Image above: My birthday present from Raina – a DIY kit to make a twin lens reflex camera – for me to build. [Sunday 14 February] | [View all photos]
Whilst I staying with Raina in Japan and knowing that I enjoy photography, she gave me a DIY kit for a twin reflex film camera for my birthday.
So getting back to London, I had a look to see what it involved and quickly realised the instructions were all in Japanese which was a bit of an issue since I don’t speak the language. Cue a call to Mikio, a fellow photographer friend from Japan, and after brunch at The Table we headed over to a cafe in the Tate Modern to begin work.
Opening the box, there were a lot of parts but the instructions said it’ll only take two hours so we got started. However, I hadn’t quite factored two things. One, that the Tate Modern is a public gallery and we got quite a bit of attention from the tables around us wondering what we were doing. Kinda fun though when we were trying to figure out how the shutter assembly fitted together also more nerve-wracking! Two, that it was Valentine’s Day and when I explained the backstory, they kinda thought that Raina was my rather adorable girlfriend!!!
We were nearly finished only to realise that there was a piece left over which had to be a bad sign. Going back through the instructions it turned out that it was the very first piece we had to install (oops!) and was kinda important to winding the film the right length between shots (double oops!).
So aside from that little technical flaw … the camera works and it was quite an experience building it.
My thanks to Mikio for helping me out and to Raina for the present. Appreciate it “girlfriend”!
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