Old Friends

During the recent saga in the attic with the plumber I had to move my collection of old camera gear. All sorts of stuff from old box cameras to modern(ish) SLR's gathered up over 45 years or so of photography.This set me to thinking of the working cameras which I still use from time to time and which are not kept in the loft. I was amazed to find that outside of the digital cameras (4 in all) I have 13 cameras in working order. Two Olympus OM10's and one each of the following : Canon EOS650, EOS500, EOS50E, Pentax SL, Pentax SP1000, Fujica ST705W, Olympus Pen EE2. EOS 3ooo, Yashicamat124G, and Canon Sureshot 85 Z, Olympus OM20. They were almost all picked up either for nothing or for very little.

Here are 3 of them. From the left: The EOS50E, from 1995, with eye controlled autofocus (now why don't they incorporate that into the modern DSLR), the Olympus Pen EE2 of 1962, a half frame camera which slipe easily into a trousers pocket and shoots double the amount of shots per roll and the Fujica ST705W from 1977, a camera on which I pretty well cut my camera club teeth and which has won me several awards. Sitting in front is a Weston MasterV exposure meter dating from 1965 and still used to guage incident light readings when required.

An old and still valued friend, every one. Might get around to shooting the others another day.