Torqueing About 50mm

None of my vintage film cameras are equipped for Macro Photography, a legacy of the 3ft/1m Minimum Focussing Distance of a 50mm Lens that seemed to be the standard for compact cameras of this age. If you look at the manuals and advertising for these cameras it’s perhaps clear to see why. The boom in inexpensive post-war compact cameras was obviously a technological advance, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as widespread without the improved standard of living for many at the time, both financially and with regard to leisure time.

The cameras that many of us are picking up for peanuts now were mass produced primarily for domestic use, family snaps, portraits, holiday landscapes and sightseeing. Seriously close-up photography remained the realm of the specialist, Botany, Science, Engineering, the Photography Enthusiast etc. So if a camera came with a fixed lens, as many were, it was designed for this this kind of use, and if a ‘Zoom’ lens was an option, I'd imagine that most folk would be using it to zoom-in on something far away rather than for close detail work.

We’re all macro photographers now of course, thanks in the main to modern phones with their truly remarkable cameras. But for the vintage camera fan, three feet often remains the limit. A frustratingly limited distance for sure, and yes my FED and Zorki cameras have the option of different lenses, but I prefer to play to the strengths of the 45-50mm lenses they came with. I doubt I’ll trade the convenience of slipping a compact camera into my jacket pocket and just going, for the burden of camera bags and interchangeable lenses, not yet anyway. So here’s what we get at 3 feet, taken on whatever camera I had loaded at the time but most likely the FED 1 and Baldessa 1a…