S
THE 1970s progressed so did Valerie's freelance work. We were
both interested in vintage and classic cars and went to numerous rallies
and club events. Soon, editors were asking her for medium format colour
transparencies for covers so she invested in a Hasselblad plus a 50mm
Flektogon wide angle lens, both of which paid for themselves over and
again. At the same time she updated her 35mm camera and after trying both
Nikon and Canon bought a Canon A1. I was happy with the Zorki, and had
bought a Kiev 4A to go with it, another camera I was pleased with. But
after trying Valerie's A1 I felt I'd like to have an SLR with its non-parallax
large viewfinder that didn't need changing for different focal length
lenses, and TTL metering, so I too bought a Canon A1, but a secondhand
one as we'd spent rather a lot on cameras. All I can say about the Canons
and the Hasselblad is that it pays in the long run to buy quality - not
that the Zorki or the Kiev gave any problems, and still haven't, but they
haven't had the long-term heavy use that the Canons have had. Valerie
put five or six times the amount of film through her Hasselbald and Canon
than I did through my A1, but none of the three gave the slightest problems.
We also 'discovered' Fuji film, and settled on Fujicolour for prints and
Fujichrome for transparencies. We moved to a large Victorian house in
Ashford, where I still live, which was large enough for Valerie to set
up a permanent darkroom.Towards the end of the 1970s we both became interested in camera collecting and the history of photography. In those days you could pick up some choice vintage cameras, even Leicas and Contaxes, very cheaply. Old folding cameras were a drag on the market. All the photographic shops were filled with shining new Japanese SLRs, and if a secondhand camera wasn't an SLR with a wide aperture lens no 'serious' amateur photographer, except peculiar people like us who collected them, wanted it. Snapshotters didn't want them either. They fell for the seductive new ranges of compact 35mm cameras that were appearing in ever increasing numbers at attractive discounted prices in the big chain-store camera dealers.
In 1979 Valerie bought a Canon F1 and passed her A1 on to me. So I now had two, and still have them, both still in good working order. We now had a son as well as a daughter, and my jounalistic work was taking me into Europe more and more. I was mising the children growing up. So in 1979 after the Frankfurt Motor Show in the Autumn I too decided to go freelance and concentrate on the UK market. So as well as writing, I too was now taking pictures for publication.
