Film Week – Winter Side

Giving my friend his fully manual SLR, I though it only fair that I use one of my completely manual ones. I have got a bit of a selection of SLR’s at home at the moment, and although pondering minimising this a little, I do like both some of the fully manual ones, and some of the slightly newer auto exposure ones.

Four our photo outing, I chose my old Ricoh Singlex TLS. Ive written about this model in posts previously. A beautiful old, well used and brassed example, I purchased the TLS off a local designer some time ago. It had belonged to her father, and although she had not shot with it, she had held onto it for sentimental reasons. Being unused for some time, it was a little dirty and slower shutter speeds sticky. I gave the exterior a polish over, and rather than taking apart for a ‘CLA’ (clean, lubricate and adjust) just gave the shutter mechanisim a dry (no film) workout whilst watching TV in the evening. The slow speeds are still not quite right, but the faster speeds, to 1/1000th are pretty good now.