Random reminder

Press, 15 October 1986, Page 35

Random reminder

NO STRIP SHOW

The "Zenit” camera is built like a Russian tank. Indeed, it may be built FROM Russian tanks. It is one of the few 35mm single-lens-reflex machines that will not fit in handbag or purse even before you start attaching telephoto lenses. Children sent to fetch it from the car go in pairs, with a trolley. A Russian Army punishment is to hold the thing at arms length. It does take good photos, except of nervous wild-life which panic when the moving parts hit the railway buffers. The sound — clunk click — is like the last thing you hear before you go home in a bag. One feels unsafe within 1700 metres, with or without a tin hat. A Spreydon woman, who keeps fit by using a “Zenit,” reasoned that the shutter noise was unlikely to frighten Halley’s Comet at a distance of 100 million kilometres, and therefore a roll of film got took. The taking itself took several days, or nights. The clockwork had to be correct, the mathematics had to be precise. Exposures were necessarily long. The Earth spins one way, the stars seem to spin the other way, and

the comet is the luminous gas in the middle. “Zenit,” by the way, is Russian for "zenith.” Englis canno normall b translate int Russia b knockin of th las lette o th wor. The word “zenith” just happens to be an exception. Time passed. The telephone rang. Would she call in at the developery and printery? The processing palace put in her paw a box containing a new film, an unexposed, cheap, slow film of an unknown brand. Hello, they said. Bad luck. We admit nothing, for nothing is ever our fault, but we are giving you this free gift which will be yours to cherish forever. Have a nice . . . What precisely was wrong with my negatives, and where are they? snapped the owner. The colour balance was weird, sniffed the young manager, they were streaked, they were spotted, and there was nothing on them except a fuzzy blob. We have professional standards, you know. Your negatives have been dumped.