Old School Photos

For each camera that I've owned there are a couple of really memorable photos I've taken - from the top of Table Mountain with my first zoom camera, photos of Sydney Opera House with my first digi cam, New York, Paris, Boston, Vancouver and New York (again) with the camera I gave the Dodgess two years ago... some of Singapore, Vienna and Boston (again) with the camera which was the first present I gave my wife after we married.

With my first camera these photos are from the banks of Lake Squam, with early morning mist sinking below the tops of the mountains in the distance, all reflected in a glassy lake. It was  given to me by my father circa 1993, and featured little other than a 35mm lens. Whilst going through the piles of accumalated goodies in my room before moving here I cam accross this old camera and decided that I should bring it along. And so, just before Christmas I bought a proper, old school film, and stuck it into the camera with no idea whether it would work.

Of course, it being a nineties camera I didn't have to do much other than put the film in - there is nowhere for a battery at all! And after a short reacquaintence with it, I managed to work out how to work it.

At this point I should probably point out that the wedding present I gave the Dodgess is a rather swish new camera - it takes photos by itself if you smile at it enough, you can change the lenses, add filters to it, set it up to take photos with 30 second exposures (to get really funky traffic effects), and for the most part all you have to do is press a single button. What's more, for a digital camera, the colours are hugely intense. We have expanded the basic model so that, with a couple of additions we can get ultra-wide angle shots, or zoom in to factor of perhaps 25 on the widest angle.


With such an array of options, the single zoom of 35mm posed a new challenge (well, obviously not new, but certainly forgotten) of getting the framing nice without any optical assistance. Which was fun.


The other non-novelty was having a limited number of photos. I mean, technically, the new Sony does indeed have a limit - it's about 1000 photos before meeting a computer and whilst the Dodgess and I have achieved that, it isn 't too harsh a task master. With the film I had 36 exposures - it certainly makes you think more, especially when you have to pay for them be they good or bad photos.


One of the treats was not seeing the result straight away - and having to wait for the film to be exposed, and then thumbing through the pictures to see whether they had worked.


Mixed bag - in low light the photos are poor. However, in the sunlight, they really shine - there is certainly now wash out of the colours around Marina Bay sands where I finished off the film. In fact, I'd say the photos have as much depth as the professional ones we had taken for our wedding. I'll try and get some up once I can scan them in.


So - quite an enjoyable foray back to a non-digital world, which I shall no doubt repeat. It is staggering to think that a camera that hasn't seen outside its case can work without any prompting 13 years after it was superseeded.