I am the rangefinder
◊ Today is the day I get kicked out of the camera club for showing my total ignorance. I cut my teeth on digital about seven years ago; I am used to auto everything. And then I got a Lomo -- not the hipster-happifying LCA, but the little baby manual Smena Symbol with the cute little pictograms on it of people and clouds -- and it is something.
OK, that something is "primitive." It's manual, but it's not an SLR and you can't see how you're focusing. There are no batteries and there is no automatic anything.
It's the exact opposite of a point - and - shoot. It's more of a point - and - tweak - and - adjust - and - shoot - and - reshoot - when - you - remember - you - forgot - to - adjust - something - else. I took photography in high school and now I am learning that I never learned a damn thing, apparently.
I spent yesterday trying to take pictures and forgetting to focus. It wasn't until today that I figured out what the little black stick thingy that came with it and fits into the shoe on the camera was. I pointed it at this awesome old Plymouth Valiant and looked through it and noticed that turning the little wheely thing on the side made things shift funny.
"Well, hell," I said. "A rangefinder. Marked in meters. Now instead of pointing the camera and making a guess as to how far away it is, I can make an educated guess."
Now at work when the computer freezes, I use the rangefinder to calculate things. I am 1.8 meters away from my coworker on the left. I am 3 meters away from the sign on the wall that reminds us to replace all incidences of "Knight Ridder" with "McClatchy Tribune News Service" now that Knight Ridder is dead. The outlet on the wall across from me is about 2.85 meters away and the tallest part of the ceiling is 2.8 meters above my head.
The coworker on the right loudly says "No, no, no, no, no" every time I point the rangefinder at him, so I don't know exactly how far away he is.