Zenit TTL

On Monday Night, discussing the marvelous photographs taken of Kings of England's BAC show by Kate Rowles (see post below), our family discussions turned to photography and the lamentable failure of my recently-purchased Sony Cybershot camera to take decent pictures under theatre lights. My Dad, who was perhaps never "a photographer" (although he has taken many pictures) told me that he still owned a 35mm SLR, bought in 1986 after Mum dropped his other one on the deck of Grandad's canal boat. So as a family we rushed upstairs to discover the camera's wherabouts. And we discovered 1 x Zenit TTL 35mm stills camera; 1 x Zenit TTL manual; 1 x Toshiba flash unit (with cracked bulb-cover); 1 x screw-on-leather cover & strap, 1 x leather camera bag. So this week has been mainly a process of discovering how to use this almost entirely manual device (it has a light-meter, which is its most modern feature). After ripping one film in half I went to Glossop Tescos with Dad to do the weekly shop and bought a Kodak Gold 400ASA film and took a lot of pictures of tree branches which were pretty uninteresting. The 1-Hour Photo counter wasn't doing 1-Hour Photos today so I took the film to Lorrel's in New Mills, and, 30 minutes later after a brief spend-athon in OXFAM, I got back 36 exposures, all of which were clear and unfuckedup. But the best 2 were of birds.

1 was of a single bird with its wings spread out, that reminded me of the tattoo that you have on the inside of your right arm. The other was of 4 birds in formation, circling something, blurred. They aren't brilliant pictures but they prove that the cameras work. But it's the excitement of having something else to do, another thing to hold, a new possibility.