Recently I have found camera from my childhood: SMIENA [Смена Символ]. I took that from my old house. It was lying around ~15 years unused waiting for the conscious user. Last photos I remember I took with this camera are the photos of Star Wars – A New Hope Episode displayed first time in polish television. I have just checked that it was around year 1989. Huge advantage of that camera is that it’s very simple. Some icons with sun, clouds and rain as main indicators instead exposure times which can be checked on the bottom of the lens make it easy to understand for the kid. Aperture can be altered on the front of the lens, but I didn’t know how to use it, especially that I didn’t know all that photography theory about exposure, aperture, and all that. Now I regret that haven’t read more about it or I haven’t attended some photography classes. Now -by using that camera I feel both sentimental that I have used it as a kid and eager to proof to myself that I can take decent photos with that camera.
As an experiment I’ve decided to load it with old Trix. I won’t waste a good film if the camera will be broken or the results will be unsatisfactory. But results from that camera are surprisingly good. I really like especially those street photos taken with Cmena, and grain from that film is great, but I exposed it on purpose on EI 200, and developed it in Kodak D76 as ISO 200 film.
I had to correct many fluffs on the film, and ad some Clarity and Contrast but effect is great.
Photos below:
Some photos taken in Gdańsk and Gdynia
Those were taken on the short trip to Dębki village at the open Baltic sea.
