Photography-Low and High Tech

Pinhole Kit

I have finally received the pinhole camera kit ordered a couple of weeks ago from retrophotographic. The camera is surprisingly small, and I managed to assemble it in a short period of time. Next weekend I will test it out hopefully, Bank Holiday weather permitting.

On the subject of photography, I decided to have a look around my local camera dealers that I have not visited for a while. They always used to stock a fairly good range of secondhand SLR film cameras as well as the odd medium format Bronica, something I have wanted since I was a teenager. I was on the look out for an old Canon AE1 which I am told is a suitable manual camera for shooting with infra-red film, something I have been wanting to try for a while now.

I was surprised to find when I walked in that the shop now stocked nothing but digital cameras, from the very cheap to the very, very expensive, and an impressive range of scanners, printers and expensive image manipulation software to go with them. I have nothing against digital but I am nostalgic for my teenage days spent in the College darkroom, under a red light, pouring chemiclas into dishes and watching the end product emerge. Somehow sitting at the computer manipulating images with a few clicks for the mouse don't have that authentic feeling of being "real photography". I must be growing old, well I am 48 next Tuesday!