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| Groyneshower - Brighton Swimming Club |
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| Promflood |
THE FILM AGE
The best camera in the world is the one you have on you when you see a photograph waiting to be taken. These days it would be a mobile phone. “Gryoneshower” and “Promflood” were taken one stormy winter morning twenty years ago. I used to carry an Olympus Trip with me which I had picked up for a few pounds and regarded as expendable. It was small enough to keep with me most of the time. With sea water spray flying around all over the place I would not have risked a good quality camera in these situation. The pictures are not sharp but they are among the more appreciated of the pictures I have taken in over sixty years of photography.
It is perfectly possible to take good photographs with an ancient Box Brownie taking roll film. If the light is right and the subject at the right distance, they will be fairly sharp and clear. These days, pictures taken with such a camera will automatically take on a vintage character.
However, basic cameras have limitations. There are subjects which just cannot be taken with them, though the cameras on mobile phones will do a lot which in the past needed an expensive camera. During the 1960s I used 120 roll film folding cameras taking eight pictures on 120 film. The quality is often higher than a full frame digital camera can produce, but although the cameras were compact and portable, they were clumsy to use.
I then switched to a Leica M2, which is compact and ready for instant use, though you need to decide which lens to put on and not keep changing. The camera came with a 50 mm collapsible lens which was good for most things, and I also had the 90 mm lens which still made a reasonably compact outfit.
When I wanted to take better architectural photographs, I bought the 35 mm Summaron lens, but it vignetted quite badly; also the Leica was not good for close up pictures. I bought a Nikon F2 to supplement it, and later on, an F3 body to use my lenses with; by then I had accumulated Nikon lenses in a range of focal lengths, as older ones are quite inexpensive. Then I found I was not using the Leica and as I needed to take larger format architectural photographs, I traded in the Leica for a Linhof Technika using 120 roll film. In retrospect, trading in the M2 was a mistake. The Linhof is tricky to use but with a rising front, it takes perfect architectural photographs in large format, which I was doing at the time, again, often for my work. These days it lives in its box as there is unfortunately little demand for these excellent pieces of equipment.
In the end, I mostly used the Nikon SLR for work photography (I was 14 years in the town planning department at a London borough) but found it too clumsy to carry around all the time so I supplemented it with a Canonet rangefinder. These have superb quality lenses but are on the large size and I traded it in after a couple of years, when I came across an Olympus Trip 35, which became the camera I always had on me. Other good notebook cameras I have had include the Olympus XA and the Minox GL; the latter is a perfect pocket camera which cost next to nothing. I kept one with me until I forgot it somewhere. I picked up another a few weeks ago, again for next to nothing.
By 2005, I thought it was time to try digital photography. That is the next part of the story.
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