Old Cameras, why bother?

I am not, personally, interested in fuelling industries that have a need to keep producing new stuff that isn’t substantially or objectively better than what has already been manufactured.

Manufacturers need to keep “improving” cameras so that people will get FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and go and buy the new one while the old one gets cast aside like an unwanted child's toy. But caveat emptor, those “improvements” may not be of any use to the photographer.

The X-Files

A bit like Mulder in the X-Files, photographers “want to believe”.  Marketing will sell “improvements” as the silver bullet to why you don’t take world class photographs.  If you buy into the marketing hype and your pictures aren’t great, you can blame the choice that you made in the camera shop.  Oh damn, I bought a Nikon when I should have bought a Canon!  Why didn't I pack whatever lens you left at home?

The range of cameras and lenses in any camera shop is amazing, but we all want to believe the marketing. We want to believe that there is a technical reason why our brand new camera or lens doesn’t make us Ansel Adams.  

Ansel Adams, or any other photographer of note, put the hours in, generally using the same camera for years and years, honing their craft, learning how photography works from a practical point of view, eventually making a catalogue of worthy work from many thousands of rolls of film or memory cards.

Back to the narrative...

A camera should take a picture. If it does that, well we are onto a winner, aren't we?

The way the picture is captured may matter to some. 

I might need a camera to capture family moments without a lot of fuss and bother or making my family pose while I muck about with settings only to be disappointed and frustrated at the results. A decent quality P&S that does all the heavy lifting, so those family memories can be captured quickly and easily and largely without anyone knowing, should fit the bill.

Equally, I may need a camera to capture the family portraits using a shallow depth of field, pin sharp focus and bang on metering. Enter the SLR or DSLR.  No P&S will achieve this and it is nonsense to expect it to.  The SLR/DSLR with a number of lenses will be the best bet. But do I need a brand new one? No I don’t. Most SLRs will work just fine and the DSLRs with a 20Mp, or larger, sensor will produce 8x10 prints of a great quality.

Where DSLRs are concerned, we have full frame sensors that were supposed to be better than APS-C, but the hype rarely met the expectation and certainly did not improve anyone’s photography.

Then we have Mirrorless cameras, that removed the mirror from a DSLR and made everything smaller and lighter, but better?  Obviously more portable and the lenses were smaller and lighter too.  But those Micro Four Thirds sensors weren’t full frame and therefore not very good?  Well the MFT sensor was perfectly good and is capable of really decent results. I'd challenge anyone to take an 8x10 print of the same subject taken on a MFT and  FF DSLR and tell the difference at normal viewing distance.

Medium format cameras are lovely but no one makes one new now so you have to go second-hand.

Large format cameras are still made but these are niche, and there are plenty of second-hand options here too.

Today cameras, of all types, are plentiful on the second-hand market, so naturally if considering a new camera purchase, that is where I’d tend to look first. New to me doesn't mean new in the box.

Why use old cameras? Well why not? They exist and in many cases have had very little use and so represent great value for money.

Obviously you need to beware of hype as some old cameras have achieved cult status and their second-hand prices have sky rocketed.

But old cameras are perfectly serviceable, if they work for the photographer and produce results where the expectation, unhindered by hype, meets reality then isn't that all that matters.  Some old cameras were underrated when new and damned by the reviewers with feint praise. In the cold light of a second-hand purchase, reappraisal will often be kinder.

Buy an old camera, be kinder to the planet and just enjoy the photography!

N.B. If you want to buy a brand new camera and can afford to do so, don't let anything I say deter you. But please list your old kit with a sensible, not hyped, price and keep the second-hand market buoyant.

Single Holga Photo - 5

This Holga Photo was taken in Brittany France on one of my forays over there.  I like the photograph because it exudes calm. It was a bit of a misty day and the day was starting slowly. I remember that we, the lady wife and I, went for a drive.  We ended up stopping at this destination, I've not recorded where though, for a cup of coffee and I loaded the Holga and took some snaps.  This one was the best of the roll, in my opinion.

Two yachts at rest

Single Holga Photo - 4

Holga Photo number four is a colour photograph taken near my home in Somerset. 

A Holga will struggle to focus down as closely as was required for this image. I carry a magnifying glass in my bag. You can focus the magnifying glass by looking through it and when you are happy, keep the magnifying glass still, and move the Holga so that the lens touches the magnifying glass.  An that way you have a close up adapter for the Holga. Framing can b a bit hit and miss, but in this case a hit.

This was taken in Autumn and the leaf had fallen and lodged in the cleft between two branches.

Single Holga Photo - 3

This Holga photo was taken in Swansea Marina on a cold, early spring day. I was experimenting with using the bulb setting on the Holga.  This frame was the one from the roll that stood out, most of the rest were a blurry mess. This one is still blurry but is at least recognisable for what it is. I like this shot because the rope holes and opening on the bow form a kind of surprised face.

