Thursday, June 7, 2012

My grandfather's camera and a walk around my neighbourhood

A few years ago, as I said good bye to my grandparents and moved away from my hometown for the first time, my Papa (grandpa) gave me something really special.
He gave me his camera.  It was the camera he had when he first moved to Canada over 60 years ago.
I treasured it and what it represented, keeping it displayed on my bookshelf with my other favourite things.
Then last week it occurred to me, I'd never really tested to see if it still worked. 
I spent about 30 mins pushing buttons, turning knobs and trying to figure out why the shutter wouldn't click.  Then I went to the internet.  And whoo - wouldn't you know it, someone had scanned the owner's manual.

After reading the manual I discovered that a teeny tiny little lever was pushed to the wrong place.  I carefully moved it and the shutter worked fine.   I loaded it with film and went for a walk to try it out.
It's tricky to get things focused properly when you have to guess the distance to the subject.  I'm sure it will get better with practice, and maybe next time I'll bring a measuring tape just to check.

Not really up to my usual capabilities...
I also noticed that the viewfinder is considerably off from the final shot - I need to remember to aim lower next time.  I really do love the look of these though.
This one is my favourite of them all, thanks to the furniture store for the cool display!
I aimed to photograph things that my grandma would like, as I plan to write her a letter and send her some prints of things taken with my grandpa's camera.  She misses him a lot and I'm sure she would love some happy mail.
All in all, I am so happy to have this little camera working.  It was really fun to go out and shoot film again - so much so that I just went and stocked up on more film today.  I love the element of surprise.  So I suppose you'll be seeing more posts like this from me!
Have you taken any photographs with film lately?

5 comments:

  1. That's an adorable and thoughtful project for your grandmother. I really enjoy the rawness to older cameras' photos. The last two are my fav - Eames chairs and that cutie squirrel. I can probably count on one hand how many squirrels I've seen in Ireland in the past 8 years. I think that's weird ...

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  2. Such a cool camera! I really love the picture of the chairs!

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  3. Such lovely photos! Isn't the internet the greatest thing ever? How did we ever manage without it? :)

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  4. Love these!! well done darling! I love having film processed and getting back the pictures, so much fun!

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  5. This is a really sweet idea - I'm sure your grandma will love them. Glad you got it working - obviously it's nice to have the camera even just for sentimental reasons, but being able to create something tangible and new from what he left you is just fantastic. :)

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thank you for leaving a comment! i love to know what you think :)

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