My First Camera

My Dad bought me my very first camera when I was about 8 years old. It was a second hand Mansfield Skylark with a Mantar 40mm lens and a built in flash. At least everything I read says that it has a built in flash, but for the life of me I can't figure out where the power would come from. It does have a spot for an external flash on the top of the camera, but what is that glass bit on the front?

Today I pulled this little camera out of a drawer it's been in for years to use in the TtV challenge. This is the first time in probably close to 30 years that I really looked at it...and there was film in it still. I tried to rewind the film, but it was so brittle it just crumbled. Who knows what was on there...but I bet it was blurry. I can remember, as a kid, of being really frustrated with the camera because every picture I took with it was blurry. My Dad's pictures weren't blurry and his camera was very similar so I figured it was the camera. Now I'm sure it was my unsteady hand.

I think I will take the camera over to my Dad on the weekend and have him help me load it up with film as it is entirely manual and I don't want to muck up the film and he still uses his camera that is similar. I'll pop it onto my tripod and have some fun will film. I'm going to use the tripod because in just playing with the camera without film it is very hard to click the button/trigger without moving the camera. I'm interested and a little excited to see how it turns out.


Damn good for 40...