dead media club 02
Image by byronv2
something else found when rummaging around in drawers recently, a pack of very tiny photographic slides – some of you may be old enough to recognise these right away, from the old Kodak 110 cameras, the slides came back in the little plastic box you see here, which also doubled as a viewer, with a magnifying lens built into one end and frame to keep slide steady, simply hold up to the light to view. If you look at the larger version you can just about make out a couple of the images here as the light reflecting off the white paper background illuminated them.
The small, slim, rectangular 110 camera, with its easy to use cartridge film system (lot easier to load than a 35mm roll!), was the very first camera I had which was mine and mine alone, not one borrowed from dad’s set. His big brother, a serious shutterbug, my Uncle Jim, bought it for me and it went everywhere with me for years, probably about 7 or 8 when he got this for me. When I was about 11 he got me my Ricoh 35mm compact – proper compact, all the controls and F settings etc to learn, everything you’d need to learn an SLR but without the ability to change lenses (and much smaller, of course), great training camera.
After that using the full SLRs with dad (we had a pile of old Praktica cameras, still do, nothing fancy but work brilliantly and indestructible). At college having to do a photo project I didn’t need to borrow one from the department as I had my own and knew how to use it, very handy. Now onto third digital camera.
Uncle Jim has been gone decades, and often I find myself wondering what he would have made of this modern, digital photo era. And I always, always find myself thinking back to that Kodak 110 he gave to his young nephew then his first 35mm, every time I take a photo I am pleased, every time I capture a moment or scene that I’m proud of I think of Uncle Jim and mentally thank him. In that spirit the tiny wee basic first digital camera I had years back now belongs to very young cousin who loves playing with it. Maybe she’ll just use it as a toy, maybe it will become a lifetime thing for her too, who knows. Thank you, Uncle Jim, for those first cameras, thank you dad for sharing your cameras and help with me. Who would have known four decades on I’d be shooting more pictures than ever and now able to share them globally? Seven year old me could never have imagined that.
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