Way back when I graduated from high school, nearly 15 years ago, my grandmother gave me a camera. Specifically, she gave me her camera, a Beacon, made by Whitehouse at some point in the 1940s.
This was long before I grew interested in photography, so well done grandma for realizing before I did that I was going to like it. However, given that it was a camera older than my mother, it had one major flaw that prevented me from using it. The camera used 127 film, which mostly went out of production in 1995. While a company in Croatia did make some film, it wasn’t something I could actually purchase – that company also stopped making the film in 2012, not that it mattered.
That camera languished in a closet in my parents’ house as I kept it with them for safe keeping as I moved through my University years, and then was largely forgotten until recently, when my mother decided to show us some of the other cool stuff she found in her closet of obsolete objects and discovered the camera yet again.
Now, however, I can use it.
It wasn’t a simple process since it’s still a niche product and not for sale in any Yorkton stores – or any Saskatchewan stores at all, so I bought it online from a business in New York. Further research revealed that it could also be found in Calgary, but at that point by credit card had already been charged – still, something to know for the future. I don’t know how I will process the images, whether I will try making some kind of dark room myself or just ship it off to one of the rare places that still processes it – there is a chance that a business in Indian Head, Sk., Film Rescue International, can do it, but they are focused on salvaging old and expired film, rather than new and fresh.
Here we have another example of that odd revival of old technology that is happening all the time. It’s the same movement that has seen people embrace vinyl records, for example. It’s less that everything old is new again, but that everything old still has some value, a rejection of the idea of planned obsolescence and the eternal march of technology. Sure, some of that old stuff was discarded because it’s bad – such as the VHS tape – but others were discarded just because they’re less convenient or there was a better marketed replacement. They might have some advantage over modern digital systems, or perhaps their disadvantages are interesting in some way. I don’t think anything from my modern camera would ever look like the photos I’ll get from my 70 year old one.
For me, it’s going to be a fun experiment entirely because it’s entirely different from how I shoot normally. It’s definitely not going to replace the expensive, complicated digital SLR camera I shoot with on a regular basis, but the appeal is how different it is from that. This camera has one button, two switches and a crank to move the film, plus I can’t tell whether or not I’m doing what I want until the film is processed much later. The only film I could find that is still being produced was also black and white. It is the complete opposite of the modern digital setups that I learned on and love using.
Of course, this all depends everything works well and the old beast still functions properly – let’s not forget that it’s over 70 years old, and was not exactly high end equipment even then, though a $10 camera would have been a major purchase for my grandparents. Hopefully the lens can see and the shutter works.
I’m glad that I can try to use it, however, as can other people with similar vintage equipment. My little old camera will never be a mainstream product again, but it’s great that there’s still someone out there keeping this kind of history alive and letting us use our old technology again
