The technical stuff: Type: Single Lens Reflex Lens: Obtained as a body only but I have a nice 28mm Vivitar wide angle f2.8 Shutter: Manual or Automatic Aperture priority 1 sec - 1000th

This is a manual or automatic camera with TTL meter and speed readout. I picked it up as a body only, in need of repair, with a broken door hinge. It would appear to have been made by Cosina, the similarity between this body and the C1 is a dead giveaway. The hinge has been "fixed" for now and I am looking forward to taking it out for a test drive. It takes standard PK mount lenses and I have a few of them, including the Cosina which would be a good candidate, it is shown here with a Vivitar 28mm super wide angle which I felt to be a good match.

In the event when I took it for it's first outing I used neither of these. The Cosina lens is not a PKA and I wanted a lens with a good stretch. For a standard lens I chose the Chinon, which is a PKA, but this turned out to be a poor choice. When I bought the camera I also bought a Soligor 28 - 200mm which was probably fitted to the camera but separated for sale, so I took this for it's versatility. I had to take a trip to Southampton and thinking I might get some shots of boats at sea the long lens would be handy, how wrong could I be. However, I did get a couple of shots of a small marina. After the disappointment of Southampton and with a camera full of film I decided to stop off in Winchester on the way back. This made up for the earlier disappointment, even the sky cleared, leaving me with a deep blue sky, enhanced by the polarizing filter I had fitted. Down to business, the camera handled really well but that's about it. The metering was at least 2 stops high, leaving me with massively overexposed pictures. This was a shame because if I had known I could have cranked the speed up to account for using the long lens hand held. The lens choices were completely wrong, the Chinon was definitely not the sharpest lens in the box and the Soligor, although quite sharp, suffered from a lack of perspective control at all lengths. I expected some barreling at the 28mm end but this was apparent right up to the long end. All of the Winchester shots were with the Soligor. The irony of the day was that I had, as my backup, a small Yashica Microtec 70 which my son borrowed in Winchester and he returned better shots from that. Incidentally the camera back was fine and it doesn't appear to leak light, which was my biggest worry.