I generally start my day at 6am and have to use specs with a +2 power in order to read anything properly. By 10am when I've returned from my morning coffee in the local bar I can change to my new specs which are only +1 power. I don't know whether it's the light at this time of day, the focusing muscles that have woken up properly or the coffee that give my eyes better strength, but I certainly feel more comfortable knowing that I can function at less rather than more diopter power as the hours pass. After our evening meal, however, I have to revert to the +2 pair in order to work at the computer.

Occasionally Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz visit... they are the well known photographers and authors (with over 60 books and thousands of magazine articles to their credit) and live about fifty miles west of here in the Vienne (dépt. 86). They always make their trips worthwhile by bringing a couple of bottles, several heavy carrier bags of English language photo magazines and at least one German or Japanese camera they are reviewing for any of a string of magazine contracts they hold from Russia to the US. One time Roger had a loaned Leica MP complete with Leicavit trigger-wind and a 90mm f/4 Macro-Elmar-M with the close-up attachment. Over his other shoulder hung one of two Alpa SW12 cameras (they were given) fitted with the superlative 38mm Zeiss Biogon originally of Hasselblad SWC fame.

There's a limit, even to a photographer, as to how much you can take in at one sitting when a Leica MP and Alpa SW12 pop through the door at the same time... but Roger's expertise at handling such equipment and his ability to describe very quickly and lucidly only the relevant and necessary bits of information to enable you to take photographs with any piece of equipment in under a minute speak for his understanding of both photographic apparatus and my grasp of technicalities.

On this visit Roger also had a Nikon D70 and wide-angle autofocus zoom. We've both professionally used probably every Nikon made in the past forty or so years... so he offered me this very popular digital version to see how impressed I would be. What I saw through the viewfinder reminded me of leaning out of a railway carriage window, as a child, and peering along the dark tunnel at the light at the end!

Well, it was not quite that bad, and I put my quickly formed opinion down to fuzzy eyesight rather than the design and mechanics of the camera. I’m tempted to say that what I saw looked like the image above... and that if a company such as Nikon can't provide better viewfinders (I'm sure they can design and make them) then the digital route for me is going to be a difficult one.