A Camera Without Film

A Camera Without Film Still Hold’s Memories

I wrote that a while ago I destroyed thousands of images, negatives and trannies.  I regret this act of material memory annihilation.  If the archive still existed I would edit the thousands of ‘clicks’ and many would be in the trash bin. All faces would be dissolved.  A few would be reprinted.  Scanned.  Shared.

Even without ‘proofs’, some images exist in a fogging mind.

Ford Cortina on Swanage Pier.  La Spirotechnique diving cylinders.  Omega 828 boat.  Blue Bedford truck’s 244N and 963K.  A seven-bedroom white house full of family nightmares.  A beautiful young girl on a Brazilian beach (who later became someone else).  An embarrassing cricket match.  The impossible rugby football kick.  John’s Moto Guzzi 850.  Kawasaki’s. Ektachrome film.  Holidays in The Med. Atlantic crossings.  Canberra.  Iberia. Half of the P&O Fleet.  School skiing holidays in Italy.  Volvo 164’s.  Mercedes Sports.  B.M.W 3.0Csi.

The Pentax S1a and Weston exposure meter.  55mm f2.0 lens.  In my bag.  Every time.  Everywhere.  Ektachrome.  Kodachrome.  Plus-X.  Tri-X.  No batteries required.  Sharp as pin images meaning nothing.  Soft as marsh mellow piccie’s worth more than gold.

Here is my S1a  Not the original – someone else’s – now mine – over the next few weeks it is my image taker.  Camera to Film to Scanner – And for the 35mm film user… a review of the camera.

Thought or question.

If material images are lost –  And one’s eyes see an object.  Can the object become the catalyst and provoke the memory to resurrect the images of the past?  Yes, it can.  Although, I feel the past is never worth revisiting.  It’s a stagnant man who holds the nonsenses of his pasts like trophies.  A man who lives is driven by the certainty of the final sleep, which drives him toward the future’s horizon.

In 1962 Asahi Pentax gave the S1a camera to the world.  An expensive camera and as good as ANY camera made in the era. Camera number 165360, the one you see in the pictures is 50 years old.  Never seen a service technicians screwdriver.  The lens could benefit from lubrication (in a month it will be sent for a full service) – The price of camera – lens – and meter? £28 (Jan 2015)  When new it was £77 the average weekly wage was £20.  At today’s prices its a grand or more camera!  For the next few weeks, they will be in my bag.  Focussing the light onto film to record my seen world.

The lens is more important than the camera?  Without the camera, the lens is an engine without fuel.  We are recording vessels.  Alive, we are everything.  In the final sleep, nothing.

Remember, I’m musing.  This blog goes anywhere, it has no purpose.  Camera review = Short story.  Essay about my none existent dog = Story.   A news item = Story.  Gossip about a 14-year-olds drunken night with two waiters = Story.  Mother condoning same 14-year-old daughters sexual relationship with her employee = Story.  The same girl grows up and runs away with violent truck driver = Story. Girl dead = No more story.  And the brain ‘expert’ written about in another book is revealed to be a night club doorman. Now there IS another story in that brainy bore.

The camera = Memory recorder.

Film/Memory = Human interest.

What happens if we sit in a field. No phone, internet, communication?  Are you able to view your world and connect to it?  Love it?  Be with it?  Understand that this world feeds you?  Is the population obsessed with recording everything because there is a hidden certainty that the world as we know it now will be remembered as heaven?  And the populous of the future will hold us in contempt?   Shout out to your great-grandchildren “Look at these images – this is what we ruined. Be happy, we gave/made for you – your life of hell”.

Hey! Jack – I’ve nearly got my Pentax back.

Let us measure the light –  Let’s Play….