ISpyShanghai

At the weekend I finally tracked down a Seagull camera!

Seagull is a photographic company that is still cranking out the kind of camera that has gone right out of fashion back West: manual focus, 35mm (that’s a kind of “film” kids, ask your Grandpa), it’s based on a Minolta camera from the 1970s with so few changes that the instruction book still features snapshots of kids wearing kipper ties and Deely Boppers, listening to the Bay City Rollers (seriously, ask your Grandpa).

Even though they’re kind of crap, I wanted to buy a Seagull for three reasons:

• I’ve got a small collection of Minolta lenses that I really like, and the original camera body I was using with them broke a couple of weeks ago
• The Seagull factory is about 2 miles from my house right there on Suzhou creek and I like the idea of using a Shanghainese camera to take photos of Shanghai
• Even on the internet, hardly anyone seems to use one-

See?

After trying to get into the factory shop several times (it’s only open on the eighth Wednesday in February, from 3pm until someone tries to get in), I found a camera shop right next to Nanjing Road East metro station.

They had a couple of models tucked away in the far reaches of the store, next to a Betamax tape of Billy Ray Cyrus and a few cans of Tab Clear.

It was just the camera I wanted, no accesories, but the only way I could buy it was as a complete package including a flash, terrible lens, huge camera bag, straps and caps that I’ll never use and a partridge in a pear tree.

This bumped up the price to 1,250RMB- not cheap, and probably a daft idea but I had my heart set on the stupid thing, and still haven’t worked out how to use TaoBao (the Chinese ebay).

I guess we’ll see what kind of pictures it takes in a week or so.

–UPDATE

Anyone who can help me buy one of these things can have my hand in marriage. I can use a Union Pay or Visa card to pay.