Point and press

Photography can have psychological benefits.

- BY MARC WILSON

For reasons I'll keep for another time, I've been learning about conventional pre-digital cameras. That's analogue cameras that you put canisters of unexposed film into, and take up to 36 blurry photos that you don't get to see until you've paid for them to be developed.

As part of this adventure I bought a second-hand Pentax Spotmatic SP-II, manufactured the year after I was born. The description said the mechanism was fine but, when it arrived, I found exactly what I expected – the viewfinder mirror was stuck in place, so I couldn't see what I was trying to photograph. A YouTube search, a similar quest to find my tools, and more than a few swear words later, it was all fixed. Cue feeling competent.

I like taking photos. I have a digital camera I like, and of course most of us carry a camera in our pockets, built into our smartphones. Samsung and Apple market their flagship phones by touting their camera bona fides, and there is even an intriguing generation of new phones coming through that have analogue components – mechanical apertures, for example – to appeal to nostalgia and the feeling that it must be better to do it the old way.