Love Lost
Last week I promised the story behind why I made this image.
I was hoping to write this on Saturday or Sunday, but there was a slight delay, let me explain…
A Word of Caution
Grab a coffee and sit and have a read, apologies for the length of this story…but then again…I don’t apologise. This is my passion, and I don’t need to! If you do get to the end…then thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to read these words.
This is a tale of love lost; disappointment; and then love found again.
[Vastly overhyped…but hey, they don’t sell cinema tickets for films with the strapline of ‘this movie sucks but come and see it anyway!’]
Apart from my Leica cameras, I fell in love with a Yashica rangefinder [please don’t let the Leica cameras know].
The Yashica I am smitten with is a Minister III.
Love Lost
I’ve been shooting film with it for many years, and it has always been reliable. Then on a fateful Tuesday, I went out for a photo-walk and decided to drop the films I had shot into the local Max Spielmann to be developed while I got a coffee.
An hour later, I got a nervous phone call from Alex to let me know there was something wrong.
Both rolls had nothing on them, apart from a slight light smear at the beginning of the first roll.
This is the last light the camera had seen.
Okay…I thought…there is a common problem with these cameras [a self-timer arm held in by friction can pop out meaning the shutter mechanism fails to fire once cocked]. All I had to do was open-up the lens and see if that was the issue – reset it in place and close everything back up.
I dug out the lens tool and went about opening the front of the camera to get to the shutter mechanism. My heart sank when I realised it wasn’t going to be an easy fix.
I put the camera back together, to allow someone with all the correct tools to dismantle the lens and shutter fully and get it working.
An internet search later and quickly realising the cost of repair may be higher than buying a replacement at this moment in time; I put the camera to one-side…to be fixed at a future date.
I would source a replacement for now.
I found a beauty online, sold by a hospice as in near mint condition and fully operational. The price was great, and I eagerly paid for it and waited for the camera to be delivered.
Disappointment
A few days later, the postman arrived with a well-packaged box, and I eagerly tore at the cardboard, plastic, bubble wrap and tape; excited to get at the contents.
Out she came…a beautiful vision of chrome and black. Almost no marks to give away the near six decades of life she had seen.
I cocked the shutter and fired the release…oh no! The shutter didn’t open. I changed the speed of the shutter and repeated my actions…still no response. I switched it into bulb mode and this time held the release down…but alas, she didn’t want to open her eye to bathe in the half light of the darkened room.
I contacted the seller, and they were very nice…they asked me to return the camera and they would refund what I had paid; but they are a hospice doing some brilliant work to help people at their time of greatest need – I didn’t want them to lose money on this.
I told them that they could keep what I had paid for the camera as a donation.
So now I had two broken cameras to get fixed at some point. Time to look for another replacement.
Returning online I found two candidates.
The first one was in an auction and had a low price. The other had a fixed price and cost quite a bit. Both were things of beauty.
The first camera had a ‘make an offer’ option…so with just 48 hours to go on the auction [and no bids made on it] I decided to make a competitive offer for the camera and see if I could have that accepted and end the auction early.
I fired off the offer…a response had to be made by the seller within 24 hours, otherwise it would expire.
Twenty-four hours later…my offer had been ignored by the seller. Okay…a bit rude…but I understand, they want the natural order of the auction to happen. A real fly in my ointment was that there were now five watchers! Yikes!
I turned my attention to the expensive camera…I was at risk of missing both if I wasn’t decisive…so I re-read the description and made my mind up.
I bought it.
Bloody-minded?
Over the next 20 hours, I kept thinking about the ignored offer for the first camera and as the final hour closed in, I decided to fix a price I was happy to bid up to and try and win the auction.
Yes…I decided to bid at the last moment, to try and keep the price down and maximise my chance of winning. It used to be called sniping…but I am unsure what the modern parlance is.
I typed in the amount I was willing to go to; waited until the last moment and hit the ‘make a bid’ button. Something seemed to go wrong…a box came up telling me that the buyer had set options that meant my bid couldn’t be made!
<expletive!>
The auction ended as I tried to find out what had happened – I hadn’t won…I hadn’t even been able to place my bid!
I think the seller had limited the sale to people who had over a minimum number of feedback ratings.
[An aside – I’ve been on the auction site for a few decades, but due to a problem with my account settings a couple of years ago, I had to close the old account (with 100% positive feedback) and create a new account.
I haven’t bought more than two things in a year with the new account…so that acts against me until I successfully buy more items. A catch 22 in this particular case!]
Okay…rather put out by this. I had made an offer of £5 more than the winning bid and over £16 more with my failed final bid. It was the seller’s loss…they would have got more money if they had accepted either of my bids than they did from the eventual buyer.
