Here’s the cameras that I purchased this week, either thrifting or online, and there’s more on the way. I can see now that perhaps I do in fact have a slight problem. It’s just so hard to not buy a compact point and shoot when I find them practically brand new and for a good price.
-Danny
My quest to obtaining the Rollei™ A110 miniature camera spawned from an encounter nearly a year prior at a flea market in the middle of no where. There I was, walking down the path of broken asphalt in a vacant lot where many people congregate to sell their old unwanted goods. It’s pretty much a camera-chaser and vintage resellers paradise. I was ending my rounds as the sun was fully expelled into the over exposed sky. The temperature was maxing out at over a hundred degrees and I was ready to wave my flag and retreat for cover. Already with a tote bag full of treasures, I was making my way to the exit when I suddenly spotted what appeared to be a cool looking tiny camera. I picked it up and instantly recognized the logo, Rollei™. Unfamiliar with this particular camera or its value or if it was even possible to use; I was under the impression that the film format had become obsolete. Intrigued by the small metal design and orange accents, I asked the seller how much he wanted for it out of pure curiosity. He looked at the camera, looked at me, looked at my rings, looked at the camera, looked at my clothes, looked back at the camera and blurted out the exasperated figure of $35. I looked at him, looked at the camera, looked at the sweat beads that were about to trickle down from my wrist as if they were begging to get out of the sun. Defeated, I put the camera back down on the table and told the gentleman thank you as I walked away. Usually I would’ve put up a fight and haggled my way to the predetermined $5 figure that I already had set in my mind but in this particular encounter I just didn’t have the energy. Usually I’m okay with taking the “L” and would simply keep it moving when not acquiring something of interest but this experience was different. It haunted me and I kept thinking about it. For some reason this was the “one that got away”, especially when I would check on them from time to time on eBay and see the prices continue to rise. Nevertheless, as most camera hunters know, the first encounter is never the last.
I finally locked in a package deal for the A110 and E110 from a seller in Germany and then watched Youtube videos over the three day span that it would take for the cameras to arrive. I wanted to be in full preparation for what to expect when I ran the first roll of film through the cleverly designed metal body and miniature Tessar™ lens. Surprisingly, no video nor any online article could really prepare me for the feeling that I got when I unboxed the camera, advanced the frame and clicked the shutter. I was completely sold and the camera didn’t even have film in it yet. Just the motion and sound of advancing the frame was soothing enough for me to keep it forever but this post isn’t about a cool looking paper-weight or fidget spinner. We’re here to talk about the experience and how the camera performed.
The first thing that I noticed when shooting with the A110 was just how much fun it was. I was never even sure if my shot was in focus due to the scale focusing slider but I didn’t even care. I was having a blast and whenever someone would see me pull it out of my pocket and snap a photo, there was always an immediate response of “what is that?” The camera itself sparks interest, not only from the pedestrians standing by or the people walking through your frame but also from the person behind the lens. The size and the usability of this miniature moment capturer really makes you want to keep using it. To me, that’s a huge factor when it comes to a compelling camera that I would want to keep in the arsenal. Granted, you’ll probably never be able to blow up huge prints due to the limited film size but I don’t think that’s what this should be used for. This is one of those cameras that you want to have around on your “off days”, to keep in your pocket when you’re in a creative rut because this charming little guy will make you forget about what you were stuck on and allow you to simply enjoy the process of creating.
Now, when talking about the photo output, I was truly shocked when I got the scans back from my friends over at @darkroomfilmlab. I honestly thought I would maybe have one or two usable frames for this post but as you can see from above, when this camera hits, it really HITS. The images embody the exact mid to late 70’s era that this camera spawns from and takes you back to a dimension in time when film was king. The Tessar™ lens (when focused correctly) is astonishing to me. The fact that the tiny glass lens can produce images of this caliber is beyond my comprehension. And the tones, the color tones are so good it’s hard to believe that they came from this miniature little shooter. But now it’s time for the pros and cons so you can decide if this something worth getting for yourself.
