After reading the posts of Kuya and oss I began to feel those photographic urges stirring from another age. Well, even another life Of course much of my 'dabbling' with photography started many years ago. The very first camera I actually bought and owned was a box camera called 'Rex'. This is not my actual camera, but I do still have it. It cost me 3d in old money (3p?) in 1962 and I bought it at one of the village Jumble Sales, these were a kind of forerunner to car boot sales. I later also acquired a Coronet Flashmaster (complete with its own flashgun). Again from the Jumble Sale and again just about all my savings got used up on that plus the cost of feeding it with film. Not forgetting the costs of actually getting hold of the results. I think in those days if I dropped off my film on a Monday at my local chemist, I could get them back Thursday or Friday of the same week. I think I paid 2s (20p) in 1963 I'm sure I still have the camera but cannot find it anywhere. It took some good photo's and it wasn't long before I became hooked. Photography became the major reason for embarking on some adventurous 'bike-rides'. It also managed to somehow find an increased success at my fishing, which was was my other great love. By 1969 I'd 'gone through' quite few different camera's. Mostly all bought cheap in a local shop called Hawkins. He sold camera's binoculars and telescopes and all kinds of gadgets. The camera that really 'nailed it' for me however was the ubiquitous Russian Zenit B SLR with 58mm f2 Helios lens. Cost me £25 in 1970 I think. BTW I still have this camera. The Zenit-B was a purely mechanical 35mm SLR similar to the Zenith E but without the light meter. Like the E, it had no automatic diaphragm, the lens had to be stopped down manually after focusing. There were also no focusing aids apart from the plain ground-glass screen. It had a focal plane shutter with speeds 1/30-1/500s, plus B. My version was the chrome-topped design, there were also some all-black models. I stayed with this camera for many years and gradually built up quite an extensive range of accessories. At one time I even managed to get hold of second hand photosniper outfit. This exciting arrangement had a Zenit-ES body (a modified Zenit-E with a second shutter release on the baseplate), and came with a Helios-44 58mm f/2 and a Tair-3AS 300mm f/4.5. The ES body from the Photosniper outfit had a kind of 'lug/spiggot' on the bottom which included the shutter linkage so that you could 'fire' a shot using the pistol grip trigger. I also had a couple of the MTO mirror lenses (500mm and 1100mm ). Here's the Photosniper kit:- The Zenits were all pretty much the bottom of the SLR market, and mostly acquired as the first step up from a regular camera....every school boy's dream really. I always felt the quality of the photos taken by my 'cheapo' rough and ready kit was pretty good in terms of definition, luminance, and color quality. My very first enlarger was also a Russian Zenit (UPA5). Cost about £50 in mid 1970's It all packed away neatly in it's own case. (The case was also the enlarger base) Well, although times have changed and photography has changed dramatically. It's still great fun. I'll be back up in that loft soon. Who knows what other delights will emerge.
Wow... Brilliant. Something tells me Peter that you would enjoy getting back into modern photography and the picture quality available now! And I bet the prices for some of these models you still own in a might over value that of a good modern bit of kit today Perhaps a trip to the antiques shops is in order - or ebay? Or, keep them for the memories they will no doubt bring back
Kuya, Most of that kit was very much lower-end, although the optical quality of the lenses was pretty good. It's not really worth anything much just a few pounds. But to me it's really priceless in memories. I'd never get rid of that old Rex box camera (still in mint condition with carry bag). Nor would I ever part with the Zenit B camera. I still have in in mint condition complete with 35mm wide angle lens and 135mm lens. Actually, I just found the old Pentax ME Super that I also used extensively. Cleaned up the battery compartment (Urghhh) installed a new bat and it appears to work great. But you're right the advantages and conveniences of digital photography are drawing me ever closer to parting with some very hard earned wonga.
BTW, I sold the Photosniper Kit in 2006 for £250. Like all my stuff it was in truly mint condition complete with all filters, lens hood, tool kit plus loads of other stuff. Also had an adapter to convert from baseplate operation to mechanical wire. I included both of the mirror lens. To be honest, I didn't really use it that much, it was kind of conspicuous and made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Also it was pretty rubbish as it was very difficult to hold steady with such long lenses. Never really had any decent results. The tripod was so much better. Can't beat a tripod. Now, I still searching for my old tripod I know it's in the loft somewhere. Cost me a fortune in 1980. Monster of a thing, not what you'd carry around really.
