It's been a strange week and a half. Zoe has been in Florida for for two weeks of intense physical therapy for her pain. She is done and waiting to fly back tomorrow. I'm very proud of how she did. It wasn't easy. She will be writing about it when she gets back. The house has been empty without her.

There have been some furniture moving projects that have needed to be done and I've been working on those. Exchanging matresses, moving my very big desk to the basement and replacing it with a smaller desk, and moving a dresser across the bedroom. Sort of a 3 dimensional spatial puzzle. It's mostly done. My old desk was one of those big metal office desks. I had delusions of taking it apart to make it easy for me to move but the screws had achieved unity with the desk. Fortunately I have son and he has friends. Robby and Mouse got it down into the basement without any personal physical damage. Many thanks to them! The desk will become my workbench.

I've also worked on putting a battery powered strobe kit together after reading the Strobist. This will solve my lighting problems and do it for a very reasonable price. It helped that I already had some of what I needed. I will have more on that when it's all together.

Griff's painting is finally on the way to Seattle. Here it is on the truck last Monday. It should be here the first part of the week. I did the arranging but it was my daughter Katie that did the buying and she is excited to have a painting of her great grandfather.

When oportunity knocks it's best to answer the door. A friend, Vern, had a 2 1/4" square folding camera that had a frozen focus. My folder, an Agfa Isolette II, has a bad bellows and I've missed it. Vern paid $70 for it which is a low price but didn't want to spend money on it since he had another just like it and he isn't one to take things apart. He knew that I'm not afraid to repair things (aprehensive, maybe) so he said to make an offer. I offered $30 and he accepted. It's the holy grail of folders, a Super Ikonta B.

There it is with a new gordy strap. The focus isn't actually frozen just really stiff. I ran a test roll through and had to exhibit self control not to load another roll in it. It was fun to shoot but I don't want to have any of the focus gears to slip a tooth. There are several pages on the web showing how to relube everything. This is an early 532/16 made in 1937. 70 years old and still a great user. My friend Blaine has said that if he goes out with only one camera, it is his Super Ikonta B. I can see how that could be.

Zeiss Super Ikonta B

Zeiss Super Ikonta B

Zeiss 532/16

Rebuilding the Super Ikonta

Zeiss Ikonta B (Pre War) Rangefinder Adjustment

Zeiss Ikontas