About me.

I'm Paul Bines. I'm in my early 50's. I collect hobbies. I used to podcast about trading cards and the Edwardian author E.F.Benson and about artists, now I collect cheap old cameras and, where possible, use them.

This blog is devoted to that - posting the highs and lows of buying cheap old cameras, usually from eBay, sometimes from charity shops and very occasionally, received as gifts from friends and family.  I'll post pictures of the cameras, as well as pictures taken ON the cameras (when I've been able to), and offer my thoughts on the cameras themselves. Where I get a DOA, I'll post about that. (and, trust me, I've had more than a few!)

My background is in IT, but this isn't my first go at photography - I used to collect Kodak Brownie cameras back in the 1980's, when they were cheap and plentiful, and all the various formats of film were easily purchasable from the local chemist or supermarket.  The price of the cameras has gone up, and some of the film formats are no longer available, but still I have the Brownies, collecting dust.

Much of what follows will be based on Olympus cameras - I've acquired a taste for them and now have several of the classic Trip and XA models (I'll cover them in more detail later), but I've also experimented with other brands and some of the less well known models - including Toy cameras such as the Diana, and somewhat odd 110 cartridge based Pentax SLR's.

Stay tuned.