The Family: MABEL (Praktica CM1000)

Introducing: Mabel

hello! i figured, in the interest to getting to know each other, you and i should become better acquainted. to that end, i thought i'd make a series of posts showcasing all of my cameras. yes, i do give all my stuff human names. what's life without whimsy?

so, without further ado...

a photo of a small silver plastic point and shoot camera. the lens cover is slid back revealing the lens, and the retractable flash has popped up.

mabel wasn't my first 35mm point and shoot (that was catherine, along with a couple of others that had such problems that i had to retire them and get rid after shooting one roll), but it did turn out to be a favourite. small, lightweight, and came with a case that attached to my belt for total convenience. it's been a while - such is life when you have a bunch of cameras - but i've been known to carry this on my belt whenever i left the flat so i was always prepared to take a photo should the need arise.

turns out, if you take a camera with you everywhere you go, the need arises a lot of the time!

so let's start off with the features. this camera will do everything except cook you dinner. pop in a battery, load the film, and close the back. the camera will automatically wind the film, autofocus, show your film counter and flash status with a screen on the top, and when you've shot the entire roll will wind it all back into the canister. and it'll do all of that with some reassuringly loud whirring and clicking.

taken from another bridge lower down, this is a photo of an old metal bridge traversing the river clyde.

a photo of a beach with two houses in the distance.

a close up photo of gravel on a rocky beach.

on the wall there's a large no smoking sign, and just behind it a pipe is releasing a lot of white smoke-looking steam.

it has various shutter speeds including a night mode of 1/6, and you can turn the flash on and off depending on what you need to shoot. you can even, if you know you've made an error, rewind the film into the canister at any point, not just at the end of the roll. the viewfinder itself is beautifully clear, with a slight blue tint. it's definitely the clearest viewfinder on any camera i've owned.

not to mention, but this all electronic camera reads the dx codes on your film to set the iso automatically, which is really cool in a point and shoot. and if there's no dx code on your film, it'll automatically set the iso to 400. obviously this isn't ideal if you've got an experimental film of 200 or 800, but i ask you: what are you doing putting such a film into a point and shoot in the first place?

now, is this the perfect point and shoot? not entirely. for all its electronic bells and whistles, this camera is not immune to the ravages of time. what i mean is, the autofocus doesn't always perform as well as i'd like it to.

a photo of some trees across the road. the middle one is pink with cherry blossoms. it's slightly out of focus.

a photo of a tree, with a scorch of sunlight whitening the image down the centre.

your mileage may vary, but honestly i embrace these little imperfections. the results it gives me are undeniably analogue. i'm not going to be submitting these shots to galleries or owt, but i do like to look at the photos.

the camera also has a panoramic mask; pressing the button lowers and raises dark cinema style bars at the top and bottom to give your shots a more cinematic look. i tried this out on my first roll, and honestly? it's a bit of a useless gimmick. is it panoramic, or is it just removing some detail from your shot?