I remember all of that kit Peter, my mate had the Zenit and I think it was the B model from memory, he also bought the sniper kit, he was into air shows big time as he was in the ATC. I think though you will find that you paid 1p new money for your first camera and 10p new money for the Coronet 2.4d in 1p 25 quid was the going rate for those old Zenit's, my first SLR was the Praktica Nova 1B which I bought new for 50 quid, I sold it many many years ago to my brother in law but a few years back I bought an old one on ebay out of nostalgia for 12 quid I still have several old box camera's that my dad bought over the years, he was big on doing contact prints from the large format 620, 120 and 127 negs, we have thousands of tiny little prints from the 1920's onward through to the late 60's, being a chemist he did a lot of his own processing.
The Pentax ME Super was a great camera I bought three of them second hand back in the mid 90's, one of them is in Manila now, the other two packed in, what I would really have liked was an Olympus OM1 or OM2 now that was such a tiny beautiful piece of engineering. I still have a Canon EOS 1N which is still a great film SLR but not used it in a long long time.
Yep memories indeed.... My very first camera was a Kodak Instamatic.... A Birthday present from my favorite auntie, bless her soul. the year after, when freshly in receipt of my first German salary, I purchased what I thought was the dog's implements of all cameras... Little I knew then... A "Pentacon Pentaflex" my very first SLR.... Unfortunately, I didn't get to enjoy it for too long, as it was stolen during a trip in Amsterdam, together with my new Fiat 128.... But I recovered quicker than I thought as a few weeks later I was able to buy a "Praktika LB" with all trimmings... Which followed me faithfully all the way to the UK... But for some reason I wasn't very happy, as camera technology was advancing, and I thought that having to use an outside light meter, was a thing of the past. So on my day off, and on my way to Chester Races, I decided to part-exchange it for the apple of my eyes... A few days later I also bought a Paterson 35mm enlarger and a Filters starter kit. The Pentax followed me for years and years all over the world, I took zillions of family photos, and never had any problems at all with it. One fateful day, one of my colleagues on board of the MV Nordic Prince, asks me if I wanted to buy his Canon AE1 Priogram for a Ton.... I asked if it was Pound Sterling, and he replied no... Bucks, Dollars............ I was so quick in snatching it off his hands I nearly severed his wrists.... Again, this is something I was looking to buy, but couldn't really afford, but with some of the money saved I bouth a Yashica FX3 With a 28mm fish eye lens.... This is something which I bought just to use on black and white photography, as I wanted to get back into developing some serious stuff, once back home from my travels. Never got to use it in the end..... Apart from this last one, all other cameras had a full complement of various lenses and zooms, which I still have up in the attic somewhere.... During a house fire, one of my Canon zooms got damaged beyond repair, and the insurance instead of trying to get me something from the second hand market, they decided to give me a brand new Canon EOS 300..... I did have some use out of it, especially during my earlier trips to the Philippines, but I got lazier with age, and have gone digital, only because the mrs keeps moidering all the time... Bought her a nice little 10mp Samsung number, but she soon tired of it, because "walay brand name", so to avoid problems I got two 14mp Sony W370, his and hers... Kind of thing... And although they are exactly the same cameras, she is under the impression that mine is better than hers.... I dread going to Tesco Extra, or Dixons with her, as it involves long discussions near the camera stands.... She doesn't seem to understand that cameras are chosen for what they can do, and not for how nice they look....
Thanks for the thread, it brought lots of memories back, some good, some not so good, but mostly absolutely great...!"!
Kinda feeling all new to this photography game.... My first camera (not including the things on my mobile phones) was a Fujifilm. I cannot remember the model as shortly after I bought it, my sister borrowed it and lost it (she has a habit of doing that, hence we don't lend her anything anymore). then about new year 2009 I bought a Kodak EasyShare (again, the exact model escapes me) and it was £69.99 in PC World. So, obviously I have taken a huge leap forward in terms of features and quality with my Nikon D5000. The only "film" camera I have ever owned was a disposable one I picked up in Thailand when I realised I lacked a camera..
