Coronet Conway Synchronised

The Coronet Conway 'synchronised' box camera was manufactured in the 50's in Birmingham, England possibly by Standard Cameras Ltd. The Conway range of cameras were their popular (cheap) models which took 6x9cm images on 120 roll film.

It's a rather dashing little camera, with simple controls and a nice clean look, and my one, bought for £1 at a car boot sale on the A6 near Carnforth in Lancashire was lucky enough to contain a used roll of film, soon to be processed!

It's attractive good looks have already endeared it to my wife, who seems to have nabbed it as a prop for her vintage styling hire business!

Olympus Mju ii

Today's slingfilm post is one of those I love most - a lovely discarded camera, cheap (£1 from a junk shop in Kendal), in lovely working order, with an exposed roll of 35mm film inside, and photos salvaged from said film.
The Mju ii was made by Olympus in 1997, and it's a pretty neat little  machine.

The images from the camera are clearly taken quite recently, and appear to me, to be taken in The Lake District near Windermere. I'm pretty sure that the one of the couple is taken from the grounds at Blackwell's Arts & Crafts House overlooking Lake Windermere (I was there quite recently).

So here's a few of the best, and if you recognise anyone and would like to get in touch please do so.

 

 

 

   

 

Plastic Fantastic! (ME-101)

I can tell you next to nothing about this next little camera. I've been carrying it around in the glove compartment of my car for so long I can't even remember where it came from. It's only giveaway is the number ME-101 on the front fascia. It's a very cheaply made, totally plastic camera, plastic lens and everything. I would've overlooked it, but for the fact that I was intrigued to see what results would come from this piece of plastic trash.

I took it on our family holiday to Devon last summer and here's the results. It does have a pleasantly soft look with some heavy masking to one corner in particular, a streak of brightness down the centre and with some (to be expected) light leaks. I've upped the contrast and saturation a tad but not much else.

After the holiday I forgot to remove the film and develop it till just last week, at which point the lens fell off! I did say it was very cheaply made!

The Anteeks (The Anteeeks?)

I'm going slightly off track with today's post, but bear with me.
I spent a fun morning with Mrs Beanphoto today scouring the car boot sales and trash 'n' Treasure fairs in the area.
As well as picking up some nice old flash guns, bulbs, lenses, some tasty looking exposed (but unprocessed) rolls of 120 film, and some unexposed 120 film, some old kodak camera manuals and other stuff (£2 the lot!), I picked up a pile of lovely looking wedding photographs, all postcard size and very sweet (again, £2 the lot). Hidden amongst them was another photo, postcard sized) of a 1960's - looking band. Flipping it over I found the band were called "The Anteeks", and it is signed "To Happy" by all 5 members of the band pictured.
Doing a little research I found the band were better known as "The Anteeeks" (with three e's) and released a double A sided single in 1966.  I checked it out on You Tube - they sounded great!! My research shows they came from Scotland (Ayrshire in fact) and had connections with David Bowie, Deep Purple, Georgie Fame, Alex Harvey and The Everly Brothers! However the line up in the photo I have appears to be different from that listed anywhere, most significantly the lead singer is recorded everywhere I can find as Frank Knapp, and here it appears to be "Linda" (surname unknown). Whether this is pre or post 1966 I know not, but I'm guessing post by those clothes, so maybe they changed their name?
It's a great photo, interesting too as I can see only one other photo of the band anywhere on the web.
Here it is, and also both sides of their fab 1966 'freakbeat' release "Ball and Chain" c/w "I Don't Want You". Check it out!!

And here's the reverse of the photo...

Morecambe Beach - Agfa Optima 535

Last year I picked up this lovely little camera at a charity shop in Clitheroe, and since that time it's been a firm favourite in my bag. So small, so easy to use, accurate with exposure, all round fab little fella.

This is a shot I took on it bak in the early part of this summer, whilst walking the dog on Morecambe Promenade.

 Sorry, I can't remember what film it was, some expired Jessops 200 ISO I think. I'll keep better notes next time!

Kodak Starmite

This weekend's great find has a double edge to it.

This gorgeous Kodak Brownie Starmite, which was in production between 1960-1963 (another one as old as me!) was in a car boot sale for just £1.50. Sadly, I had no change, and it was instead snapped up by a friend.


On the plus side, it had a roll of half- exposed Kodacolor II 127 film in, I took a snap of my friend and then he kindly allowed me to remove the film! 

Let's hope it has treasures to release! 


Sadly, my local printers, who kindly developed my strange old rolls of film for me (and didn't charge me if they came out blank) have closed down, so I have to find a new lab. It may be some time before we find out!

Discovering Wonderful Things

Recently, it was my birthday, and I bought myself a new toy...

Isn't it pretty?

It's called a film scanner. It's not the best film scanner in the world, nor the cheapest, but it does what it's supposed to do, and really rather well.

Why did I want one? Because I have boxes and boxes full of stuff like this....

and even more boxes of other stuff like this ...

I've been taking photographs since I was about 12, and before that my dad was a photographer too. Back then we both shot everything on film, we sent the film off to places like "Boots the Chemist" to be developed and several weeks later (imagine that - we had to wait weeks!) we got the films back again with the prints in wallets like this...

 

They were very cleverly designed to keep your prints in one side and your negatives safe in the other, like this ...

 

Sending your films away to be printed was very exciting, you had weeks of imagining how, when you got your pictures back, they would look like this...

or like this ...

When they did come back, they usually looked like this ...

 

But that was a wonderful thing, it was good to make mistakes, I learnt from making them, and sometimes those mistakes worked better than my original idea! I have my dad to thank for my love of photography, and because of him we have many, many wonderful family pictures like this ...

(that's me on the end, dressed as a camera, an outfit made by my dad, and my big brother on the other end, dressed as a Christmas present - we obviously had a lot of empty boxes lying around that year!)

Some years before my dad passed away, he give me several boxes of these wonderful things, wallets of old black and white film negatives and slides, 35mm, 120mm and more, which have lain in the cellar, waiting to be explored. Many, because dad enjoyed doing his own developing and processing, and because he often printed just one shot from a roll of 12 or 36, we have never even seen. 

Until now... and that's why I wanted this wonderful thing... 

 

And here's one from the first batch of scanning yesterday...

(me, aged about 3, in my neighbours house in Cardiff)