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Forgotten joys
Originally published 09/19/06 on Cadet Spiff's Deep Space Log
"Well, here it is. I don't even know if it still works," the Redheaded Hippie Chick tells me as she sets the leather bag on the table. "I'm sure it at least needs batteries."
I look at the worn, black leather and carefully start to unzip the main section of the bag. I peel the sides back and look inside to see the familar shape of a 35mm camera body. I pull the camera out of the bag, careful to support the mid-range zoom lens which is still attached, and bring the viewfinder up to my eye.
As I look through the lens, noting the aperture settings and the light meter, I focus on an easy chair across the room. I might as well be focusing on my past.
It's been years since I've taken photographs with a "real" camera. I once had an old Minolta that I lugged everywhere with me. I received it as a Christmas gift when I was about 13 years old. I apparently expressed an interest in photography, and my parents indulged that curiosity.
The Minolta was suggested by my aunt, a professional photographer in Wisconsin. She told my folks that if I were to get a camera, it needed to be totally manual; no automatic exposure or autofocus, which were just becoming popular at the time. No, my aunt decreed, if I was to learn photography, I was going to learn it correctly. I needed to know how time and light would affect my work, and a manual camera was the only way to do it.
She was right. I learned about f-stops, fractions of a second, depth of field and film speed. I learned enough that I became a photographer for the high school yearbook for two years. I made some money in college working as a party photographer. I learned my way around a darkroom, and used that ability when I went into the newspaper business.
All with the same old Minolta. That camera captured some of the best moments of my life, from still lifes to infants playing in the yard.
I don't have the Minolta now. The last I heard, my ex-wife pulled it from a closet and gave it to my oldest daughter. That was at least five years ago. Where it is now, I don't know. Forgotten in our disposable society, I suppose.
An SLR camera isn't a toy. It takes work and knowledge to operate properly. You don't just slip it in your back pocket and carry it around to take snapshots. So it gets left behind in favor of digitial cameras and phones that take pictures.
But I feel the heft of the Redheaded Hippie Chick's camera in my hand, and I am flooded with the old joy. I'm looking forward to taking the camera out, cleaning the lenses and mirrors, and picking up a roll of 100 speed Kodacolor. There are new memories to capture and new art to make.
And I can't do that with a phone.
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