I bought a Zenit 11 on a blowy Sunday afternoon in a car boot sale in the late summer of 2005. The man who sold it to me had bought it new, back in the 1980s. He didn’t look at all sorry to see it go, but he’d moved up in the world, proudly showing off his nifty miniature camcorder. The Zenit is hefty and noisily mechanical and whiffs of engine oil. The Russians used to drop them from aircraft, allegedly, so they have to be tough.
At that time I didn’t know anything: even loading the film was a complete mystery. A nervously purchased colour roll, loaded by a patient fellow at some camera shop, came out completely un-exposed, which temporarily puzzled us both, but all was good, forced me to get it right by myself. Getting it right, as I subsequently found, meant rewinding properly, too. There’s a sleeve around the shutter button that needs pushing right down to disengage the wheel that catches the sprocket holes. If you don’t disengage the sprockets, the film will definitely tear. Hah: try yet again.
Two expensive rolls of HP5 came from Charlie Eagles, the camera shop where my auld dad used to hang around, back in the day. The staff there didn’t know how to load a Zenit: that’s okay, not many people do. So these two photographs are from the first roll I loaded and rewound myself, with tuition from the lovely Graham at the now defunct APS in Grey St, who also did the developing. Nobody does black and white developing locally now: we mostly do our own, or shoot C41.
These were taken on an evening stroll in the beloved Toon. Blue carpet above, was shot over a section of illuminated pavement outside the Laing. Waiting below is platform 3 at Stephenson’s magnificent Newcastle railway station. With little clue about exposure, I remember using some version of sunny 16: I didn’t fathom out how to use the light meter until the following year. Completely clueless, but it was a start.
Blue Carpet top, was chosen for PPF’s Look This Way exhibition at the Customs House in South Shields. Quite why that one, rather than Waiting, my unendingly enthusiastic and supportive mother couldn’t understand. Puzzles me, too. Waiting is the first photograph I printed myself, in a darkroom up a precarious ladder in a friend’s hot, dusty garage roof.
First proper camera, first film, first hand print, first exhibition. That’s a lot of firsts. I still use the Zenit: recently bought a 50mm 1.8 lens for it for £20 on ebay. That camera is the best £10 I’ve ever spent. Do get one!
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2 Comments
The Central Station photo has a lovely timeless quality, like it could have been taken any time between ‘Brief Encounter’ and last week.
You say your trusty Zenit was your first proper camera, so what did you use before? How did your interest in photography develope? Hope you don’t mind me asking!
Yes, that Brief Encounter feel is what made me fall immediately in love with HP5!
Before the Zenit, I had a whole series of automatic thingies going way back to my teenage years. My first photos were with my mother’s Box Brownie, and I used auto 110 sliding case/shutter thingies to take photos of my own children. So although I have always taken snapshots, it was actually seeing these, and this Zenit, that really got me hooked. I’m a newbie, as they say.
And no, I don’t mind you asking, not at all. This dialogue people are having, across many blogs and sites, is endlessly fascinating to me.
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[...] remember taking this, but I think from the chronology, it must be the Zenit11 and possibly that expired Konica 100 that was knocking about on eBay for 30p a roll. AKPC_IDS += [...]