Ah nice old camera's Dom That Pentacon Pentaflex is identical to the Practica Nova 1B must have been an alternate brand naming. I have one of those sitting in front of me right now lasted me a long time before I sold my original copy. This next one was my pride and joy in the 1980's, really wish I had never sold that one but times were hard at the start of the 90's I also bought this in 1986 just after it came out, at the time it was probably a bad move as it was quite difficult to learn and use, at the time my boss was not so impressed either and suggested I should spend more time with the manual camera's we had at work, he was right At work this old early 1960's Nikon F became my all time favourite, no meter, totally manual, but taught me a lot. My boss Alistair used this the Pentax 6x7 medium format SLR which was enormous but the results from it were fantastic, this was at the time that I was working as an industrial phtographer. I occasionally got to play with this monster in the power stations like Longannet, although more often I was using it out taking photos of wayleaves in farms up to my knees in cow poo We also had a couple of Sinar P 4x5 View Camera's similar but not exactly the same as this photo, they were fantastic technical camera's but required a lot of skill to use properly. Our biggest technical camera's were the size of a room I mean 20 foot long by 10 foot wide, I'll need to dig out some of my old pictures from the work sometime. I bought several other camera's during the 90's but I was not very active in Photography in those days The Pentax ME Super was a great wee camera though. And I still have one of these over in Manila, I bought it a number of years ago on ebay
Really nice posts everyone. Some great information, nostalgia and still that sense of fun. A name that's been eluding me for the past few days and really bugging me as I just couldn't remember, is Ferraniacolor. Anyone else remember that? When I first joined our local camera club they were all into 'Slide Battles'. These were basically slide-by-slide theme-based competitions using only colour slides, usually with twin projector set ups. Great fun, and very serious. Often with some top notch local judges. During a good 5 year period I used a lot of Ferrania CR50 colour slide film that I processed myself. Usually buying it from Jessops of Leicester in bulk rolls and loading my own casettes with various numbers of shots. Processing was both 'fiddly' and took quite a long time as I recall, using chemical kits and photoflood lamps for the reversal exposure within the developing tank spirals but in a water bath (a pyrex pudding bowl in my case) and kept submerged water to keep the film cool. All DIY usually in the kitchen, with chemicals everywhere. With care it was possible to achieve some very good results. I really liked that Ferrania CR50, it had unique but good colours and quite fine grain. Actually by extending the first development times the Ferrania could actually be pushed up to ISO 400 without too much problem. Pushing much over that did show quite pronounced grain effect, which was actually quite a nice effect for some subjects. I also often played around with Kodak Ektachrome which was rated at a nominal ISO 400 but again, could quite easily be pushed up a further two stops, again by extending first developer timings. Even at ISO 1600 it was a darn good quality film. All this nostalgia has just reminded me of another blast from the past, Orwochrome. Anyone recall that one? A real great buy (and so so cheap), and gave really gritty, grainy and atmospheric results. I used it quite a lot. Another name I remember trying out was Perutz. I only tried a few rolls and obviously didn't rate it much as I don't remember ever using again. Naturally the 'industry standard' Kodachrome 25 was always at hand with it's super high-definition, in fact virtually grain free images were possible. No DIY processing there though, so it did require careful use due to the expense. Eventually I found a real gem in Fuji pro slide film. Again bought in bulk and DIY loading into my own cassettes. By this time I had taken the plunge to buy a third-hand motor driven tank with automatic temperature controll. This turned out to be a marvelous time saving device as I no longer had to manually agitate the developing tank for 10 seconds every 30 seconds or whatever that darn cycle was. Later I found another real gem in the Fuji pro slide film. Again bought in bulk and DIY loading into my own cassettes. Still using E6 processes. Eventually I finally settled on a new Fuji film that came along called Velvia. This turned out to be so very good that I never felt the need to use Kodachrome 25 anymore, which gradually became less easily available until one day it was just no longer available. Once I'd really become hooked on colour slides I only rarely used black and White. Mostly only for exhibitions and competitions. I can only recall ever using the Afgapan 25 and Ilford Pan F, both had the finest grain I could get. I wonder if B&W film (or developing and printing) is still available these days? I've been out of serious photography for at least 15 years and do feel a bit intimidated by todays digital world. But as I understand it all the controls are now within the camera itself. I mean like ISO ratings, so no need to carry around different films, much better control of imagery etc. Then with the magical processes of software such as Photoshop, the old style darkroom gives way to a comple fully equipped virtual darkroom with almost unlimited controls. It's sounds great, almost liberating in a way. But would I enjoy it as much as I used to? Would I actually miss the excitment of alchemy and myriad accoutrements that made life so interesting and challenging... Or will the technology itself and mastery of Photoshop become the new alchemy? Only one way to find out I guess.
