It was like an aladdins cave. After spending most of my lunchtime in there I bought a second hand canon cine camera.
That night I had a play with it, but it didn’t grab me. Couldn’t see myself walking around with this thing and making use of it.
So the next day I took it back to the shop and exchanged it for a Zorki rangefinder camera. I didn’t have a clue what all the buttons were, the last camera I used was my dad’s Ilford Sportsman. That had sunny or cloudy setting for the aperture as I recall.
This Zorki had a few more buttons for me to play with. Tried a few rolls of film, which turned out okish. But it was when I tried E-6 slide film that I realised the potential of this camera, most of the slides were awful, too dark too light. The ones that, by pure chance the settings were spot on were amazing. Shallow depth of field in a couple made the photo look like 3D.
This is where I fell in love with photography. In those days Google was just a twinkle in Larry Page's eyes, the nearest place for informantion was the local library. Looking through the national geographic, the images were amazing. The potential this little box had was beyond imagination.
In the 'how to' section of photograpy books, I soon relised to get to the level I'd seen in the national geographic books, I needed a light meter. So the next day off I troted to the camera shop in the Queens road. On asking the salesman he recommened a second hand Weston Master 6 light meter. A new world had just opened up.