Those that know Meghan and I know that we have what appears to be an on going camera acquisition problem. To remedy this but continue to try out ALL of the cameras we have decided to start borrowing cameras from our fellow camera enthusiasts instead of trying to purchase or hoard them all to ourselves. Not all are winners though and some are just easier or more fun to use but you have to shoot with them first to find out! Thus, we decided if we run a roll through every camera we are interested in, not unlike going on a 5 minute date with a bunch of strangers at a singles night, we can quickly see which are worthy of being added to our collection (or put on our list of “must haves.”) Camera speed dating!
Here is most recent camera I had the pleasure of many quick dates with…. the Horizon Perfekt 35mm camera.
A few quick facts on the Horizon Perfekt… it is a Lomography camera – probably their most well made! It has a focus of about 6 feet, which is good to keep in mind if your shooting party photos. It has an aperture range of 16 down to 4 and high shutter speeds of 60, 125, 250 and 500 and then slow shutter speeds of 2, 4, 8. There is a lever that you toggle to go between fast and slow shutter speed settings.
This camera is one of my own. I had always wanted a panorama camera and purchasing a Hasselblad X-Pan, Widelux or Noblex was and is totally unrealistic for me. The Horizon offered a light weight affordable alternative. I’ve owned it for quite a few years now and the whole time I toyed with the idea of getting rid of it, mostly because of how much of a hassle it is to load – which put me off using it. I even thought of trading my newer style Horizon for an original late 60’s Russian Horizont, so at least it would be a unique historical piece for my collection.. however I have two customers who are experts on Horizon cameras and they stopped me. One of them told me I was lucky to have the model I had because of its slow shutter speed capability (in other words do not trade it in for an older model, no matter how cool it looks) and the other showed me the trick to loading it easy peasy. So this summer I decided to take the Horizon out more often, no excuses, and I must say we had a wonderful time! I absolutely loved street shooting with it and will continue to take it out for casual walks. That being said anything to do with hanging out with friends like a party in a park, art gallery open and for a ride on a sailboat, I was less than impressed with the photos….it still could have been user error though, who knows. I must also add it has a rather satisfying Kerchunking sound as the lens pans across the scene your photographing!