Up to about 18 months ago, the local Poundland was still selling Ferrania 35mm film 24/36 exposures, for a quid... I remember Ferrania color very well, also Agfa, Kodakchrome, and best of the bunch for me was Sakura color. This last one I was able to overrate it so much that I could take beautiful candle lit pictures. Sakura started off as a cheap import, but soon enough became really the most expensive of the lot, as more and more people realized how good the stuff really was. Yeah, Thanks to you I had a lovely trip down memory lane.
Mastery of Photoshop is something I would love to have.. I play around with a few things, for example making images black and white in the background and keeping the main fouc at the front in colour. I have (as a prank) amended a photo of a friend to make it seem like he was gay... Simple stuff, but nowhere near the level of a magazine photoshop designer. I'm at work now so will try and post some examples later to some of the things I did in Photoshop...
Yeah I remember Ferraniacolor Peter, if I remember correctly it required a manual fogging stage where you took the part processed slide roll and put it in front of a bright light to perform the reversal stage, E4 process was it? Later systems like E6 had a chemical reversal stage I think. Ah sorry just realised I had skimmed over your message you mentioned the reversal stage already I'm just at work and had a lousy day, brain is fried from too much fighting with bleedin javascript and browser incompatibility
We used Ektachrome at work Peter, never pushed it though. I vaguely remember Perutz but never heard of Orwochrome. Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64, well they were the reason I bought the Pentax ME's in the 90's I was only really interested in slide by that time and indeed I bought the Canon EOS 1N with the hope that I would use it with Kodachrome for a long time but sadly and heartbreakingly Kodak brought an end to the Kodachrome era, it was a magnificent reversal film and nothing could touch it, so advanced that only Kodak specialist labs could process it and so chemically advanced that the dyes will be stable for 100 years or more probably. Most technical archiving film has an expected lifetime of 25 years for the processed article, Kodachrome vastly exceeded that even though it was not specified as having a longer life than 25 years. And there was something so special about the fact that only Kodak authorised labs could process it made it so high tech and it was so hard to get the correct exposure only a 1/2 stop latitude wonderful stuff
Me too Sean, I have done some clever things with it on occasion or at least with it's clones like Paint Shop Pro (the old versions of PSP, I hate the new ones since Corel bought them) This was the end product. Shot 1 (the end result) This next one was the core shot. Shot 2 (the original) This was the clean version that gave me the clean cars on the right. Shot 3 (the donor) I painted out parts of Colin on the right, the head and upper torso mostly then cut the relevant bits of car from shot 3 to overlay on shot 2 to give me shot 1. One of the best composites I have ever done as even at full size which is much larger than this the joins do not exist Why could I not get the shot in the first place, well there were a lot of us and it was not just the guys there were a lot of wives there too, and I get a bit shy about asking everyone to get out of the road this was our rest break Ten S2000's on the last day of a four day tour of the highlands about to scream our way down from just north of Loch Ness.
Sorry I missed this wonderful most, Peter. We certainly have two experienced photographers here in you and oss With everyone else here, we could almost have our own photo club That photosniper kit looks like it could get someone into trouble if they were in a security zone, like an air force base or such-like
That was my first camera Dom, I bought it in Singapore in 1978 and used it for years taking slides mostly
Thanks for the compliment, but one thing I'm not is an experienced photographer. Haven't done it seriously for many a long year. I do have plenty of experiences, but that's not quite the same thing. I've spent about 3 or 4 weeks looking at the latest gear and pondering if I could justify the cost against the passion. Still thinking on that one. My early years in photography were really a passion and I had good reasons and motivation for that. You're right about the photosniper kit. I never really felt comfortable with it. Beside which, it was a real trick to get a good steady shot.