Single Holga Photo - 2

Taken on the Holga in Bathurst Basin, a triangular dock area to the east of Spike Island. You can see the general Hospital building to the right.

I love the dappled light under the trees. I think the Holga has handled the scene well.

This is an area of Bristol that I know well and I still enjoy visiting, especially with a Holga.

Walking along the dock at Bathurst Basin

Single Holga Photo - 1

One of the things that I love about the Holga camera is it's ability to surprise you. This photo has such a painterly feel to it. I remember when I took it not feeling very hopeful about the frame. However with the Holga camera you need to keep shooting, even if you are not feeling great about the roll.

When I processed the film and looked at the negatives this one jumped out.

The photograph was taken in Pill, near Bristol.  The name "Pill" comes from the Welsh word Pîl which denotes a tidal inlet or harbour. My maternal Grandparents lived in Pill until the 1980s, when they moved to South Gloucestershire.

My Mums cousin operated the Pill Ferry from Pill to Shirehampton when I was a kid. His name was Robert. These boats reminded me of those days.

Pill Ferry

Two boats resting until they are needed again.

Redscale Harman Phoenix 200

For this blog post I have converted a roll of Harman Phoenix 200 to redscale. Harman technology sell their own version of this as Harman Red 125. Given that this film is officially available as a redscale film, the only other one on the market is Lomography Redscale XR, I was excited to se what this emulsion could do in the redscale space.

Harman Phoenix is supplied in a red box and isn't a general colour film in the same vein as Kodak Gold, for example. Harman have described Phoenix as the initial steps on their colour journey and Harman are inviting photographers to get involved in that journey. Phoenix is a limited run film.

Harman own the Ilford brand and manufacture some really excellent black and white emulsions in HP5 Plus and FP4 Plus.  They are not known for colour film.  To create a colour film from scratch is a costly business and without the might of a corporation like Kodak behind them, then the research and development of a new emulsion might prove too expensive to even try.  Harman came up with a strategy that they have been completely upfront about.

1. Create a colour film, that may not be perfect but the sale of which will fund the next stage of R&D.
2. Invite photographers to use the imperfect film and provide feedback
3. Use the feedback to improve the chemistry and go to step 1

Harman have since created Phoenix II, which is a refinement of Phoenix  but still not perfect as a general colour film. But photographers are being involved in the development and really enjoying the experience.

Given that Phoenix was a limited run, it has started to run out, but Phoenix II is now available.  Phoenix is also staring to expire at retailers and so there are deals to be had on expired rolls of this emulsion.

My roll of Phoenix was gifted to me by my good friend Dave Whenham. Dave has an excellent blog here --> Dave Whenham Photography.

Dave also, very kindly processed the film for me too. So thank you Dave for your help.  Thats why I see this roll of Redscale as more of a collaboration.

The results from Phoenix redscale are excellent and so I will definitely repeat the experiment.  By the way, I also have a roll of Phoenix II that I may convert to redscale.

The Festival of Wood - Westonbirt Arboretum - 2003

The Westonbirt Festival of Wood was held during the 2000s until 2011, when it changed into the Festival of the Tree. I attended in 2003 and took the family Canon Sure Shot TeleMax camera loaded with a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus.

Westonbirt Arboretum

I thought that the negatives had been lost to time as house moves took place over the years that followed.  

However recently I opened a box that had been sealed when I moved house last year and I found some negatives all filed in sleeves but not in a file.  Some negatives from my trip to Egypt and some from Tunisia.  In the middle of the negatives and filed between a set of Egypt negatives and a set of Tunisia negatives, were the set of black and white negatives from the Festival of Wood. Half of them in the Sharm El Sheikh negative file sheet and half in the Hammamet sheet. quite why I did this is a mystery now.

Sharm El Sheikh

Hammamet, Tunisia

These are significant because they are a document of me getting into black and white photography and using the family compact camera. I'd forgotten about the day out and that I'd bought a roll of HP5 Plus from the local camera shop.  The negatives have a numbered sticker at one end and so I must have got the camera shop to process the film. So these are really first steps for me. I've rescanned the negatives and cropped some of them, the pictures aren't half bad, considering they were taken on a compact camera.

An Afternoon Out with a Compact Camera

Recently I wrote a blog about the joys of compact cameras.

In-Praise-of-Compact-Cameras

The compact camera is a great carry around camera and sometimes the thought of carting around a heavy bag full of lenses, camera bodies and all that jazz, it just a bit much.  My 35mm film compact camera of choice at the moment is a Lomo LC-A.  It's definitely not perfect but it produces images that are not dreadful.  This is a very low bar, I know.  

The internet influencers would have you believe that a Yashica T4, Olympus Mju II, Contax T2 or Ricoh GR1S are the best compact cameras for 35mm film and so they may be, but now that the cat is out of the bag the prices match the hype that the influencers create. And that serves no one well, least of all those of us who are on a budget.

