Inevitably, carrying around a bagful of cameras for testing purposes has produced a few photographs worth showing in their own right – four cameras are represented here – but it doesn't matter which camera took what, when, or where. Cameras have personalities and, like people, each has its own charms and annoyances, strengths and shortcomings, and the trick is to get to know them and let each do what it does best. Which is really what all that boring comparative testing is all about: does the new player bring something new to the team? Luckily, they usually don't, although I do still seem to have kept more cameras that a sensible person would have sold on years ago.
Actually, I did trying selling all most some of my film cameras [1] a while ago via Ffordes in Scotland, but to my surprise some of them were returned as (in insurance broker's terminology) "beyond economic repair". It seems a couple of decades sitting unused in a cupboard will lead to various sclerotic conditions: stuck shutters, cracked bellows, and the like. All of which could be fixed, but at a greater cost than would be realised by a sale. However, the demand for good film cameras is such that I still made rather more from those that were sold than I had expected. So if you've got an old Olympus Mju sitting around somewhere, for example, I suggest you sell it while the fad lasts...
1. I went through a phase in the 1990s of buying dirt-cheap roll-film cameras, mostly folders, whenever I came across one. I ended up with quite a few, some of which were real gems. The best of these – an Agfa Isolette folder with the exceptional Solinar lens – became the basis of a project photographing the river at Mottisfont Abbey, near Romsey, that turned into my first solo exhibition, "The Colour of the Water", displayed in the Abbey from March 2003 to November 2004, later collected in the book Downward Skies (full preview at the link).
2 comments:
Mike,
I divested myself of a tranche of cameras before they became cool, unfortunately, and the only ones I've kept (and don't actively use) have sentimental and/or aesthetic value. They decorate the study, for those who like that kind of decoration. My favourite is a Pentax Spotmatic that was my father's, that he bought for a pittance in Nepal after it was run over by a motorbike and sold on by its American owner, and worked perfectly well for decades afterwards.
I do like the picture of the van!
Huw
Huw,
There's no denying that old film cameras are more decorative than most digitals will ever be! My favourites are the Bakelite Brownie 127 that gives me vivid rushes of childhood seaside memories, and various classics of pre-War and 1950s design.
I once had a photo-project with the title "The Blue Van", as I kept coming across them parked in odd places. This one is always parked in that photogenic spot.
Mike
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