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!

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!

Kodak Instamatic 33

I challenge anyone growing up in the 70's like me not to recognise the Kodak Instamatic. Surely every house had one of these compact, easy to use cute-looking era-defining cameras. The Kodak Instamatic 33 was one of the very first cameras I ever owned, and I remember it and it's black plastic case strung around my neck on just about every family holiday we ever took.

I picked up a '33 recently at the Lancaster Antiques Centre for (get this) 10p!! and I put the 126 cartridge that was still inside it through the processors at Farnells Lab recently. the plastic cartridge casing must certainly have helped protect the film inside because I got the contact prints back yesterday and we have a result! Some jolly little back garden snaps of a pet poodle among the patio flowers, and all with that lovely 1970's de-saturised look and some nice camera leak effects (okay I'm a geek!).

Canon AE-1 Program

Yesterday as I sat down at my work desk, I found this lovely Canon AE-1 Program 35mm SLR camera with a cryptic note asking "any good?"
The camera turned out to be a gift from a colleague who knows about this project and thought I might find it useful. Isn't that nice?!

The Canon AE-1 Program was introduced in 1981five years on from the Canon AE-1. The major difference being the introduction of the Program AE mode which sets both the shutter speed and aperture automatically.

I'm not quite so sure however that my generous colleague knew she had left partially used film in the camera! We'll have to see what turns up on that roll!

The AE-1 Program has a delightfully retro looking manual which makes me think that the camera may be from 1981 but the manual must surely be a 1970's design classic!

Coronet Flashmaster

This week's new camera find is this 1955 Coronet Flashmaster, from an antique shop in Kendal (£6). The Flashmaster takes 6cm x 6cm on 120 roll film. sadly no film inside this one, but I look forward to putting some through at some point.

The advert here is from a 1955 edition of Picture Post (courtesy of old school paul).

Welcome to the Slingfilm project.

As someone who was around cameras from a very early age, thanks to my dad being a 60's hobbyist photographer, I have collected and in many cases discarded possibly hundreds of cameras. 

The Slingfilm project has developed out of my camera collecting and from finding, possibly due to the recent development of digital photography, a growing number of film cameras in charity shops and car boot sales etc which still contain undeveloped rolls of film. Given that we live in a society that has enjoyed photographing and documenting almost every aspect of our lives, and that most people would consider their photo albums as the first possession they would reach to save in a house fire, I'm more than a little interested in these cameras and photographs that have been (knowingly or unknowingly) discarded. The Slingfilm project will attempt to document the discarded cameras I find along the way, where found, how much I paid for them, some history of the camera itself perhaps, along with the films often found inside them and the results of the processing of those films - the lost memories. 

I am lucky to have a great film lab nearby (Farnells Photographic lab) who have been helpful in processing of these old films, some of them untouched for 50 years or more. The results will be patchy, many I know will be fogged and useless, others will be badly exposed, but perhaps, just occasionally, some gems might turn up. 

Let's just see how it goes...