Friday, March 05, 2010

My First Good Camera

My first good camera was a gift from a neighbor who was a friend of my mother. It was a Voightlander Vitessa L that she had replaced with a Kodak Retina Reflex and wasn't using any more. I used that camera a lot during my last two years in high school along with a Graflex Century 23 that I later bought. Prior to the Voightlander my only camera was an Ansco ReadyFlash. Amazingly I still own all three of those cameras but only the Voighlander is currently functioning. The Ansco used 620 film which isn't made any more. I could re-spool 120 for it but the camera isn't worth the bother. The shutter on the Graflex sticks and needs cleaning. The Voightlander was in disrepair too but I had it fixed and CLD'd (Cleaned, Lubricaded and Adjusted) by Classic Camera Workshop in Huntingdon Valley, PA in 2007 and ran a roll of film through it after getting it back to verify that all was working as it should. I hadn't done anything with these two photos from that roll until yesterday when I decided to combine them into a diptych. I may have been thinking in those terms when I shot them but didn't get around to it at the time. They are certainly aligned as if I intended to use them together.

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