LTL SLR

On our trip throughout the south of Ireland, we stopped in Cork for an hour and a half lunch. Emilee and I were still pretty full from breakfast so we decided to do some shopping instead of eating. Less than a minute after we stepped off the bus we saw a shop that peaked our interest. The sign above the door was canary yellow, and the name, 'It's a Deal!' was lettered in candy apple red. An assortment of kitchen goods and crystal decorations sat in the window, and behind them you could see that the shop was packed with tons of random merchandise.

We browsed around and realized it was basically a garage sale in a storefront. All the prices were on little yellow stickers with initials of who the seller of each item was. Behind a couple bins of records was a cabinet housing a half dozen film cameras. Most were just simple point and shoots, but there were two SLRs. One of them was black and looked very similar to my Minolta X-700, but it had a large, strange looking flash unit attached. I don't remember what the brand was, but it was definitely some European one I'd never heard of before. The body was priced at €20 and the flash was €15-20. It was a really cool camera, but €30-35 was a little too steep for me right now, so I turned my attention to the other SLR.

It was a silver Praktica LTL-3. I knew nothing about Praktica—I'd never heard  of it before then—but the design of the camera was so interesting. Instead of the shutter button being on the top of the camera near the film advance lever and the shutter speed wheel, it was on the front of the camera just to the left of the lens (if you're looking at the front of the camera; to the right if you're taking a picture). Another interesting thing about this camera is that it's a screw-mount lens, meaning that the lens actually screws into the body instead of twisting in. It takes about 4-5 full turns to get the lens attached rather than the 1/4 turn required of normal lenses. I asked one of the guys working at the shop about it, and he said, "It's German, I think. The guy I bought it from told me they're practically bomb-proof." How cool is that?

Even though the light meter wasn't working, I bought the Praktica for €20. Once I get a new battery, I'm assuming it'll work just fine since the rest of it seems to be in really good condition. Later I did some research and found out that what's in the camera now is likely a mercury battery, so that's awesome... I'll have to figure out how to dispose of it properly. But I can get a new, non-mercury battery in the States for $10. I also found that Prakticas were made in East Germany from 1970-1975. Since mine's an LTL-3, it has to have been made in one of the later years (there was an LTL and LTL-2 before the 3 came out, each with only slight changes). This puts my camera collection up to 11!