Day 1 for Melaka Trip:

Tuesday. 18th December 2007.

This is what I have been wanting to show all of you for some time already. This photo here is actually a closeup of the expert photographer, TY (aka Tian Yu), holding onto his film camera, the Lubitel 166 - it has this classic feel to its design, and that camera is one of the three TY brought during that trip (the other two being digital cams).

According to TY, he said that he has been using this film camera for quite some time; he did mentioned something it being an "antique" and being passed down by one of his relatives (though I might have heard wrongly).

Another thing is that, this camera is already damaged on its sides - the Viewfinder cover lock and Camera back lock head were loosened, so he had to tighten them with masking tape (not shown). Almost no shops in Singapore specialize in repairing this particular model of camera.

(NOTE: Nowadays, shops and companies are going digital, and that might mean that processing films and negatives for photo-printing is slowly going out of fashion, though at this current point in time, some people still believed that film photos are higher in quality in comparison to digital photos. But this can be countered with improvements in resolutions of newer digital cameras in future technology...)

The Lubitel 166 is entirely manual; (no digital functions) you need to be really understand photography well to utilize its functions so that you can shoot awesome photos with it.

I never handled this Lubital film camera personally, though I know that it feels good to use film cameras; but the prerequisite would be to familiarize myself with the many technicalities in photography before promoting to other advanced models.

Photos by: Seng Tat