Ultra-wide

« Jarkko and Otava survey the snowy park vista. A gallery filled with 15mm of puppy and crane porn. »

After about a year of reading reviews and trying to find one locally, I succumbed to my lust for a Voigtlander 15mm/f4.5 Aspherical Super-Wide Heliar lens and ordered one day when I was feeling particularly weak. I ordered it from a shop in California since the only one I could find here was twice the price, used, and came with a camera I didn't really need or want. The only downside is that it's not coupled to the rangefinder so you have to guesstimate the focal distance, but the depth of field makes up for a lack of distance precision. It has a 110° field of view, weighs a mere 4oz, a 30.7mm profile and can focus as close as .3m. The lens arrived a few weeks ago but I hadn't had time to try it out. Saturday, I thought it would be nice to take a few pictures of Otava to see what it could do. The lack of distortion and only mild vignetting is pretty impressive for such a wide and inexpensive lens. [as an aside, anyone who has a Leica and wants a $300 lens from a company who knows how to ship to the EU *wink*wink* drop me a line.]

As a followup to the aging population of Helsinki there is a story about the population explosion of weiner dogs in Finland. They are definitely popular in my neighbourhood with little old ladies in fur hats where the weiner dog quantum number is two, sometimes even three. There are quite a few puppies between 6 and 12 months in the park these days, many of them aren't very well behaved regardless of size. More than a few owners have mentioned that their older puppies still aren't housebroken which seems totally abnormal. Otava has been a week already without an accident. Maybe there needs to be an rise in puppy training classes.

The Sanomat had a wacky article about an archive of 1980s Estonian TV commercials. The "Kanahakkliha" spot is clearly the predecessor of the "Syökää Kana!" commercials from last year. It will take another year to get the freaky chant from that out of my head. HAKK HAKK HAKK LIHA LIHA LIHA.....