My Camera Collection

While I'm taking a little break from working on other things I thought I'd share an image of my camera collection. This is another photo from my nearly decade old phone, so please excuse the quality.

Here's a list of the cameras in that photo:

Pentax MZ-M - can't find exact year, somewhere between '97 and mid '00s

Praktica BX20 - somewhere between '87 and '90

Zorki 4 - 1963

Smena 8M - 1983(?)

FED 3 - 1961-1963

I actually have another camera that isn't in that photo, a Polaroid SX-70. Unfortunately, I've not had much luck with the SX-70, either the film I was using just wasn't that good (back when the Impossible Project was first making it), or there is a light leak in it somewhere, or some combination of both. I'll probably experiment with it some more if/when I have some money to play around with.

And speaking of problems with cameras, the Praktica has been giving me a lot of trouble too. The problem I've been having is with the rewind mechanism, it just doesn't work properly for some reason. I've only shot two rolls of film in it and the first one just didn't wind up at all, I almost lost the roll to light exposure when I opened the back of the camera, the second roll somehow just straight up snapped when I was trying to rewind it. Losing a roll of film to shit like that is depressing, but it's even more depressing when that roll of film cost more than twice what I would normally spend on a roll plus the effort I put into taking the photos. Anyway, I have one more roll of film in that camera now, hopefully I won't have any more disasters with it...

So far, out of all my cameras the Zorki 4 is my favorite, but I've yet to develop a roll from the FED 3 or the Smena 8M.