Parcelpacker's photostream  

I was quite a keen photographer in my early twenties when I acquired a rather beat up old Canon A1. Most of my early stuff was taken on Kodachrome 25. The limitations of slide film meant getting it right ‘In Camera’, which I never was able to manage, so I eventually ended up blowing 3 months salary on a Mamiya 645 and migrated to B/W. The hours spent in the dark room provided hours of pleasure, even if the resulting images sometimes didn’t.

I eventually went on to pursue other interests, and it wasn’t until 2006 -26 years later - that I’ve got back into it again.

I brought myself a Nikon D80, and thought this was the be-all and end-all of my photographic journey. It was great to be able to waste as many shots as I liked, till I got what I want. I never thought I would ever go back to film…..How wrong I was.

In the summer of 2007, and a moment of madness, I dug out my old Canon A1 and shot a couple of rolls of HP5 through it. I developed, the film myself, scanned the negs into Photoshop, and have been hooked ever since. In July 2007, I acquired a used Bronica SQai and a Holga 120 GFN and I’m having a ball experiencing the wonders of film again.

2009 saw the acquisition of a 40mm f/4 and a 150mm f/3.5 for the Bronica plus a Sekonic L-758D lightmeter. Apart from the occasional outing with the Nikon, I now almost exclusivity shoot with the SQ.

2010: The camera collections starts to grow, with the acquisition of a number of Olympus Trips, a Russian 6x9 folder, and my latest toy, a Pentax 6x7 with a 45mm f/4 and a 200 f/4. A new traditional darkroom completed in May this year, means I can now get stuck back into that wonderful black art of Lith printing. While I'm able to print negs traditionally now, I'm not convinced the process can deliver the mind blowing results of a film scan which is then worked on in Photoshop, The Nikon digital gets an trundle every now and again, but for the most part , it now collects dust on the shelf.

For those that come across my images, I hope you enjoy at least a few of them.

www.nicktonkin.com