A man and his Pentax (my history with film gear) Part 1
The legends are true. The myths are reliable. Believe what you’ve read and what you’ve been told.
Pentax 67’s are massive. and heavy. and loud. and I wouldn’t have it any other way! I enjoy using one as my main workhorse camera and it produces great imagery. My opinion is that a Pentax 67’s limitations are exactly what gives it charm and character in our digital world. It has something that cannot be replicated, and will never be mechanically or industrially produced ever again!
It’s a camera that has a long history dating back to 1965 but like it’s heavy-duty ethos it has stayed on a straight path through the decades as an industry juggernaut!
BUT I’m getting ahead of myself. This blogpost is the first in a series in which I will explain a little about my history with film and camera gear.
Let me set the scene; the year was 2O16 and I was young.
My first foray into film was via an old 7Os polaroid camera (the one with the rainbow on the front), I bought it from a knick-knack dealer who didn’t know if it worked at all and lo and behold, it didn’t. It still shot film and spat out pictures, but they were always overexposed to near whiteness if outside or hazy darkness if inside. It was still a cool piece of kitsch for the collection.
Fast forward a few years and I would come to receive another Polaroid camera from a relative (Thanks Aunty Lyn!) An Amigo 62O from the 8O’s that worked flawlessely. Needless to say it came with me on all sorts of adventures, fulfilling my instant photographic dreams from years before.
Technically speaking I was taking pictures, but in retrospect I feel like I didn’t really start shooting film properly until I ‘discovered’ a small 35mm point-and-shoot camera owned by my Mother. It was an Olympus Trip 35 that Mum bought new in 198O to use on a European vacation. I’d inadvertently seen the images taken with it in various family photo albums! The camera had actually lived on my bookshelf for years after I’d moved out of my parent’s house because I thought it looked like a neat little retro piece with it’s funky lens design. Unbeknownst to me it was still in great working condition and was actually a fantastic little camera to shoot with.
After being introduced to 35mm film photography through a close friend in Spring 2O21, I got to thinking about my little Olympus on the shelf. After a small amount of research on mechanical operation and also the different filmstocks available I was off to the races. I bought and shot a roll of Kodak Gold 2OO (more on why it was Gold in a future blog post) and the resulting collection of images were magical for me. They still are. Vibrant. Sharp. Lucid. Evocative.
That was the bingo moment. I was head over heels for film photography!
And from there it was all downhill.
Thank you for reading! Catch ya in the next one,
Benjamin