PROS:
CONS:
All in all I have a true love affair with this camera, so much so that I currently own three of them simply because they make me happy. If you want a fun little pocket shooter that inspires you, not only by its design but also by its capacity to create solid looking small format images, then the Rollei™ A110 is surely for you.
-Danny
I had a profound dream last night. In my dream my parents just got a divorce and I was helping my dad clean the house that I grew up in. He was picking up clutter off of the coffee table as I was on trash duty. Just a father and son doing chores together and talking about life. He was asking me about school then asked me what my plans were for the evening? I told him I didn’t have any, then he asked me if I would like to meet his new girlfriend? I was a bit stunned because in this dream I knew that the divorce was still fresh, still new because the wound in my heart ran deep; these simple words that fell from his mouth felt excruciating. I asked him if he ever thought that maybe one day him and my mom would realize that they made a mistake and get back together? He stopped what he was doing and narrowed his focus directly to my eyes. As he stood there in thought, time decided to mimic his posturing. It took what felt like an eternity for him to finally answer me, “No, son, I don’t”. Fighting back the tears as hard as I could, I was finally able to maneuver my voice past the lump in my throat, “it’s because you guys stopped laughing”. Then I instantly woke up.
As a kid, my childhood home always felt alive. It was always full of laughter and felt like a hub for love because as much as I hated it, my parents were always playing, always laughing and grotesquely always kissing or leaving hickeys on one another. Yes, grown ups walking around with busted blood vessels in their necks on public display as if they were two teenagers who felt the need to boast their affection and claim their territory. It was a disgusting visual through my adolescent eyes and especially embarrassing when I had friends over. Yet, as much as I hated it, all of my friends who came from broken or divorced homes would always tell me how lucky I was. I never understood it and would plea for my parents to just be “normal”.
I understand now as an adult that the reasonings behind my parents divorce was completely valid. In fact, now knowing the chaos that was dwelling beneath the surface of the laughter and kisses, I’m quite surprised that the marriage ran as long as it did. But my dream, my dream didn’t upset me or make me miss my parents being married, no, my dream seemed to apply to myself currently. It was as if a ghost was visiting me from the past and showing me what will happen in the future if the gal and I ever stop laughing. Laughter is one of the things that bonds us, makes us feel close, makes us feel alive and makes us want to continue to fight for what we have. Laughter echos wherever we are and seems to infect others around us with a sense of energy that penetrates to the soul. You have no idea how many times people stare at us, compliment us or are in pure shock that we’ve only been together for six months. It’s because we’re aware of our magic, we cherish what we have, we’re grateful and we’re both willing to fight with everything that we’ve got to never give up, never stop playing, never stop kissing.. never stop laughing.
-Danny
I found this Wacom™ Intuos 4 editing tablet at the thrift store the other day. I spotted the box and figured it was empty, I mean what are the chances that I would randomly find a piece of tech that I actually want/need. I opened the box to discover that it was in fact complete and everything was included, most of it still even in the original plastic. Highly skeptical but equally optimistic, I decided to spend the $8 that it would cost for me to take it home and see if it would fire up once plugged in. After connecting it to my laptop and updating the driver, I noticed that it wouldn’t power up for more than three minutes. Luckily I’m tenacious and enjoy being resourceful so I plugged in a new cable and to my surprise, it worked perfectly. I got a practically brand new editing tablet for $8 and an old cable that I had laying around, but that wasn’t the best part.
When moving the box I noticed there was something taped to the bottom. A business card, an older style card that looked handmade and scotch-taped to the exterior. I looked closer and it was the card of a well known photographer. Someone who’s been making photographs since way before my time was using this tablet in their studio before deciding to donate it to a donation facility that eventually sorted and distributed it to a Goodwill™ that I just so happened to be at. I don’t say this enough, but when you begin to see how things in life line up, how the universe will give you little treasures to let you know you’re on the right path, you will begin to see that you can attract the things that you need or want. All it takes is a little bit of inner perspective to be able to spot things in the physical world. When you learn how to do this, you can make things happen and you become magnetic.
