LTL3 and other cameras

Having uploaded all my images, many scanned very laboriously from badly cataloged prints, I've been a little nostalgic for the camera that took many of them.

This was it. A Praktica LTL3, bought second hand in Dixons Kirkcaldy in 1982. I was initially very hesitant about it's completely manual exposure and focus, but soon got used to it. I took soooo many pictures in the mid 80's, just at the time when I was getting a decent amount of pocket money and before I had discovered alcohol in any volume. As I think about it, particularly in 1984 when the photo taking seemed to reach its maximum, this rather bulky camera must have been with me all the time.

I was briefly seduced by the technological marvell that was the disc camera - remember them? My Aunt Nan could never take decent photos and these cameras were meant to be so easy to use that we even suggested she got one, I don't remember if she ever took that up. Disc cameras were meant to have virtually eliminated blur, but they did this by using very fast film, so the photos were always very grainy.

I never really knew how old the Praktica was as I bought it second hand. One of the websites I visited today said that they began production in Praktica's Plant in Dresden in the former East Germany in 1972, but anyway - it gave up on me around 1988 and I was advised that it'd be more money than it was worth to fix it. So I took to borrowing my Dad's Olympus OM10 and it became my favorite camera for many years.

I bought a little plastic Olympus compact in 1995, really just to have something small to put in my pocket for my friend Steve's wedding, that became my main camera before I left it, somewhere in Aberdeen on a rather drunken night in 2001. I then took to using a load of cardboard disposable cameras - well, it wouldn't matter if I lost one of them! The cardboard age lasted (with a brief departure with a very very cheap Boots own brand compact) from 2001 to 2004 when my Dad gave me his old compact digital camera, another Olympus and I was in the digital photography age.

I just realised that the Nikon digital SLR is therefore the first SLR I have bought for 25 years!

I'm really struggling to think what my favorite photo is that was taken with the Praktica, but this is pretty representative of the era. Taken by flatmate Nicci Vernolini, this is me and Inca the dog in the autumn of 1985. The Praktica being augmented by a flashgun, bought at great expense (or so it seemed at the time when I also had to buy Led Zeppelin and 10cc records!) the previous year.

I rather like this photo also taken with the Praktica in the Summer of 1985 of Kirkcaldy band, The Crucified Brains.