As part of my ongoing quest to buy as many weird and wonderful cameras off ebay as is humanly (and financially) possible, I treated myself to my first medium format twin lens reflex camera. Up to now all my cameras have been digital or 35mm so this was a bit of a leap into the unknown. After bidding on all sorts of TLRs, I finally ended up with a Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex 1C from the late 1950s.
It's an absolute stunner, a truly beautiful piece of workmanship with a bewildering number of knobs and dials. It's a million miles away from the old point-and-click cameras I've bought recently. I reckon it takes me about five minutes to take each photo, from reading the light meter, setting aperture and shutter speed and then trying to take a photo and realising that I've forgotten to wind the film on from the last shot! Theoretically this should mean you end up considering and composing each photo more fully, although it's taking me a while to get used to this way of working.
I've only shot two rolls so far, and I'm still getting to grips with what it can do. From what I've seen so far though I think I'm going to be enjoying this camera for some time to come. There's a selection of shots up on my Flickr pages as usual.
