Camera Talk

Yesterday when I went to develop my roll of Centuria Chrome, I saw for the first time an actual LC-A. I was surprised that it was actually a 35mm camera coz I always thought it was a 120 format cam like the Diana and the Holga. And what surprised me even more was the size of the thing! It's small man! Of course, it's not as small as those tiny digital cameras these days. It has to, after all, accomodate a roll of film!

Anyways, it got me interested in it, so I went to read up abit on its history, how it was first made, introduced, mass-produced, celebrated, died down, discontinued, then revived again. But even more, it opened up my mind to a world of smallish film cameras that I could bring along when the Fisheye2 or the FM2n was too large to take!

So I started reading up the more popular small film cameras, and I stumbled upon a type of cameras called the half-frame camera. It takes 72 or more pictures from a normal roll of film, significantly reducing the cost of street-shooting and snapping away at anything and everything! Of these, I wanted to have a look at the Olympus Pen series, the Belomo ones, Kiev cameras too, and even Canon had a half-frame rangefinder-like camera with interchangeable lens!

That's bad news for my pockets because now I lust after a "new" old breed of cameras... Then as I read on, the half-frame didn't become so important as the final size of the camera. I loved the Minox models because they're really really tiny! Of course, my limitation is 35mm film. There are puny ones that even digital has a hard time shrinking down to, but they use special films like the 110, or the 8mm... which as far as I know, is only sold from a couple of places, and more importantly, only developed at ONE place. So if that particular place (Fee Fee, if you must know) decides to up its price, I'll have no one to turn to and my camera would become pretty useless.

Anyways, back to the point. I went to look around some of the more common used camera shops, and to my dismay, half-frame cameras are almost extinct! Almost... I found a Canon Demi with a 50mm lens and a 28mm lens. Its meter seems to work ok, but it was selling for $480.

Another camera that caught my eye was the Rollei 35S. Found a brand new, plastic-wrapped, limited edition, gold and brown one at The Camera Workshop (TCW) going for $1250!!! Can you imagine that? Wah kau... Then I found a normal silver one at P&G selling for $1350! There was another one beside it going for $320 I think... but that's the f3.5 one. The $1350 one was an f2.8. Anyways, found a Rollei 35S and a 35TE at the same place I found the Canon. They were going for $280 and $355 respectively... or at least, as far as my short-term memory serves me. And they're not even half-frames! Damnit! But they're damn cool, I tell u... Super retro.

And yesterday I got myself the urge to try deep space photography! But that would require quite specialized equipment that I wasn't ready to delve into, given that I'm living in Singapore. So the next best thing was to take photos of star trails and starry skies! Again, living in Singapore meant that it's hard to obtain such pictures due to light pollution and cloudy skies. Nevertheless, it's not impossible. Just very difficult... which makes me want to buy my D300 even more than before!!! ARGH!!!

Photography is drowning me. Its seduction too much for me to take. I lust after equipment of various capabilities. I want to fondle and caress every body and lens that I can find and wish that they were mine.

*sigh*

If only...