Larnach Castle, New Zealand.

[Tony Warren]

Showing family visitors from the UK around recently, I visited Larnach Castle, just outside Dunedin, the Edinburgh of the South. Larnach Castle, claimed to be New Zealand’s only castle though in reality a very lavish residence built in the 19th century. William Larnach, who built it, was a major figure in early New Zealand commerce and government. The house was rescued from a ruin by an enterprising family who are responsible for the securing the superb condition the building is in today.

I was using a camera quite the opposite to what many members of this forum are used to being almost totally automatic, a Pentax Zoom 60. Despite feeling almost completely redundant other than pointing and pressing the shutter release, it produced some quite decent results.

Film was Fuji 200.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

I can’t see any connection with the Edinburgh of the North, but I do see nice photographs from an interesting camera I didn’t know about. Thanks for the uploads, Tony.

My wife’s just had an academic paper published on the annotations by one James Peattie, a Scots emigre to New Zealand, to the Scottish National Dictionary in the late 19th, early 20th century. He clearly knew the Scots language well, and had a good sense of humour in his examples of usage. Reading the paper, I learned a lot about Scots in Otago.

 

[Gary Ayala]

The Pentax seems to do a nice job, especially if all you want to do is press the button. I did enjoy looking at the details in the first image.

(Disclaimer: the only affiliation I have with Scotland is my youngest daughter attended a semester at University of Stirling ... and I have a bottle of Glenfiddich ... somewhere.)

 

[Tony Warren]

I can’t see any connection with the Edinburgh of the North, but I do see nice photographs from an interesting camera I didn’t know about. Thanks for the uploads, Tony.

My wife’s just had an academic paper published on the annotations by one James Peattie, a Scots emigre to New Zealand, to the Scottish National Dictionary in the late 19th, early 20th century. He clearly knew the Scots language well, and had a good sense of humour in his examples of usage. Reading the paper, I learned a lot about Scots in Otago.

There are more Scottish references in the city itself, including the almost obligatory Rabbie statue in the centre, identical to one I have seen in Scotland. There are many Scottish names in streets and suburbs here too with a pipe band competition every year.

As to the camera, it as near to digital as you can imagine I guess but quite viable for what it is. I like to have a better idea of what is going on though. I bought it as a capping off of the several automatic cameras I have had over the years and which I have been writing about on 35mmc - from a 50's Vitomatic to this. Quite interesting to see how designers were always ahead of technology and how the latter eventually managed to delivered the goods.