Hello. I've been thinking about posting here. I like junk cameras.

[hunter]

I buy cameras that cost five dollars or less, I put film in them that costs a dollar or less, and I take pictures like this:



This was taken with one of my favorite cameras, a Spartus "35 F" Model 400. It cost me all of $2.00, has no light leaks, a fine shutter, a very clean but perfectly wretched glass lens, and aperature settings of 7.7, "N", 16, and "K" which I'm guessing means Kodachrome in normal sunlight, but maybe I'm wrong. And yes, double exposures are easy which is why I bought it. Plus it looks really cool, like an old camera should look, and it's older than I am. I was going to make three exposures in this shot but some impatient twit started honking his horn at me.

But recently my faith in cheap cameras has been shaken. Junk cameras are no longer as junky as they once were. In the last two weeks I've bought a few cameras for $5.00 or less that are certainly not junk, including a Polaroid 180 in near new condition, and a working Sears KSX super SLR, which is actually a fairly nice Ricoh in disguise.

I replaced the the 50mm lens on the SLR with a 19mm wide angle lens I found someplace else, and between these two cameras I'm thinking fate has called upon me to spend less time digging through bins of old film cameras or annoying drivers in the street to do some serious photography.

Or maybe I can just leave those cameras alone for a little while more and keep wasting film with the Spartus, or my most awful of awful cameras, a Vivitar IC 400 with some kind of cheap lens that is even worse than my actual Dollar Store cameras.



Unfortuanately I also have to find a place other than Costco to develop my film since my wife took pictures of me skinny dipping and I didn't know it so when I went to pick up the pictures one of the women behind the counter had a smirk on her face and wouldn't make eye contact and the other was looking at me like she'd seen me naked and was too friendly and I didn't figure out why 'til I saw the pictures... which I won't post here because my farmer's tan is blinding, but then again maybe the lens flare off my butt is interesting. Nope. It's not.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. wow, where do they still have

fallout shelters?

cool find

junk cameras are da bomb!

you need to run your own b/w film... pennies per shot

[hunter]

4. The second picture was taken at an old military base.

It was a fallout shelter for food. I don't know what sort of plans they had for sheltering people, but somebody's food would be safe behind thick metal doors and concrete. The flimsy door in the photo is a later substitution. Some stuff at the base gets sold for scrap by government agencies, other stuff simply vanishes.

I haven't developed my own film for more than twenty years; not since I got married and had kids. Maybe now that I can trust our kids to drive our cars, I can also trust them not to drink any developing fluid I might have around.

[Tindalos]

2. Those are cool pictures

I don't know anything about cameras but I like what you're doing with them.

Welcome to the group.

[JeffR]

3. Great post.

I love the iffy images from these cameras. The double exposure is fascinating. A triple exposure version would have been cool to see.