Iain Kendall • Prior to the Polaroid arriving, my second purchase...

Prior to the Polaroid arriving, my second purchase arrived from an eBay seller - an Olympus Trip 35. My good friend Kerr bought one earlier this year and when he showed me it I kind of fell in love. It’s an incredibly simple camera but that doesn’t detract in any way from how brilliant it is.

During my holiday this year I found myself jumping between colour film and black and white film for different occasions, the black and white was perfect for my more composed shots of war memorials and the colour perfect for the candid shots of my wife and our time together in Bruges and Ypres. The downside was that I would find myself on more than one occasion rushing film to get to one film or the other…it wasn’t ideal. So last week, I decided to bid on one from eBay…and I won.

The camera is a beautful example - built in October 1974, it is almost pristine. It came with all the manuals, lens cap and a leather case which, granted, has seen better days. It’s incredibly sturdy as a point and shoot camera and I wish this kind of quality remained today.

It has one major flaw though and it could make or break the camera, the auto exposure feature doesn’t work…at all. The red flag is meant to appear in low light and stop the shutter button from firing but it doesn’t. There are a few possible reasons for this; the selenium meter is dead or the aperture blades are sticky and not opening, so I’m working my way through a guide that will hopefully find out the problem but it doesn’t look too good at the moment.