The LC-A isn't hyped by anyone, apart from the Lomography people - because they sell them, but that doesn't mean it's no good. Mine is from the early 1980s and is a genuine Soviet built one. You can pick them up for a decent price if you exercise some patience and avoid instant gratification syndrome.  I used the camera for a walk around one of Somersets' prettiest towns Frome a couple of days ago.  Here are the photographs.

2020 - Pandemic Photography

It seems like it never really happened now. 2020, the year that Boris Johnson asked everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to stay at home in order to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. During the period where we all stayed at home, I found myself getting a bit bored. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

Anyhow, I had some adapters that would allow 35mm film to be shot in a medium format camera. Sprocket hole photography.  There was an article that I found where you had to create a leader for your 35mm film from a scrap length of 120 backing paper.  Then you wouldn't loose any frames when the film was loaded.

Like so. This allows the takeup spool to be standard 120. Once the film is exposed you have to unload in a dark bag and wind the film back into the 35mm canister.

I loaded a roll of Fomapan 100 into a 6x7 medium format camera and during my time outside, shot these while observing social distancing (remember that?).

I'd forgotten all about these negatives until I came across them in an envelope recently.

The first frame thanks the NHS. Funny how we all did that when we thought we were going to die isn't it? (Bit of politics as Ben Elton might have said).

    

    

Sedgemoor Vintage Show 2026

Having moved to Somerset about a year ago, I decided to attend the the Sedgemoor Vintage Show, last weekend. The weather was a cool 32 Celsius and the barometer said it was due to be dry (no kidding?).  I went last year and really enjoyed the show. 

Apologies for the state of this but it was a well used resource.

I decided to take the Polaroid Flip camera, on loan from Dave Whenham. I took two packs of Polaroid iType Monochrome film and one of iType colour. The polaroid camera allows an easy photography style at these events while bringing its own retro vibe.

They have vintage cars, motorcycles, tractors and farm machinery, lorries and finally the stars of the show various steam powered road engines and rollers.

Nicely restored steam road roller

A lovely display of stationary agricultural engines, pumping water  or sawing wood was available to view.

The programme was a really useful tool, giving the history of individual vehicles, who they were supplied to (Coventry Council in one case) from new, who owns them and who restored them.  Some vehicles have had several restorations due to age.

There was a period correct tea marquee where you could have a cuppa and a slice of homemade cake.

The beer tent was a busy area and a nice selection of beer and cider was on offer.

Parking was free and entrance was a tenner. You got a programme free and a wrist band. Once you've paid for entrance you could go on the second day for free.

My favorite tractor the Field Marshall

An excellent afternoon was spent here.

Racing Cars

Now and again, I enjoy going to motorsport events. I'll take a camera with me and see if I can get close to the cars.  I enjoy the design and engineering work that has gone into the cars and I try to capture some of the design choices with my photography. These photographs were taken on 35mm film. Fomapan 100, if memory serves.

In Praise of Compact cameras

There are times when you want a camera that is a serious tool to take properly exposed, beautiful negative frames. However all of the technical activity to get a properly exposed, nicely developed negative makes the whole process really slow. If you are having a trip with a friend to London, for example, as I did recently,  you cannot make your friend ( a non photographer) slow down and stop, while messing around with meters, f stops, apertures and shutter speeds, not to mention intentional composition. No, you want to point and shoot and crack on with enjoying the company of a friend.

Bit shonky due to an expired roll of film that was (accidentally) exposed both sides.

Luckily the trajectory of camera and photographic refinement made much of the technical work automatic, allowing even non photographers to take some nice photographs. Non photographers don't buy SLRs or Medium Format cameras, they buy a little automatic compact camera.  In the early 1980s there were loads on the market and the improvements in automation carried on until the 1990s.

Japan produced some lovely compacts such as the Olympus trip or the Nikon L35AF. 

Here is a trip down memory lane.  In 1991 I bought a Canon Telemax Sure Shot 35mm film camera as a tool for making family memories. The camera we (read my wife) already had was appalling. While I can immerse myself in technical detail and the finer points of photography, my wife wasn't interested. She wanted to make snaps of the kids, our days out and our holidays. We'd send our film off to Truprint for processing and get back negatives, 6x4 prints and a free Truprint film.  The Canon was perfect. An automatic camera with film auto wind, really sharp lens and perfect metering. The Telemax also had a two position zoom, 38mm or  70mm.  The DX encoded films allowed the cameras internal brain to configure the ISO of the film in the camera and use that to calculate the exposure and meter the subject. Finally the camera used a near infrared beam to assist with the focusing of the lens.

It was a great camera and served us well. Interestingly the resulting photographs and negatives are still in the photo albums.

