Olympus pen f camera retro leather case4/18/2023 After seven years of adventures, my old friend looks a bit tired. I unsling my F3 from around my neck and take a good look at it. I sit down on a nearby bench, and decide to swap my trusty Nikon F3 out for the new Pen. I contemplate going in and buying some film, but after a day of trekking across the city I need a quick breather. My pride in my rudimentary understanding of katakana disappears within a couple seconds when I see a big red neon sign that reads “YODOBASHI CAMERA” in English sitting right next to it. I click the shutter again, see it rotate out of the way, and settle back in its perfect half-frame window. I turn the camera around, open up the back, and see a curious dimpled gray shutter curtain. I turn the shutter dial to bulb mode, hold the shutter button down and see the mirror flip sideways and snap right back when I let go. Staring back at me is a mirror mechanism more sideways than Paul Wall in 2005. And why is this thing vertical? How the hell… I then turn the camera around, unlock the 38mm f/1.8 Zuiko, and take it off the body. It’s dim, with a sequential set of whole numbers on the side, perhaps for the in-built light meter. I advance the wiry, almost hidden advance lever tucked below the top plate and look through its viewfinder. The camera chirps back with a healthy “chk-chk”, timed perfectly to what sounds like a single second. I pick it up, run my fingers along its engraved sans-serif logo, turn the front-mounted shutter dial down to its one-second demarkation and press the shutter button. He leads me to the counter where he sets the camera down and gestures for me to inspect it thoroughly. Ī shop assistant notices me gaping at the camera, comes over, and offers to take it out of the cabinet. There you are, I think, looking at the tiny camera. Sitting in the middle of a cabinet labeled “Olympus” is a pristine Olympus Pen FT, complete with a tiny Zuiko 38mm f/1.8. The little store contains a sea of legendary cameras, but I’m only there for one. I would’ve hugged the elderly store owner right then and there, had it been polite to do so.īut I straighten up and regain my composure – I have a job to do. When I finally walked in, there was a sense of completion, a sort of culmination of the hopes and dreams that come with writing for a camera website for so many years – a sense of happiness. After navigating the dizzying Tokyo subway system and nearly getting lost in Shinjuku’s shopping district, I arrived at a nondescript building which, according to a small yellow sign, housed a camera store on the second floor. The journey was a bit like how I dreamt it would be I boarded a train from the outskirts of the city, threw on one of my favorite albums, and watched the expanse of the Greater Tokyo Area blur past, awestruck. Just an hour and a half ago, I set out to finally fulfill a dream of mine – explore Tokyo in search of cameras. Even the ever-ready cases have their own perfectly organized little space. Whatever space isn’t filled by cameras or lenses is taken by accessories – filters, straps, flashes. Leica, Nikon, Pentax, Contax, Canon, Olympus, even luxury point and shoots and heavily used bodies have their own cabinets, all packed to bursting with cameras and lenses. The man gestures again, this time toward banks of camera-filled glass cabinets that populate the tiny store, labeled with every camera manufacturer and film format in existence. Inside, a beautiful Tele-Rolleiflex, a perfect matte grey Mamiya 7, and a sea of Zeiss lenses surrounding a pristine limited edition Hasselblad 500 C/M. “Sumimasen,” I reply, collecting myself and bowing in return.Īmused, the man gestures towards a glass cabinet. He holds back a chuckle as he watches me stumble clumsily across the shop’s entrance. ” An elderly man, perhaps the owner of the camera shop, bows almost imperceptibly towards me.
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