Thanks to some very generous friends, I now have a vintage Yashica FX-3 film camera and a Vivitar 90mm macro lens. They have been cleaning out some things from their father’s collection of camera gear, and in the past few months, I’ve been gifted several film cameras, multiple lenses, a full darkroom setup, a very nice copy stand (on which this and many other of my images have been shot), a 3 light flash kit, and many other odds and ends.
This shot came about when I started looking through an old leather camera bag I received yesterday. It contained 2 cameras and 4 lenses. This lens, the Vivitar 90mm macro lens, is quite compact when the focus is set at infinity. But as I rotated the focus toward the one-to-one macro setting, it doubled in length! All of the markings, gradually revealed as the focus ring turned, are things we don’t see with the new auto-focus lenses of today.
All of the bells and whistles of the new digital cameras and lenses are awesome. But like they say about vinyl records, there is something really special and fun when you can go back to all analog.
Day 186 of my 365 photo a day project.
