This was getting stranger. You may remember me mentioning that on my previous outing, less than eighteen hours earlier, I’d taken a newly acquired lens out for the evening on the crop body, along with the 24-70 on the full frame - the latter being the combination I probably use for at least eighty percent of my photographs, and have done for a number of years. You may also recall me reporting that the second hand Tokina lens, newly arrived via the wings of your favourite auction website all the way from Pakistan had failed at the very first attempt to use it. An error code I’d never seen on any of my cameras before had rendered it unusable, and my plan to shoot low and wide flew away faster than the gulls that filled the sunset sky.
Here I was at Nun’s Cross Farm on Dartmoor, on what was the first gathering of the three happy snappers for many a month. Some of you know about Lee and his inveterate habit of changing his entire camera system more often than they change the Doom Bar barrel at his local pub. This time he’d joined the party with something entirely different. A thing of beauty in fact - a thing that clicked, whirred and purred with every shutter release. Something older than the three of us. Something silvery with more than sixty years behind it in the form of a 1960 Leica M3, with two prime lenses. Fifty or ninety millimetres. “You have to zoom with your feet,” he explained as we chomped down three large breakfasts at Morrisons in Tavistock. Of course he’ll have sold it by Christmas, bought something else and then changed that as well, but unlike our gear, his will probably have shot up in value when the inevitable happens. I like the idea of returning to film all these years later, but when I think about it for any length of time, I realise that it really only is the idea that appeals. Of course he was the only person who attracted the interest of another tog that day - apparently she heard the whirr of winding film and was transported back in time. It really is a very beautiful camera, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost among the functional and nondescript black BMWs and Audis. I swear one day he’ll turn up towing a two hundred foot tall brick tower on castors behind him. “There’s a camera obscura inside,” he’ll say as Dave and I stare at each other with blank expressions. “I got it on eBay - bargain price it was. Came with a fixed three hundred and sixty degree lens” he’ll continue as we wonder how long he’ll keep it for. “I’m going to have it towed up to the top of Carn Marth so I can take a shot of both coasts at the same time.”
One huge advantage of using a sixty-three year old film camera is that you don’t get error messages on the back of your screen, and now the weirdest thing had happened. Can inanimate objects spread diseases? Had that Tokina lens somehow infected the rest of the collection? How come the Canon lens and camera combination I’d been using without a single problem for years was suddenly reporting exactly the same fault as the other lens and body I’d taken to Holywell Bay the previous evening? Maybe it was heat, humidity or a combination of the two. Whatever it was, the problem wasn’t going away as I stood here in front of the composition I’d just lined up, and the only option available was to use the other lens I’d brought to Dartmoor, meaning I’d be shooting at a minimum of seventy millimetres for the day. So like Lee, I zoomed with my feet. Meanwhile, clouds zoomed across the scene, leaving this gem of abandonment moving in and out of shadow as I tried cleaning the contacts over and over again, while Lee googled the error code and provided a live commentary on a series of YouTube videos where various hackers did improper things to their failed lenses with pencil erasers and edges of tee shirts. “Should have bought a Sony,” was Dave’s sage advice. I tried to remember whose idea this reunion was.
The next day I tried everything. I sucked in a breath of anticipation and reset the cameras, cleaned the contacts, removed the batteries and cards, switched them off and on again, repeated the entire process, and drank more coffee than was good for me. All lenses were tried on both bodies, and the rash didn’t seem to have spread any further. After a fashion, the Tokina decided it was getting bored with the naughty step and proceeded to work normally, but the Canon 24-70 refused to play ball, no matter what I tried. Still at a complete loss as to what had happened, I sent an email to my trusted camera repair shop, a story which was almost as long as this one. Although I didn’t mention Lee’s Leica. Or the camera obscura. Worried that the lens was too old to be repaired, I nervously thumbed the pages of eBay for a potential replacement and prepared myself for bad news.
But they tell me they can repair it. I’m told it’s nothing to do with needing to clean the contacts at all. Apparently it’s an iris flex that’s needed, and they have some in stock. I had no idea it had an iris flex, or even what one looks like, but it’s on the way to the repair shop, and it seems my beloved lump of elderly high precision glass will live to see another day, and I won’t be having to find something north of five hundred quid to replace it. And when it’s alive and running again, I’ll have another large breakfast at Morrisons in Tavistock before coming up here and trying to line up that shot once more. Zooming with your feet might be fun sometimes, but I’d prefer the shorter journey along the lens barrel if at all possible please. And if they can’t fix it after all, then this composition of the famous abandoned farm, taken moments before the error message appeared will be its final legacy.
Hopefully that Tokina will work the next time we go out together, or it might be on the next plane back to Pakistan.
