I don't collect cameras for the sake of collecting: they're all there to be used. Part of the reason for having this many cameras is a mistaken notion that there is a 'perfect' camera: I am well aware that this is an illusion (there are only cameras that are right for the situation/format), but certain cameras do feel seamless in operation, where operating the camera doesn't get in the way of the shot you are trying to get, or conversely, the operation of the camera affects the outcome of the image in a productive way. My first camera when I was about fourteen was a cheap 35mm compact, then as a student I got a Praktica SLR, which at the time seemed a big step up; this was in the mid-1990s, all the better-off students had EOS-type cameras, and I was buying secondhand as it was all I could afford. I then expanded into medium format with a Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex Twin-Lens Reflex, and at the other end of the scale, someone gave me a Kodak No. 2 Brownie. I also found a Olympus Pen EE3, a near perfect snapshot camera as I then thought of it, and a couple of years out of college I traded in my Praktica for a Canon A1. With the addition of a stereo camera and more lenses and accessories for the Canon SLR, that's how my collection remained for a number of years, until I got burgled, and lost everything but the stereo camera.
At the point in time of replacing them, or being able to afford to replace them, secondhand camera shops were dying off, thanks to digital and partly no doubt to a certain auction site. Over recent years I'd added a few more to my collection, mostly out of serendipity - I got into medium format folder cameras after finding one in a charity shop for example. Now I've started to add to the collection again...
What this blog is about, then, is my use of analogue, film-based photography, different cameras, equipment, films, techniques and so on.