-Danny
C, and I were recently shopping at Moona Star™ were she found this really cool hand-dyed, hand-stitched sweatshirt by a brand that we’ve never heard of but instantly loved. I Stole My Boyfriends Shirt™ is one of those brands that we really like because they source vintage goods and then reform them to fit their own ethos, their own characteristics and make them speak from their personal narrative. There’s nothing that we love more than supporting cool DIY brands that make big impacts fueled by passion.
-Danny
The gal and I were getting french fries from The Sunset this weekend like we sometimes do and I happened to walk by a vintage VW bus with a surfboard cascading along the sand under an umbrella. The way the sun was hitting it made me want to capture it so I asked the owner if it would be okay if I snapped a photo. He obliged. After firing off two shots I thanked him and was about to walk away. Mid-step he said “check this out”, not sure what to expect, I walked around the side of the van and now ankle deep in sand to find one of the coolest things I have ever seen. The guy, Tony, turned the old VW van into an upscale rolling mobile photo booth, accurately named Malibooth. He was even kind enough to let the gal and I take a few spins in the booth before his clients were about to arrive.
Photography always has a romantic way of surprising me. A simple request to take a photo of a random dudes surfboard in the sand in front of his old VW van turned into me interacting with a really cool guy with an even cooler business that left me with a special keepsake that’s now permanently displayed on our fridge.
Thanks again, Tony. Everyone be sure to check out Malibooth
-Danny
So wild, I literally just finished writing about the Agfa™ Sensor series (below) and look what arrived in todays mail from Japan. Also, I know I stated that I wouldn’t be covering any MJU’s or T4’s because I’ve had so many of them throughout the years but it just so happened that I found an MJU II for super cheap so I figured, why not buy it. I’m still not sure if I’m going to keep it or not.
-Danny
I’ve been obsessed with the Agfa™ Optima Sensor series 35mm cameras since I stumbled upon them online last month. If you’re an industrial design buff like me you, you’ll appreciate all of the mindful design elements that went into the final production of these compact shooters. For starters you, your eye gets directly drawn to the big red shutter button and huge viewfinder. Its like looking out of a window of your dream home into your dreamworld. You also can’t help but to notice the uncanny resemblance of old Braun™ designs by none other than the infamous, Dieter Rams. The cameras are lightweight and jam packed with German engineered technology that was extremely advanced for the 1980’s era but still function seamlessly in todays photographic exploration. As soon as my eyes scanned over the images of the Agfa™ Optima Sensor online, it was lust at first sight.
As of today, I officially have three of the series that I had to have shipped from different corners of the world. Two Optima Flashes and one Optima Sensor (same as the 535) and have one more on the way from Japan. The funnest part about collecting these cameras is the fact that you have to search and source them from all over the world as there’s not too many people who want to let go of the ones that have survived over the years. If anyone out there reading this has one for sale, please let me know :)
-Danny
Where do I begin? Well, for starters I purchased this Yashica™ Auto Focus Motor II on eBay for $18 from a buyer who didn’t indicate if it worked or not. I just figured it looked cool and would make for a nice paper-weight on my desk but a part of me was also hoping that this old girl still had some air in her lungs. Made in the early 80’s and was way ahead of its time by being the first motorized compact on the market, I prepared myself for a piece of workspace decor. Upon its arrival I instantly popped in two fresh AA batteries to which there was no pulse. I figured it was hopeless to try to resurrect it since I’m not a camera technician but I did remember a guy at a flea market once telling me to always check battery terminals and to clean them out when dealing with old cameras. I got a wet-wipe and jammed it into the battery compartment with a screwdriver and twisted it around until I could see the corrosion fading and the shiny silver prongs glistening like a nickel in the sun (I just learned that you should use vinegar for this trick). Again, I know nothing about working on cameras and I’m about as delicate in the process as a drunk person running through a rose garden. However, it worked. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I could be a rocket engineer after this feat or surely map out the quantum physics that would lead us as a society into a carbon-neutural global travel initiative. I loaded in a roll of expired Fuji™ Superia Xtra 400 from 2001 that I found at a Goodwill and figured I would take her for a spin.
