Halina Paulette Electric
written by disdis
on March 31st, 2009
, one comment
(7 votes)
image from here
This is my third girl after Holga and Diana. The poorest and oldest of them. But though it doesn’t give me what I want, anyway, I still love her… somehow.
Three weeks ago, I went with my girlfriend to her parents. My “father in law” told me he had a present for me and introduced me to his old camera.
He bought it in the Sahara in mid-60’s, while we was in military service. Yesterday, I found out my uncle (died last year) had also bought this camera when he was in the military service in Sahara Desert.
The Halina Paulette was a 35mm viewfinder camera made in Hong Kong by Haking. It was introduced in c.1965, with a 45mm/f2.8 lens in a 4-speed (1/30-1/250) + B shutter with an added light meter. It has a reputation for being cheap and rather nasty. And it deserves it. But it does take photographs, it can be focused, shutter and aperture altered..and perhaps most impressively it has a light meter that not only works, but actually gives sensible readings.
When everything is in it’s favour it will turn in a quite nice result. So, northern Lomographers give up. You should never use this if you don’t go to the south. It’s best to shoot down sun. The noise the shutter makes on release does nothing to disguise the cheapness of the internals either. No Ooohss and Aahhs. Just a faint click.
The rings are also hard to move so it’s quite difficult to follow the rule “don’t think, just shoot”. The special moment doesn’t usually last so much time to put everything into the right position.
Spring is already here and this week has been bright and sunny, so last weekend I took the camera and a Fuji Superia 400 roll of film and I went for a walk. It was sunny and perfect to shoot some pictures. There’s a school in Vitoria that have been painted with safari animals. The building is colourful. I love it…. Maybe my next LomoLocation. I thought, “it fits perfectly a camera bought in the Sahara, let’s go”. I took some pics of the elephants, rhinos, sunflowers… I was nervous to see the results. I remember after some pics, I sat in a terrace to look at the camera and said, please, ease my sorrow, light my life. When the sun went down, I met some friends in a pub and after some beers I was already taking pictures. The present also included a Nisisin UF35 flash. I thought It could help me during nocturnal exposures but it doesn’t. Too much light for such a poor sharp portrait.
You can see the results here. Now I’m trying a B/N film on it.
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