The Wait
No matter…there was a camera on its way to me.
Two days later, I got a notification that another camera I had viewed had dropped in price. It had been relisted and looked excellent. The catch…it was a Minister D…very similar to the Minister III.
I looked at the total cost. It seemed like value-for-money and maybe I could just try it out at that price?
Okay…I met the price they wanted and now a second camera was on its way to me. Was this online buying bug getting the better of me?
The Minister III turned up
Packaging didn’t look good…Ace Ventura had delivered it. I expected the worst…videoing the unboxing, just in case the contents looked like the outside.
A miracle! It was unblemished and the shutter fired! I needed to put a film through it to test…but I had a good feeling about it! I would need to get a cheap film dropped into the camera and go on a walkabout to capture 36 frames and exercise the shutter speed and aperture.
A day later, the Minister D turned up.
I took the D out of the box, marvelling at the sight of the camera. Almost as if it was fresh from the factory. I cocked the shutter, pressed the release and…
…well…
It sounded ‘kinda funny’. I repeated the action and…yep…that was a weird sound.
I looked down lens and fired it a third time. The leaf mechanism opened slowly and then closed slowly. Yeuk!
I twisted the barrels of the lens to set the aperture to its widest and the shutter speed to the fastest they could go. The rings turned like they were coated in treacle.
I fired the shutter…same laboured open and closing.
Right…okay…I put it into bulb mode; pressed and held the shutter release and the shutter opened and closed!
This wasn’t right at all.
I checked the listing…I hadn’t missed a ‘for parts’ notice anywhere? Nope, at the top of the listing was ‘excellent condition and fully working’.
Good! Back into the box and returned the camera in the post the same afternoon.
I got the feeling that someone had ‘serviced’ the camera and had given the mechanical parts a squirt of lubricant. Big mistake!
But I liked the feel of the camera and now looked longingly at other listings. Within 48 hours I had ordered a replacement for it!
At the same time, I was offered the chance to buy another Minister III…this one was sold with the condition being described ‘as if never been used’.
I didn’t need to buy it…but made a cheeky low bid, thinking that it would be dismissed out of hand. To my complete shock, it was accepted, and the camera was put into the post the following morning.
I now had two more cameras winging their way to me!
Love Found
The replacement Minister D turned up a few days later and…OMG! You know when a camera comes out of a box, and it is…well…just right. Perfect. Awe-inspiring.
Putting a test film through it was going to be a mere formality. I just knew it was going to work perfectly.
There is just something about a fully mechanical rangefinder camera that doesn’t need a battery or electronics…something magical.
I was now waiting for the final package…which came yesterday late-on.
[I know it is silly writing ‘yesterday’ on a blog post that can be read years later…it may add a bit of chronology to the story, but realistically it means nothing to you the reader. For the record, I am writing these words on a stormy Autumnal Tuesday afternoon in October 2021 and the camera arrived at around 5pm on Monday evening.]
I wasn’t expecting much…I thought I was going to receive a broken camera, with something not quite working. With surprising speed of the acceptance of my bid and postage - I was a doubting Thomas!
How wrong I was.
I simply did not believe that the feelings I got from unpacking and using the Minister D a few days earlier would be replicated again. But as I opened the untidy bundle of plastic, paper padding and tape…I took out a camera that made my heart sing.
I realised again why I had fallen in love with these rangefinders.
The doubts I had, dispelled in a moment.
Reflection
So, explaining the image posted last week…it was first light from the initial working replacement for my beloved Minister III. A familiar tool to shoot 35mm film, with all the quirks and nuances that come from a near-sixty-year-old camera.
But I now have a Minister D to shoot with as well. Another beautifully crafted manual, mechanical rangefinder from a bygone era. A gorgeous work of metal art that provides a working tool for personal projects.
Want a Leica film rangefinder? Get a Yashica first…so very much cheaper; maybe a little less intuitive; but enormous fun to use.
I’m not a hipster…way too old…but I love the process of shooting and developing the film…when lazy, I love that wait as you pop the film in to be developed by someone else and then scanning in the negatives.
Marvelling at the scenes captured as wanted and groaning at the failed shots. Learning what you did well and what mistakes you made.
The forced slowing down of making images; the limited number of frames available with each film; the natural story told on each subsequent frame as 36 scenes are captured; the having to get the image settings ‘right’ in-camera; and the anticipation.
This is why I still shoot film between my professional agency work engagements.
I just hope I am going to get more years of joy from these wonderful mechanical, manual rangefinders and not have to go through the giddy, scary process of buying from online auctions again.
