Ty McClelland: May 2013

I forget exactly where I was going, or what I was doing.

I just looked and thought;
Huh, I'm stopping here and looking inside.

One man's junk, another man's treasure. I wandered around looking at all the stuff. Some things I had no clue what they were for, others, were a blast from the past. I love going to these and seeing all the stuff, the imagination goes rampant (I could use this in the kitchen, oooo I remember my grandmother had one of those...)

I looking around, and out of the blue:

wait.....no that's not right...

ahh, that's more like it...

Sitting in a dusty case, in a dusty store, I sat down on the dusty floor.

That's expensive I thought. I don't know if I can justify the cost for something that is not guaranteed to work. Quickly I researched the Welta, yeah, it's old. But I couldn't really tell much from the phone search, so it was time for a gamble. When the guy let me negotiate down to ¥10,000 I motioned to the Diana and said "Together?"

Beautiful typical Japanese response of the sigh, eh-to, and the head cocked to the side (he did this the whole time I was looking at the camera, nervously trying to make the sale.)

'OK' he said.

Wait, did I just score TWO cameras for $100? I did...wait....yeah he's dusting them off (LITERALLY) and putting them together...holy cow.

I feel like a criminal.

Not really.

So, the Welta Welti is at the youngest, 1950. There doesn't seem to be a solid way to pin down the exact date, and honestly I haven't worked that hard to figure it out since I wasn't sure it would work or not. The Diana Mini is pretty much a current build used by instagram hipsters who want to feel cool and shoot film. I shot film. In 1980. I don't really know when I stopped, probably when I had to get a job and pay for college and things. Kept shooting though. MANY rolls of film never seen again as at one point I moved 8 times over a period of 5 years, by the time the moving was done, I didn't have much to speak of.

I digress. Hipsters, yeah. Go ahead, because an old guy is back with film cameras, and he's proud of his photos from two cameras he never used before, that he took a gamble on, that he picked up from a junk shop, that work. Photos below same ones on my flickr.