Old cameras/present-day fun

Hey all,

Yeah, it's been another long drought between posts, but it's been for a good and legitimate reason...I've been working like hell on my rave book, and just as importantly, the official proposal for it as well. This is the thing that I've begun to send to various publishing houses that I think would be good candidates for putting out my book. Needless to say, I had no idea that it would take this long to print up all the various sections of this proposal, or that it would be as expensive as it has proved to be. Oh, well...c'est la vie, je suppose...

Anyway, that's not the main reason for me posting tonight (11:50 PM!). The main reason is because I want to describe the pleasure I experienced earlier today when I attended the monthly Pasadena Camera Show at the Elk's Lodge in...yep, you guessed it, Pasadena. This is a show that specializes in used camera gear--meaning mostly traditional (read: FILM) photography. I can't tell you how good it felt to be rummaging through all sorts of near-ancient camera bodies, lenses, flashes, etc...it was going right back to my photographic roots. I ended up purchasing some truly old-school gear...an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic camera body for $25.00, and two vintage screw-mount Pentax lenses for $110.00. What significance does this hold for me? Well, plenty--especially considering that the Pentax Spotmatic is the camera that I taught myself photography with during my early years in the rave scene in the Nineties. The camera pictured above is that very camera, actually...a Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic that my father purchased in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1967. Needless to say, all the equipment of that age was manual...meaning no autofocus, no auto-anything. I think you can imagine the struggles I went through in those early days, learning for to manually focus and calculate exposure...in the dark! It was incredibly difficult at times, but it was SO worth it in the end. It drilled the basics of photography into my head, to the point where my subconscious mind learned how to make all those complex maneuvers without me really thinking about it. Plus, the Pentax was a joy to work with, since it's such a lightweight and compact system. It allowed me to work my way through densely packed rave crowds without being weighed down by bigger and bulkier equipment. Makes me wish that Nikon and Canon would design a smaller, lightweight DSLR system with bright lenses--Pentax proved that it can be done, so why can't the big boys of today do it? And don't tell me that the Micro-4/3rd system is doing this, because...it ain't matching up, sorry.

Anyway, I've gotta be up for work at 6:30 tomorrow morning, so I've gotta cut this short. Hopefully the next post won't be so long in coming. Hope you folks are going good to yourselves out there...