The files from the digital cameras that replaced the Sure Shot in the early 2000s have all been lost. Not one of them still exists, even though they were backed up. The backups I still have but the format cannot be read. (why do I hang on to them?).

It is a matter of regret that the camera was not looked after and was consigned to a drawer. Even after I returned to film photography, I ignored the camera. And then it got lost in a house move.

Looking online today nice examples fetch £100 (but I'm digressing. again!).

The point being that a decent compact film camera will serve the user well and allow nice photographs to be taken without slowing down any social interactions/walks/trips/holidays etc.

It was with this in mind that I took my Lomo LC-A to London.

I won't repeat the information that you can look up on the internet.

Here is a link to save you using Google,

Lomo_LC-A

The LC-A is a compact camera that produces decent results. Not top flight, portfolio ready photographs, but decent pictures. It's automatic and is very quick to use.

The LC-A is becoming a favorite as a walk around camera. I took this with my LC-A at a location local to my home in Somerset.

I'd recommend an LC-A to anyone looking for a dependable, compact automatic camera.  The controls fall easy to hand, it's zone focused, which I'm happy with, and the meter is really accurate. It would make a nice travel camera.

The Efficiency Myth

Many of the devices that we routinely use in our daily lives were sold as being more efficient and our busy lives required efficiency. It is, we are told, more efficient to use Google than go to a library. It is more efficient to drive rather than walk. It is more efficient to use a washing machine than spend a day doing the washing.  There are thousands more examples but you get the picture.

I was recently thinking about a compact camera that I bought for my family and how it really did its job and no more. The camera served us as a family well. This line of thought directed me to consider how devices that we use in our lives, on the basis of efficiency, all do more than one job.  It seems to be a "sold" benefit that my phone can be a camera and a navigation tool and a music player and an e-reader and and and.

I must live in Utopia, right? 

But there has been an insidious change in our devices.  My Canon Sure Shot TeleMax only took photographs. It didn't send me notifications, it didn't advertise stuff to me, it didn't demand a monthly subscription to use it. Crucially the camera didn't distract me!

Maybe that's the reason that I like film cameras? Sure I enjoy the tactile and involving process of using film and old cameras, I certainly enjoy the chemistry side and the processing of the latent negatives to permanent negatives, myself. But when I use an old ( but could be new ) film camera, I am not distracted by notifications, adverts, or the promise of a better experience if only I'd sign up for a subscription. I can use the camera in a mental space that is free of that noise.  

The noise of incessant notifications, adverts and reminders for subscriptions has got louder and louder with each passing year.

I am interested in current affairs, what is going on in my country and how the lives of the population is affected.  I want to get my news from a reputable source and not someone on TickTok voicing an opinion from a position of ignorance or racism. But you see a headline from a traditional newspaper organisation, on Google, and you click through. Bang! There is a subscription demand to read the news!

I pick up my phone to use the light meter app and suddenly I'm reading an update on BSky or answering a WhatsApp message, or I've been distracted by a video of a young lady feeding her animals on her Dads farm. I've certainly been distracted from taking a photo and enjoying the environment that I am in.

It wasn't that long ago that I bought an Amazon Kindle E-Reader. It was paper white and allowed me to download books and read them. It didn't send me notifications or advertise anything or ask for a subscription to use it.  Now I attempt to use the Amazon Kindle app and run the gauntlet of notifications, adverts and subscription reminders

The modern phone is a distraction machine that wants our attention and money. It even distracts us from sleep. even when it's in "Do Not Disturb" mode, it's malevolent presence is a siren call to us. And we deliberately avoid sleeping in case we miss out. 

The intrusion is such that I've started to read physical books again.

I like technology and I think that it can be a boon to life in the 21st century.  But cut out the bloody adverts, distractions and begging for a sign up to a subscription!

The problem is that all the apps we use all play the same game. They all notify us, distract us and advertise to us. But the cumulative effect is one of overwhelming the 'phone user. Or at least it overwhelms me at times.

How can it be efficient for me to feel like this? The truth is that the efficiency that we are told that we need only benefits those who are selling efficiency.

So devices that allow all that noise to be cut should be sought, if you feel the same as me.

Here are some points about this.

• Choose a device that does not and cannot send you notifications.
• Choose a device that does not and cannot advertise to you
• Choose a device that only does one thing.
• Choose a device that does not distract you from the task for which you picked it up for in the first place.

To be clear I am not suggesting that anyone dumps their smartphone and gets a Nokia 6110. I am suggesting that you limit notifications, block adverts and try to use the smartphone on your terms.  Now and again, if you need a break from the noise, maybe choose a digital or film camera, an E-Reader that only allows you to read books, a notepad, a music player that only plays music or maybe just sit and do nothing with your smartphone locked away. Maybe buy an alarm clock and leave your phone downstairs? (I need to do this one!!!!)