The Film Retriever

The gorgeous looking LTL I haven't even finished putting a film on one Praktica and suddenly another one pops up on my doorstep. Seriously though, it was an impulsive buy, I didn't need it - the seller wanted £35 and I offered £10, walking away reassured that he was going to reject my offer. Well, he didn't. Why did I want it ? How can you say no - even Juliette Binoche is using a black LTL in the "Unbearable lightness of being". If you scroll down my blog, you will find my review of its successor, the LTL3 (a camera for all intents and purposes similar to this) that I ended up selling as I was more interested in higher specified models. My impressions back then was that the LTL3 was a clunky camera to use and that you are better off buying a Nikon F6 if you want to enjoy film (...eyes rolling...🙄). A flock of M42s... As I said, to some extent the Praktica LTL is very similar to its successor- the LTL3. Size and ergonomics are the same, focusing screen is slightl...

The Praktica Super TL  I've said plenty of times on my blog that I am done with Prakticas but they always manage to find their way to my camera collection - well, Prakticas are not done with me it seems. This one was different though; it came with an early radioactive Pancolar 50f/1.8 and was for £10 so I grabbed the opportunity as fast as I could. A Praktica (BMS) was my first camera back in the early 90s, when the unification of Germany was fast approaching and Pentacon was selling off Prakticas at production cost. The seller told me back then that they were making profit on the cases and filters they were selling with them. So I suppose I wil always have a soft spot for Prakticas. A year ago I got hold of a Nova PL which seemed to work well but it came with a CZJ Tessar with dry lubricants so I sold it online. This Super TL was the successor to the Nova adding a light meter although it is quite quirky to use and quite frankly, I don't use it at all. I find it fu...

The venerable IS-1000  This is a review of the Olympus IS-1000, a camera that I came across in a charity shop and decided to buy. It was cheap, looked like it was working and came with the batteries inside - those batteries alone justify the £6 I paid for it. It also came with an original Olympus strap and the manual - the strap is a bit of a pain to put and remove and unfortunately it cannot be used in other Olympus cameras. One thing I noticed whilst going through my photography magazines from the 90s ("Φωτογραφος" magazine) is that the only mention of it was in this report of the PhotoKina in 1990. There are no test reviews and it doesn't even appear on the list of available cameras in the greek market in this 1991 issue of "Φωτογραφος". Following this, there is a shop advert from 1993 with the IS-2000 and IS-3000 - it looks like by that point, the IS-1000 was already discontinued. The 1990 PhotoKina announcement Looking through the Popular Photogra...