As you can see from the photos above, the camera actually performed way better than expected. Granted, it’s very temperamental and the auto focus is ‘on the spectrum’ and there was a few times that I had to turn it off and on again to get the power jump-started but for a camera that’s around forty years old, I would say it was worth every cent of the $18 price tag. It has a very charming disposable camera vibe that a lot of people really like but encapsulated in a fun, easy to use, hefty body. My biggest issues with it was the focusing and the flash recycling time as I like to shoot close and fast. After getting the scans back from Dark Room Film Lab I realized that a lot of frames were definitely outside of its focusing range.
Would I recommend you buying one? That depends on what type of look you’re trying to obtain in your photos. If you want snapshot images that aren’t super sharp and are somewhat flat but still embody vintage looking fashion and party photos, then yes this is your shooter for sure. If you can find one in working condition for under $20, I say grab it because I’ve read stories of people picking these up at thrift stores for $5 and selling them for over $100 on eBay. I’ll break down my pros and cons below.
PROS:
CONS:
So there you have it, the first round of First Roll™ and there’s tons more coming. As most of you can tell from my Instagram stories and blog posts lately, I’ve been on a buying frenzy in search of my own personal favorite point and shoot that isn’t in the cool kids, cult classic, club.
Thank you @_Jtchapps for letting me test this out on you.
-Danny
You know when you decide to surf the net first thing in the morning while listening to old Italian music from the 1960’s and sipping espresso when you suddenly get taken down a visual rabbit hole that hopscotches from one URL to another until finally you strike creative inspiration? No? It must just be me then. That’s what happened today when I started out at my favorite fashion website which then took me to an article on Aaron Rose which then took me to his website where that door opened up to a short documentary on Hamburger Eyes™ that he directed. I’ve know of Aaron Rose for years. In fact, he was one of the first names I remember discovering when I was heavily influenced by the likes of Supreme™ and Terry Richardson when I first started doing photography. AR owned the Alleged Gallery in New York when the city was dirty and the candid snapshots of that era were equally as gritty. For someone like me who lived in the suburbs of Thousand Oaks CA, it seemed like the perfect dreamworld. I would fantasize about the day that I could be wild and free and document my debauchery in a way that resonated with me and where I was at in that stage of my life. Graffiti, skateboarding, drugs, music, sex and art in all types of shapes and mediums, what more could an isolated kid ask for?
It was interesting to stumble upon this documentary today because I’ve heard of Hamburger Eyes™ in the past but never really paid much attention to it other than knowing it was photography based. Personally I thought it was a one photographer and left it at that. After watching this short I realized that its so much more special than one person, it’s a collective of people who love photography and documenting life and make it a point to produce something tangible, zines. I used to Xerox my own zines on a old photocopier when I was an office manager. I would wait until everyone was gone and work all night trying to layout my images and then stapled the bundled stacks of warm black and white paper together and gave them away to anyone that would take one. Zines used to be huge and I think for any individual that is prone to capturing life through a lens and has any sort of DIY attribute sewn into their DNA, a zine is just something that you do. You want to do it, you need to do it, and its something that’s compelled from passion. It’s the best way to publish your own work in a manner that isn’t in a cloud but can be held in a hand, flipped through, browsed, ripped and taped onto a wall. A zine is the archetype for what will later be your Magna Carta. I don’t know about you but sometimes I forget about my roots and how much more fun things where when I did it by hand. In todays age we all just upload tons of images but these virtual indexes have no life, no soul. They’re merely renderings transmitted for a split second and then lost forever in the never-ending scroll. If Instagram was to crash today, or even worse, if the world was to crash tomorrow, what significance of your creative pursuits would be left behind for the next civilization to discover? Heavy, I know, but sometimes we are so busy chasing the instant gratification that we forget why we even started creating in the first place.
Watch the documentary, warm up your Xerox machine or printer, put a new blade in your Xacto knife, load a fresh cartridge of staples and get to work.
-Danny