Closing in, originally uploaded by jjn1.

Spotted in a friend’s rose garden this morning.

Serried glassware, originally uploaded by jjn1.

Lined up awaiting guests to the launch party for Nicci and Sean’s new book.

Listeners, originally uploaded by jjn1.

At the POLIS conference in LSE on Friday.

Fading beauty, originally uploaded by jjn1.

in our garden, this afternoon.

After sticking too long to film technology, it looks like Leica is finally getting the digital game figured out. Yesterday it announced a record profit of €248.9 million for the latest fiscal year, a significant increase from the €158.2 million it earned the previous year.

[Source]

If you’re a Leica user, this is a distressing picture. Why? Because the Tri-Elmar retails in the UK for an eye-watering £3198.

I came on it via a tweet by @jwcgraves pointing to Cory Doctorow’s post on BoingBoing, in which he observed:

Hefting and peering through a high-end camera lens, you get a sense of the craft, the precision engineering, and the thoughtful design that went into it. But look at it in cross-section, as with this photo a neatly bisected Leica Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm lens and the hellish, gorgeous complexity is revealed in a visceral way: “These were actually made by Leica students as a graduation project and boxed as a ‘cutaway model’ of the lens.”

Seen outside the Porters’ Lodge one lunchtime.