Skip to main content

Balm for the Sole

I love the feel and look of old leather. Being a vegetarian (wannabe vegan actually) I never buy new leather products. But I enjoy using old - preferrably really old like 50 plus years - leather items like camera straps, cases and bags. Even though what I come across at second hand or flea markets finds most often is mass-produced, I cherish the sense of using something that a skilled craftsperson has used their hands to make.
  Two weeks ago I bought a leather bag for 10 crowns (€1) at a flea market. It certainly didn't look like much, being all dried up, crumpled and pale. But what caught my eye was some details that made it look like it was designed to look nice.
It is a small traveller's bag or overnight bag.
 The zipper fabric had deteriorated. Removing it was like tearing paper.
I've changed zippers on two leather bags previously, so had a couple short bits laying around. I thought it would be a nice touch to combine them.
I soaked the all surfaces in leather balm - which I bought at Haga Trätoffelfabrik in Gothenburg. It made the leather more healthier looking and gives it more strength. The zippers I sew by hand with a thick-ish cotton thread through the existing holes. It looks cool to use a colour thread that makes the sewing pattern visible, and it is rather durable - though not as if it was made by a professional, of course.
 I'm very happy with the way it ended up. I will definitely use it for weekend travel. Making a new life to vintage things gives a very satisfying feeling. And it's so easy - most of what you give/spend is time. That's why I keep selling vintage cameras. And using them!
Welcome to my Instagrams: #flashknappen #ourbooksmalmo #getourart
and the Etsy shop getOurBooks filled with old cameras and their accessories.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Chaika Leica

Well, here's a Chaika 2M that I bought from Alex Helios via Instagram.  It's a great full manual viewfinder half-frame camera. The wheel on the top is for shutter time selection, from B to 1/30th to 1/250th of a second. The square button on the front right of the camera is the release/exposure. The lens mounted on the camera in the picture is not the original Industar-69. The Chaika is a rare model compact camera since the prime lens is detachable. What is more is that it has M39 screw mount. But - like with the Paxette M39 system - you can't get focus with a lens from another M39 system. Unless you adapt the lens or - in this case - the camera (mount)! The Chaika mount is easily detached from the body by loosening four screws. If I want to mount the Leica thread mount M39 (LTM) lenses on the Chaika - which is my goal with this mod - I have to add 1.3mm to the mount. That is what is needed to change the camera's flange focal distance (FFD) from Chaika system to L

Celebrating 20 + Articles Elsewhere

  I have had a fun eight years burrowing deep into the world of film photography. Within a few weeks my 22nd contribution to 35mmc.com will be published. The website, which is run by a small group of people, publishes contributions from the global community of mostly film photographers. I have contributed sporadically with reviews and other articles on  photography related issues since May 2017. Almost as long as I have written about photography on this blog.   Disposable Cameras Canon QL17 Rangefinder Canon Demi half-frame Canon Lens Modding Olympus LE Camera Olympus Pen-F Yashica 50 mm Lens     Halina Lens Modding  4 Minolta Cameras Steinheil 50 mm Lens Instamatic Voigtländer Lens Modding Meikai Camera Ricoh Auto 35 Camera     Chaika Camera Modding Redscale Film   Hanimex 110 Camera  Canon 1980s Compacts Canon Prima Mini Camera Reviving Instamatic Cameras Focus-Free Digital Lens During this time I have also contributed a few articles to the HalfFrameClub, Streetshooters and Emulsiv

Lomo-Modd-Orama

A Lomo Smena 8 camera with a faulty shutter. An Olympus Pen F camera. Part of a microscope adapter for the Pen. That's what I started out with. 45 minutes later I had a new lens! Mount The mount came off a microscope adapter. I got the adapter from my first (of two) attempts to buy an Olympus Pen F. There seem to be some unscrupolous ebay sellers around peddling useless Pens with microscope adapted prisms. Luckily - in hindsight - I got a microscope adapter with this first Pen. Which I now trashed when a Lomo Smena 8 without a future landed on my doorstep (figuratively speaking). Conversion / Havoc Smena I only knew the camera as a half-frame camera [Correction - it's a full frame camera!] called Smena 8 and hadn't thought to place it in Lomography-land until I read the name Lomo on the lens when it was already modded. Unwittingly I had tread the tiles of lomo-dom twice in as many weeks, also having put two rolls through a Praktica CX-1 which appears to be Gr