Nostalgia

Here's a post that is somewhat nostalgic for me.  Back in 1978, when I was 17 years old, I joined my high school's yearbook staff during the latter half of my junior year as photographer.  They used a huge Polaroid Land Camera and a Konica Autoreflex TC 35mm SLR for their picture-taking needs.  I ended up getting to use both of those cameras, but the one I remember most fondly, was the Konica 35mm.  Here's an image of it in the hands of the guy who was the yearbook photographer just before me, his name was Randy.  This was taken from my junior yearbook:

And here's that same camera in my hands from my senior yearbook.  Both images were cropped:

I learned a lot using that camera and here are some pictures I took using that camera.  The first three were for the yearbook, and the last three were some I took for myself:

I liked that camera so much that I ended up buying one of my own many years later.  When eBay came along and became huge, I realized that you could find practically anything there.  Remembering how much I liked the school's old Konica Autoreflex TC, I searched and found one on eBay - and bought it!  Here's a picture of it:

And a picture taken with it (after I had gotten a lens for it:

It didn't come with a lens, so I got me a second one from eBay that had a lens on it.  The second one didn't work, but was pretty cheap and it had the advantage of having the lens I needed.  That one looked like this:

The first one did work when I first got it, but it jammed up soon after and I haven't had a chance to fix it or use it until recently.  But I did manage to fix the second one I got that didn't work and here's a picture I took with it.  It shows some of the buttons in my late Mother's collection:

At first, however, I now had two of these Konicas and neither one of them worked.  So, I went back to eBay and found a third one that worked, but it, too, didn't have a lens on it.  Not to worry, though, because I had a lens.  Here's what that third one looked like:

And here's a couple pictures taken with that third Autoreflex TC:

Fast forward to 2019.  I was again searching on eBay and found an auction that had nine great old single lens reflex camera bodies, and two of them were Konica Autoreflex TCs!  I ended up getting those cameras and paid less than $10 for both of the Konicas together.  Here's what the first one looks like and a picture taken with it:

And here is the second one, now the fifth total Konica Autoreflex TC cameras in my collection, along with a picture taken just last night with that camera, more buttons in my late Mother's collection:

So, that's the tale, (so far....) of the Konica Autoreflex TC.  Who knows how it will end up?  But every time I use one, I'm transported back in time to when I was teenager and blissfully taking pictures that captured a special memory each time I clicked the shutter button.

Film Box Pinhole Camera

This post goes back in history.  The year was 2010, but it hearkened back to my college years and my first photography class in late 1979.  In an attempt to teach us the concepts of photography, we built our own pinhole cameras out of cardboard and a soda can for the pinhole.  These cameras produced 4"x5" negatives because we used 8"x10" photo paper and cut it down into four equal sizes, which gave us four "negatives" per sheet.  This type of early photography, from the 1820s, was called Calotype photography.  As an example, here is one of those shots I took back in 1979:

It shows the parking lot of Southeastern Illinois College, which is the college I went to.  I chose that subject because you could only load and take one picture at a time and to load and unload the camera, it had to be done in the darkroom - and I used the college's darkroom.  Plus, the original shot was a "negative" image and had to be contact printed to get a positive print.  Fast forward to 2010.

Remembering those early, (for me), pinhole camera days, I thought I'd revisit them and make my own pinhole camera again.  I had read where people were using all sorts of containers to use for their camera bodies and then adapting photographic paper or different sizes of film for their negatives.  Some of the smallest cameras I saw being made were out of matchboxes.  This inspired me to use an empty box of film for my camera body.  When it was finished, this is what it looked like:

But to use it, I had to cut down a piece of 35mm Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film to shoot in it and then tape up the box so it wouldn't have any light leaks.  For my "shutter," I simply used a piece of tape over the pinhole "lens."  It didn't look so polished, but it did keep the film from the light:

It took me several attempts of shooting before I was able to get a decent image, but one of the earlier images that didn't turn out so good looked like this:

Finally, I was able to get a fairly good image, and it was taken at the Fairfield, Illinois fairground during their Fall Fun Fest days of 2010:

I don't know what that curved group of light blobs were or what caused them, but they were present in all my shots, even when I used a different pinhole piece of aluminum in my final iteration of the camera.  The above shot looked like this taken with another camera, which employed about a 28mm focal length, so I guess my film box pinhole camera had a pinhole about the equivalent of a 28mm lens:

Since I eventually got my pinhole camera to take a picture you could somewhat recognize, I considered it a success.  Now, I'm wanting to build another pinhole camera that uses photographic paper and get back into taking some calotypes.  Stay tuned!

My New (Old) Camera

I'm still here! Family matters have demanded my attention for the last couple months and I haven't been able to blog with any regularity. But, things are getting a little more back to normal and I just had to post this little item about my new camera.

Pictured above is what it looks like - this is the actual camera body I bought used on Ebay. It's a Pentax K1000 and it comes with the strap but no lens. I haven't gotten it yet, so the above picture is the actual one that was used on the auction's page to get people interested in it. It got me plenty interested in it! A little story behind why I bought it.

A friend of mine gave me a great little Pentax 28mm wide angle lens, but as it's a K-mount, I didn't have anything that it would fit on. I've been wanting to use it, so I did a little research to see what Pentax cameras it could mount on. I found out that pretty much every Pentax film lens will fit on just about every Pentax film camera they ever made. That's why they've been around so long and why people always remember using a Pentax. The Pentax K1000 was introduced in 1976 and they made it virtually unchanged until 1997! The reason it was so popular is because it is totally a manually-operated camera - no automatic shooting modes. This made it cheap and popular with schools who would buy up bunches of them for beginning photography students. They were easy to master and quite well laid out, even in their simplicity. Another reason I finally bought a used one, (for $20 no less!), was that in 1977 and 1978, when I was looking to make the move into a really good 35mm camera over the ones I had been using, I began to look around for something that would fit my needs. Olumpus had one called the OM, Minolta had a revolutionary camera that would shoot in all operating modes and manual, too, called the XD11. And the Pentax K1000 looked attractive to a 17 year old for it's smaller price. I ended up getting the Minolta XD11, which I have talked about before here on Photo Journey, and the Pentax and Olympus just settled into being what almost was. When I found out that a Pentax K1000 would take the lens I had, I jumped at the chance to finally get the camera I almost bought over 30 years ago! I can't wait for it to arrive so I can start to shoot some film with it. Below is the lens I have that was given to me:

This lens is an expensive and well-made wide angle lens, an SMC Pentax-A 28mm, f/2.8. Another great thing about this lens is that it came with a 2x tele-converter, which I'm sure the original owner purchased so that he could use it in tandem with this wide angle lens and bring the focal length up to the range of a normal, prime lens. 28mm times two equals 56mm, which is well within the range of normal lenses. They run from about 45mm to 58mm and make subjects appear to be normally proportioned on film. So, I'll have a lens that is equal to the normal shooting distance and it can double as a wide angle lens when I want to include more in my frame. I can't wait to try out everything when I get it all together!

Below is what my new camera will look like with the 28mm wide angle lens on it. I have digitally manipulated two different images so that it resembles what my new rig is going to look like. There's nothing quite like shooting with a film camera in the manual mode! One other thing I really like about my new K1000 - it can be used without having to put batteries in it!

April 1st, 2010 update - Here's my new camera: