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In continuing with the violent analogies from the other day, This is the newest weapon in my arsenal , the delightfully named Konica Big Mini. I believe that the other names that were in the running were “Little Biggie”, “Camera Fantastic” , and “You Don’t Need a Zoom Lens, A Set Thirty Five Milimeter Focal Length Is Good For You And Your Photography”. The Big Mini was made popular in Japan thanks to the beautiful Hiromix, a young female photographer who was incredibly popular a few years ago but now is not around so much. She did have some photos in Esquire two months ago though. You can see ALL of Hiromix for a few sweet seconds in Arakimentari, or for as long as you like in Araki’s book, “Araki by Araki”.
The Big Mini has a nice little set 35mm 3.5 lens. This means if you want to zoom, you have to manually pick up your feet and walk towards the subject. I ran a few rolls of “Konica 105 yen a roll” color film through it. The results were quite nice. I found the camera used at MAP camera for 3000 yen. Usually this machine is at least 8ooo yen used- The reason mine was so cheap was because it is broken. The camera functions fine- it’s just that the wires from the camera body that feed into the back door have frayed from door swinging use. This means the data back does not work. This is not a problem, but then again the film counter screen won’t work. Neither will the buttons that allow you to turn the flash on or off. But what I have is actually what I wanted- a small fixed lens point and shoot with a flash that is completely automatic. A Ricoh GR-1 would have been nice but for the price of one of those I could have bought like, seriously, 27 more broken Big Minis, or 10 good ones.

After I bought the camera (what could rightly be called an Impulse Buy), I shot a few rolls around Shinjuku with my M6. Those will be posted sometime this month, once I get them printed and scanned. After that I went to Shimo Kitazawa to meet up with some people off of the Japan Photographer Yahoo Group. I met Martine, Phillip, and Mark. We went to an izakaya and roughly 64% of the edamame were consumed by me. It was fun to meet people that I had only previously know from the internet.. Suddenly you have voices to match to blogs, and a feeling of realization that at any moment I might be held accountable for anything that I had written in the past. A good time was had by all. If you are reading this and in Tokyo, by all means come along with us next time.

It was too dark to take Phillp and Martine’s pictures in the izakaya, so you will just have to trust me that they were there. The two photos above do prove that I did meet Mark though. Mark comprises one third of probably one of the most photogenically cool families around. Evidence of this fact can be found in his photographs of the other sixty six percent of his family. The remaining 1% is uh.. let’s see.. The Populaire.