Thank you Mr. Pentax ….. two cameras ….. smelly photography and heaps of pictures

Of course there wasn’t a Mr. Pentax, but Pentax cameras offered me an introduction into photography.

Two old friends, 2023

I bought two Pentax K1000’s sometime in 1978 and along with the essential equipment for developing and printing pictures they became a pretty big chunk of how I spent my spare time.

This was smelly photography …. When with bottles of chemicals and enlarger locked away in a dark room you could bring to life the pictures you had taken just a few hours earlier.

I have never forgotten the pleasure and wonderment of seeing an image slowly appear on a piece of paper as those chemicals fastened the negative into a print.

To be honest I was never that good at the developing bit being too impatient to work out the correct amount of exposure times which made some of the finished pictures a bit hit and miss.

That said enough did work.  

Abandoned, Rochdale Canal, 1979

And those pictures some of which will soon be celebrating their 50th birthday remain a personal record to what I saw, thought important and recorded all those decades ago.

They included demonstrations, walks along the grimy bits of where I grew up beside the River Thames, and holidays spent in Paris, Greece, and trips across my adopted city of Manchester.

Corfu, 1984

Many of those places have vanished like snow in the winter sun, but I can still remember them.

The Pentax K1000 was the Morris Minor of cameras.  They survived the baking hot heat of Greece, performed well in the stickiness of a Parisian August and were not phased by wet gloomy days in Manchester.

I wasn’t then and I am still not a great photographer, but I enjoy taking pictures and to adapt that old phrase “I know what I likel”.

And smelly photography was an excellent learning curve in that it allowed you to learn from the mistakes you might have made.

Odd one out, Crown Square, Manchester,1981

So, the pictures taken during the day, could be processed in the evening and what looked a good picture in the street was shown up on the negative to have lacked something.

And the band played on, Castlefield, 1980

Of course, digital cameras offer the same opportunities, but back in 1978 that was not available to me.

So, thank you Pentax.

Alas my Wikipedia tells my Wikipedia tells me the Pentax glory days are gone. “Pentax Corporation (ペンタックス株式会社, Pentakkusu Kabushiki gaisha) was a Japanese camera and optical equipment manufacturer, and currently, it exists as the Pentax Life Care Business Division of Hoya's medical endoscope business, as well as the digital camera brand of Ricoh Imaging, a subsidiary of Ricoh.

Pentax, founded in 1919 as a town workshop specializing in polishing eyeglass lenses, developed Japan's first single-lens reflex camera, the Asahiflex, in 1952. By 2006, Pentax's domestic market share in digital cameras had declined to 4%. In 2007, Pentax was acquired by Hoya and subsequently merged with the company the following year. In 2011, Hoya spun off the Pentax brand's digital camera business, which was then acquired by Ricoh, leading to the establishment of Pentax Ricoh Imaging (current Ricoh Imaging)”.

Washing the prawns, Woolwich, 1979

Still to misquote Mr. Douglas Adams, Goodnight Pentax and thank you for all the pictures.

Pictures; My two Pentax K 1000s 2023, and some of the pictures they took, 1978-1983, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Pentax, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentax

**So long and thanks for all the fish, Episode Three of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series by Douglas Adams, 1978

A little bit of Cambridge returns to Manchester after 50 years in Milan

Now, in a country which is known for style the classic Ronson Varaflame held its own against all that Italian design could throw at it.

It was introduced in 1957, and was one of the world’s first gas lighters, which was refilled by those distinctive blue torpedo tubes, which when empty ended up as a prop on my model railway.

I remember the lighter well, mainly because it looked so modern in a house still dominated by clunky heavy unfashionable objects from the late 1940s.

And today, holding one in my hand, it combines a robust solid body with that pioneering aerodynamic shape, and it knocked the socks off everything else  that was around at the time.

Mother had one, which she cherished, but I rather think it has long been lost.

All of which made the discovery of Simone’s Varaflame a real find.

It was bought sometime in the early 1960s, in Cambridge, and travelled to Italy a decade later where it  busied itself doing the business for sixty years, and has now made its way to Manchester.

Sadly, the Kodak Instamatic, 304, has not be joined it.  

It first appeared in 1965 and was one of the more sophisticated instamatics, which along with others in the Kodak range introduced a generation to low-cost photography, and in turn had many imitators.

But as fun as it still looks, it is old smelly photography, relying on film, chemicals, and a dark room to recreate its magic.

And we have embraced the digital alternative.  So if it made its way to Manchester, it would just sit in a corner of the study, gathering dust, but never likely to be put on the market for sale

Such are the relics of family history.

It was also bought in Cambridge in the 1960s, left with the family for Italy, but will stay in that country.

Location; Cambridge, Varese, Manchester

Pictures, Ronson Varaflame, 1957, and the Kodak Instamatic, 304, 1965, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson