I love photography in all its forms, formats,
sizes, and guises. I love cameras in all their types from lo-fi to
sci-fi. I love collecting and I love making.
This means that I have way too many cameras,
whether I've bought them myself or been gifted them or made them. Often
if I find something I like, especially if it's something a little
strange, I'll go out of my way to get at least a second
(or third or fourth) in case it breaks. Of course, if the worst happens
and a camera does break, that doesn't mean it's going in the bin. It will
usually get kept for spare parts, or more often turned into my
favourite photographic thing to make, a pinhole camera.
Pinhole is probably my favourite "alternative" process. This is where
the camera used to make the accompanying images came from. The V.P. Twin
(short for Vest Pocket Twin frame counter) is a bakelite 127 half frame
format camera made from 1935 to the late
1950's by the English company E. Elliott Limited. I have two: the first
came in a job lot purchase and had a shutter mechanism that was a solid
block of rust, and the second cost £2 from a junk shop and had a working
shutter but a cracked lens. Two bodies, one
lens, and one shutter to me equal a fully working camera and a perfect
excuse to make another pinhole camera. The resulting camera has an
effective aperture of f100 and gives 16 4x5 cm frames on a roll of 127
film.
- Dale Willetts, @delusions_of_competence
