When I went home for Christmas my Father dragged out an old camera of his. Apparently he used to have lots of fun habits including rally driving, motorbiking, and using hip leather-bound cameras. Brilliant coincidence.

I’ve never really used analogue and the camera’s got a separate light-meter which was lovely but prompted two pages of badly written notes in case I forgot everything the minute I took it out by myself. I’ve now progressing to the photo-taking speed of a bumbling tourist, which is progress. I left the flashgun and bulbs at home, because they’re fuzzy magnesium one-use-only and I don’t trust myself with analogue. My only previous experiences of it include watching my Father hide inside a heavy velvet curtain to change film. I always looked at film pots with some sort of awe.

But it’s lots of fun, and I’m very proud of the camera in a strange way. Although it occurs to me that I have to take the film out at some point.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Et7UQh1tg&hl=en&fs=1&]

This is one gorgeous, sexy and wildly inappropriate camera that I do not in any way need (apparently you can stick a bit of leather on any old camera and I’ll love it).

It’s a lovely-looking camera with some specs that mean a limited amount to me, it has some down sides:

It’s called the E-P1 pen – which is a pun in the same realm as the Harman Kardon GLA-55 speakers, so called because they are made of glass.

Their advertising uses Stop Motion. And whilst this is not full-stop a bad thing and follows a man from 1959 when the E-P1 camera was released through to the present day (I see chuffed people in a brainstorm following that), it’s dull. Think Wolf and Pig (in fact it’s a direct Youtube response) but longer, and released when Stop Motion had definitely become old. So it’s dull and long.

Which is a shame because the camera is the sex. Feel free to disagree with me on either.