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# Photography

Click here to see my film dev+scan price comparison page!

Before I started secondary school in 2016, I pretty much had never picked up a camera. Early on in my time there, I decided to go along to a photography club, run by the wonderful Mr Parker, where I was introduced to film photography using bulk-loaded HP5 in a Minolta SLR that beeped at me. I learnt the basics of photography there, got to grips with developing my own film and making darkroom prints and did a GCSE in photograhy. The rest, as they say, is history.

These days, I mostly shoot colour negative film with a little bit of black and white here and there (Kodak Ultramax and Ilford XP2 are the go-tos). I don't do any of my own developing or scanning, though I want to get back to doing that at some point.

I'm working on getting some of my actual photography here eventually, but in the mean time, here's a list of some of the kit I have!

## My Cameras

### Praktica BX20

35mm SLR, Praktica B mount, manufactured between 1987-1993

My BX20 was the first camera I ever owned, and to this day my favourite. It's an easy to use, versatile body that's rock solid reliable*, feels super nice to use and has a really pleasing shutter klunk to it.

*ironically this camera is the only one in my collection that just randomly broke recently - the shutter speed dial fell off, though it was pretty much just a case of carefully reassembling it and tightening a screw down again.

I have a motley selection of lenses for it, including some I use with an M42 adapter:

- Prakticar Pentacon 50mm f1.8 (I got this brand-new in-box! It's beautifully clean)
- Helios 44-2 50mm f2
- Vivitar 28mm f2.8 (also came boxed)
- Helios 28mm f2.8 (politely, this lens is a soft and fuzzy piece of crap)

### Lubitel 166U

120-format TLR, 75mm fixed lens, manufactured between 1983-1996

This is a super-basic but insanely fun camera to walk about with and use. The word "lubitel" means "amateur" in Russian, and when new it came with a insert that you could use to convert its native 6x6 negative size into a 6x4.5, hence the "Univseral" moniker (though I do not have this piece, nor do I have a lens cap).

I have not shot with this camera anywhere near enough. The few shots I have got have produced some lovely photos, though - I just need more practice and it needs a disassembly and a clean.

## Retired Cameras

### Pentax Espio 115M

35mm point-and-shoot, 38-115mm zoom lens, introduced in 1996

While not functionally dead, this particular camera developed a light leak from the lens which condemned it to a life of shelf decoration. It's annoying; an electrically (mostly) functional camera rendered useless because of how costly and complex it is to fix mechanical problems on little point and shoots.

That said, there was also an intermittent but increasingly common problem that meant it would fail to fire the shutter and instead show an "A2" error on the screen. Nobody on the internet seems to know what that meant, and I don't either, but I guess at this point that doesn't matter very much.

Either way, I liked this camera so much that I bought a near identical replacement that I'm currently testing.

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