My first “new” old camera

When I retired a decided that I wouldn’t rush around joining clubs and finding things to do – I wanted to just take it easy for a while, sort out the garden (which is large) and generally potter about for a bit. As it happens a lot of things got in the way of that but that’s another story and unrelated to this blog.

After a while I thought back to the pleasure old style film photography had given me and started to read up on the subject. I soon became aware that although digital photography was by far the major player, film photography had not died and indeed was enjoying a renaissance of sorts.

Looking back I realized that I had enjoyed black and white photography more than colour. Processing black and white film was simpler and I my mind the lack of colour added to some photographs far more than was lost. It gave some pictures more atmosphere and mood – it had none of the niggles of colour pictures such as colour casts or colour reflections or worse (the blight of many of my photos) someone in a fluorescent orange coat in the middle of an otherwise stunning landscape. Now I know that digital photo editing can solve all of these issues but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I don’t think it’s wrong to fix photographs in this way, it’s just that I found it too much like hard work.

So I decided to buy myself an older film camera, but what?

After much reading on the internet about other people’s opinions I decided that I wanted something ‘old school’ and settled for a Zorki 4 rangefinder camera.  This decision was based on reading that the camera was still popular, ‘relatively reliable’ and fairly cheap. The slightly newer 4K model with a film advance lever rather than the knob was a bit more expensive and didn’t seem to offer much else in return.

After failing to ‘win’ at several eBay auctions I finally got one and duly waited for it to be delivered in the post. When it arrived I went over it thoroughly – it had been described as being in working order and so it was except I found the aperture ring on the lens to be so stiff that I could hardly move it. A shame because otherwise I thought it was a real gem. I had a dilemma, should I try to fix it with perhaps a little heat and a drop of oil or should I return it? In the end I contacted the seller who was very apologetic and suggested I return the camera for a refund – so I sent the camera back. A couple of days later the seller contacted me to say he had fixed it, with a little heat and a very small drop of oil, asking what did I want to do. I asked him to send it back to me which he did along with another note of apology and it looked and worked perfectly. I gave this seller some good feedback on this one – he earned it.

I’ll show you some photos of the Zorki in the next post.