Treasures in Charity
By Kristin Mitchell
27 Nov 2007
It was a rainy wintry day in Edinburgh. It was really raining. Raining in the way that when people talk about Brits and say "they always talk about the weather" . Well Edinburgh was really giving the sort of weather that people talk about.
I rolled out of bed, thinking that I was only going to go to the dentist, for another appointment to sort out my hyper-sensitive teeth.
My dentist' surgery is located in my old neighbourhood. It's a particularly nice part of Edinburgh, almost a small town or village community within the city. If charity shops are a gauge of an area, showing the kindness, selflessness, and community spirit, then it's understandable that this area in particular has more charity shops than any other kind of shop. More than it has take-aways and newsagents and pubs put together!
I always used to enjoy a trawl round the shops in that area. There's a wonderful second hand camera shop with a lovely friendly dog, where I can buy filters for my lenses at prices I simply can't find anywhere else. The charity shops also offer a plethora of fashions and fair-trade goods that make me feel happy.
On this particularly driech day, I decided to go to the local cancer charity shop.
A friend of mine once told me that it's worth asking about cameras in those shops, simply because they usually have one or two appearing which are quickly snapped (forgive the pun) up by other photo enthusiasts.
And on this occasion, I was in luck. They had a manual 35mm SLR - Practika PLC2, from around 1976. I had a good look at it. The shutter seemed to work. The aperture blades glided in and out. No dust or marks or scratches on the 50mm lens. I opened the back, and quickly shut it again. There was a roll of Kodak slide film inside.
I paid for the camera, which came with a carry case, a magnification lens, an eye-cup and a hotshoe adapter.
I spent the day snapping away, practicing shots. I wasn't hopeful, since I'd already opened the back of the camera. I met up with a friend, and showed my find to her.
"Unfortunately I've already opened it" I complained, "so I reckon my shots will be rubbish since I've already accidentally exposed the film".
"It's slide film, right? well, have it cross-processed. Your photos might be rubbish, but when they're cross-processed at least they'll be interesting rubbish!" she enthused. Incidentally, if you were wondering, she's the girl in the main photo, and holding the camera and Metz flash in the second photo.
So I snapped away, until the roll of film was nearly finished.
Later that afternoon, I went to a second hand bookshop, where I browsed and found a book about my new camera. Another customer came into the shop, and spotted my camera hanging around my neck. We chatted briefly about photography, he seemed pleased to see that not everyone had abandoned film for the digital revolution. I told him of my bargain find, and how excited I was to have this camera.
The next day, I tentatively visited my local camera chain store. I asked if they were willing to cross-process my photos. They were only too happy to help. So then came the one-hour waiting game for the photographs to appear.
I wasn't disappointed. While my own shots came out fairly noisy, I was stunned by the other photographs. Photos of flowers, of a garden. The previous owner had left several shots of paintings in a studio, which I suspect he or she had painted. And there was one mysterious, cloudy shot of a man's face peering into the lens - I suspect perhaps someone in the charity shop either testing or contemplating buying the camera.
There's something lovely about having a camera which has carried a little bit of it's previous life to it's new home. It reminds me of those internet-trends for leaving novels in public places, or notebooks for others to read and add to. It also makes me want to try and find the original owner, and give them their photographs back. It makes me wonder why they gave away their old camera, without first checking the film.
But certainly, the day I was just going to the dentist, I really didn't expect to have a moment of fate with a camera with a story of it's own.
