The Makina Chronicles (Manual Focus Edition)

Once upon a foggy Tuesday in Tampere—a day when the sky matched the grain of untoned Ilford HP5—an earthbound visual creator named Kiribane wandered the red-brick poetry of Finland’s post-industrial soul, cradling his Plaubel Makina 67 like a Cold War secret.

“Ah, Tampere,” he muttered, unfolding the camera’s bellows with a gentle snap, the way one might open a letter from a long-dead poet. “The Manchester of Finland… without the Britpop or decent curry.”

He flipped open the Makina’s left-hand grip, thumbed the lens barrel forward into place, and adjusted the manual focus helical with the kind of care usually reserved for neurosurgery or threading a needle in a thunderstorm. The Nikkor 80mm f/2.8 lens caught a smokestack in its gaze, as Kiribane aligned it in the rangefinder patch—double images merging like existential choices on a grey Tuesday.

Click. One frame down. Just nine to go. The Plaubel, ever merciless, reminded him: You only get ten. A medium-format monk’s vow.

Just then, a shimmer in the fog. Not golden hour. Not even Helsinki hour. A Martian, green and slightly damp, appeared—wearing a wool hat emblazoned with “Saunatar” in Comic Sans.

“You shoot on film?” asked the Martian, in flawless Tampere dialect.

Kiribane didn’t flinch. “Of course. Anything else would be… JPEG.”

Captain Flarnax and his crew had come to Earth not for the Moomins—they’d already wept at the boat-in-storm diorama—but to capture the essence of Tampere. The soul. The steam. The melancholy overcast.

Kiribane passed the Makina to Flarnax like an elder handing down an heirloom. The Martian’s three fingers curled awkwardly around the grip. He peered through the combined rangefinder/viewfinder, blinking twice.

“Oh,” whispered Flarnax. “It’s like seeing your own death… but in perfect tonality.”

They roamed together—photographing saunas, brutalist concrete benches, and teenagers loitering outside Hesburger like misplaced characters from a Kaurismäki film. But then—disaster.

Frame 12.

“The winding arm!” screamed Lieutenant Qip, trying to advance the film with antennae trembling. “It’s… stuck. Like us. In 2003.”

They tried everything. Warm breath. Martian telepathy. Even whispering “Snufkin forgives all” into the light seal. The Makina remained unmoved—its film transport mechanism jammed like a Nokia ringtone in 2005.

Flarnax handed it back solemnly. “You must complete the mission. Frame Tampere like it’s the last honest city on Earth.”

So Kiribane returned at dawn. He reset the ISO reminder dial—pointless, but sacred—and cocked the shutter manually with a thumb flick as smooth as Tampere’s railway announcements. He metered the winter sun against the smokestack’s edge (just eyeballing it, because: real photographers feel light), focused until the bricks aligned, and fired.

Click. Frame 10. The last.

“This,” he whispered, “is better than the Louvre.”

The Martians vanished that evening in a puff of steam, bound for Vallisaari and beyond. But some say their laughter still echoes in the Rajaportti sauna, mingled with the scent of birch, smoke, and faint whirring sounds—like a leaf shutter waiting for one last frame.