Archives Photo: novembre 2005

On friday, 18th of november, I have shot an entire 36 exposures film during lunch pause and went to make it develop right after. The result is quite good, even if (as I said in a previous post) the camera body is not hermetic to light. You will notice red strokes in the middle of the images in the first image of the serie.
But something incredible happened to me: my uncle decided to lend me his Minolta Dynax 5 with 3 different lenses! This is a very good camera and I am going to test it right away. This is a stunning surprise for me, since all my experience with traditionnal cameras have somewhat led to technical problems. Now I'll be able to concentrate on art and composition, instead of technical issues. I am impatient to use this Dynax 5...

Check the new pictures

Some months ago, I had the chance to get a Kodak Retina Reflex III that I got from my father, who got it from his father also... The camera was almost not working, so I decided I should get another one from eBay, which I did. I bought one at a very modest price, and it worked perfectly during 5 months, letting me shoot almost 10 films. Now the mechanism that triggers the shutter is broken. I did not even try to repair it, and it seems it will be quite complicated and very expensive also to have it repaired by a professionnal. So if anyone here has any clue on how to get it fixed, I would be infinitely grateful.

Here are some sample shots taken with that Kodak body:

                

Now the last camera I have recovered from my father is a Canon AE-1 (pictured below), first introduced back in 1976. I have managed to load an BW Ilford film inside, and started to take some shots. But the shuttering sync does not look right so I may get surprising results. This won't prevent me from shooting the whole film and prey to get clean pictures.

Why am I interested by old cameras, while I started photography with a simple digital camera? Maybe because I felt the need to discover the origins of this technique. And surely because so far I could not play with depth of field, and it is very pleasant to know that you still can get pretty pictures with 50 years old camera bodies. I will update here as soon as I have news concerning the Kodak & Canon camera. Hey, what do I see outside? Rain? This will be perfect to make a photo session during lunch time. More news later...