Spinning Self-Portrait

My son took his Lumix (the one Fake Aunt Sheryl gave him last year, along with the Team Umizoomi bag she made for it) to school for show and tell last week, and came back with several intriguing photos, including this one. Fun to see his classroom from his perspective — and to see his attempts at artsy photos.

He also came back with a camera lens that was cockeyed from a classmate obviously dropping it on the floor. Luckily, I was able to get it realigned with a little elbow grease, and my son still learned an important lesson about who you trust with your stuff.

Cosina CX-2 Test Roll

Cosina CX-2

I bought my Cosina CX-2 on eBay last spring for under $25 shipped. I’d been waiting for a decently priced one, especially since I overpaid through the nose for my Lomo LC-A back in 2004, and the Cosina CX-2 was purported to the THE camera that the LC-A was modeled from. I got this particular camera for a decent price — mostly because the seller was upfront that it needed new light seals.

Honestly, it’s not that bad. My Olympus XA has seals that don’t look much better, so I figured I’d take it out for a spin without doing any seal replacement (mostly because I’m still inexperienced at replacing light seals).

I was on the fence about the seals for a while, though, so I didn’t take the camera out for a test drive until September. I took the CX-2 for a walk to the new Middlegrounds Metropark in downtown Toledo, then finished off the roll that weekend.

Cosina CX-2 Test

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Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day: March 2017

The mercury rose unseasonably high in February here in northwest Ohio, Zone 6, and I feared for some of my earliest risers. In what I’ve dubbed the Early Spring Border, where I can see muscari and daffodils and hyacinths and alliums from my kitchen window, things are definitely moving along earlier than usual — but, thankfully, in this border, only one very early blooming dwarf iris felt the wilty brunt of this week’s snow.

Dwarf Iris

This is what it looked like on February 25. Today, it’s a sad, floppy thing.
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