Ways to prevent GAS

One of the things about being into film photography is the sheer range of droolworthy gear available online at certain well known auction sites. This is not even counting the outstanding bargains one can find at flea markets. Yet one thing I’ve noticed about both myself and my fellow Lomographers over the years-we don’t necessarily buy or use what the market itself considers the ‘best stuff.’ I like to think this is what gives all of us as a community a distinctive look in our photographs-and I don’t just mean here, by the way, the traditional plastic lens cameras. I’m talking about the unloved and unfashionable triplet lenses, the gloriously cheap yet distinctive world of pinhole photography, the old box cameras with their weird soft meniscus lenses, the 110 film users, the old folders, and the whole M42 school of SLR lenses-lenses which were already going out of fashion, out of date, and becoming unhip as far back as the 1970s.

I think this individuality is a good way from getting sucked down photography’s most seductive grand narrative-that with a very expensive camera, you will make better photographs. That with a Leica, you too will turn into Robert Capa or Henri Cartier-Bresson. This is indeed a seductive myth, and I wish no ill will towards those who follow it. But the reality is that some of the best photographers in history also used cheap equipment back in the day-and not all of them in a deliberately ‘lofi’ way either. I’m thinking here of people like my favourite war photographer, Don McCullin, or the fabulous Cuban Alberto Korda.

I think therefore that the other benefit of getting into photography the way most of us here have done today is the joyous discovery of cameras which were underrated or less successful in their own first iifetime. I love my Welta Weltaflex, but I’ve never met a serious photographer anywhere who heard of it, or rated it if they did. And that’s absolutely fine with me-this little triplet lens TLR is my own personal discovery and treasure. I’m not obliged to imitate anyone when I use it.

Finally, buying as we do also, once in a while, puts genuinely great cameras in your hands-cameras that whilst still unloved or relatively unknown are genuinely technologically innovative, ergonomic, have cracking lenses, but which can still be bought for relative pennies compared to a Rolleiflex, Zenza Bronica or Leica, or even a Nikon F. I have three cameras in my collection which I think match this description-my Mamiya C330, my Pentacon Six, and my latest acquisition, the Czechoslovak TLR known as the Flexaret.

These are genuinely great cameras, with nothing second-rate about them in terms of design or fittings, but again they don’t have a ‘signature user’ who’s driven their market value through the roof. The Flexaret for example has wonderful ergonomics, where every setting is adjustable from the front with the right hand alone-they obviously really thought through that design, they weren’t just churning them out, and the lens is a cracker too, as good as any Zeiss Tessar. The Pentacon system is just as impressive-the first really successful 120 film SLR, talk about proof of concept, and again a vast array of available lenses.

The Flexaret in particular is also now my answer when I look online at other TLRs, still one of my favourite systems. I still look, and I’m partly cursed because I recently learned about Rolleicords, the ‘amateur’ version of the Rolleiflex, which sell for half the price of Rolleiflexes, still have great lenses, and visually look just as great as their larger brother. They were causing me serious GAS recently I must admit-but they still all cost twice the price of my Flexaret. So when I look at them now, I just think to myself-I have a camera just as good as that already, it has all the bells and whistles they do, and it looks just as great-its called a Flexaret, and very few people have ever heard of it. But you have, and you’re lucky enough to have a really good one.

This is as great a cure for GAS as I know of.

written by alex34 on 2014-10-13