a lot.

A little too much. But they like me too, so that’s good.