Fujica 35-ML
Recovery and Discovery
Among the many appalling lapses I recall from my childhood, I fear that I must have destroyed several beautiful old cameras – shapes and impressions remain, but nothing more. I had a mania for taking things apart, and of course never developed the skill to put them back together again. The first of my cameras to survive into the present is this Fujica 35-ML.

I went off to England briefly in my last year of secondary school, and a friend of my mother’s presented me with this camera. It never made it with me to England, and after that it spent the better part of fifteen years snoozing in my closet. When I finally recognised what a lovely thing it was, I came close to destroying it: I failed to pay proper attention to the operating instructions, and wound back a roll of film without engaging the mechanism. The camera and I managed to recover from the experience; and I have a few interesting ‘cracked’ pictures to show for it: the film broke on the way out, and the lab taped it back together again.

Recoveries

Above, a page from the original operating instructions for the Fujica 35-ML. The pictures at the right were produced by failing to read these instructions. If you click on the small pictures, here and elsewhere, it will open a new window with a larger version.

Technical Details

My Fujica 35-ML came with remarkably complete documentation. The inspection certificate reproduced above indicates that it passed inspection on the 1st of October, 1958. This does not give me a birth date to celebrate; but it does tell me when Fuji decided this camera was ready to be let loose in the world.

Fuji Photo Film’s first lens-shutter camera was the immediate precursor of the 35-ML: the Fujica 35-M. It went on the market in time for the 1957 World Expo, held in Japan. The 35-ML is an early semi-automatic camera: lens aperture and shutter speed can be set according to light values read off a meter. A ring to adjust shutter speed is coupled to a ring to adjust aperture: it is possible to ignore the light values, but not possible to decouple the rings. This proves to be a minor annoyance in use. The light value adjustment ring, shown in the last picture in the sequence below, seems to be the major difference between the 35-M and the 35-ML.
The 35-ML is a rangefinder camera, with a reliable combination of straight helicoid focusing coupled with a parallax compensating viewfinder. It came mounted with a coated 45 mm Fujinon f2.8 five-element lens; mine is impressively sharp, and would stand up well in comparison with much younger lenses. The body was designed to be held in the left hand, and operated with the right: all the controls are positioned on the right-hand side of the camera. A hand-grip was available as an accessory, which screwed into the tripod mount.

Manitoba: Winter–Spring 1986

I have a shoebox full of old negatives, including the first few rolls I took with the Fujica 35-ML. I had assumed that these were lost, but they turn out to be merely damaged.
The sequence above represents my earliest work with this camera. My intention was to test the equipment and to see what I could do with it: not much, as it emerged. Did I simply give up on it? Or was I more interested in seeing the world a different way?

Blurred and stained as they are, these negatives are not without interest. The image of Thomson House is effectively composed, and suggests a cold isolation appropriate to its setting. The single broken tree reaching out over the ice of the Red River in winter has remained in my memory even outside the context of this particular image. There is a sense of frustrated ambition in the gesture that matches the mood of both a secondary school student – as I was – and of a city locked both in winter and in its undeserved provincial status. The last image in this sequence captures my last visit to Lake Winnipeg: I can speculate that the wind helped throw off the focus. Really, though, the burliness suggests my own memory. I’m fond of the straight lines in this picture: horizon; clouds; distant point; and shadows of clouds on the lake itself.

Granville Island 1988

The series below I recovered from a film that took two years to shoot, and which then sat undeveloped in my desk for nearly ten years. The emulsion quality is, as one would expect, not so great. It is a marvel that the film managed to develop at all; this should be an excellent endorsement for Kodak.
These images are of their time in several respects. There are a number of visual references which make the most sense in a 1980s context: the Love and Rockets logo; the easy juxtaposition of garbage and finished architectural forms. In another, enduring, sense, they manage despite themselves to address themes of loss and preservation. Just about everything in these images has since vanished: the dumpsters and signage, of course; but also most of the buildings; and the atmosphere of the place itself.

Seasons, 2002-2003

This camera and I woke up when we moved to Japan. It remains one of my secondary cameras, but I suspect I could use it to better effect if I applied myself to it properly. It excels at producing unexpected interplays of lines and shapes. I say ‘unexpected’ because a rangefinder camera never quite takes the picture you see in the viewfinder: there is always an element of co-operation between the photographer and the camera.
The date sequence in the title is misleading here: the first four images date from 2003, and the last four from 2002. Although the series represents a seasonal sequence, the temporal sequence is reversed; it also proceeds from trees and sky alone into a built-up environment. The camera recovers moments from the world around us; in those recovered moments, the picture removes the world from time, that we might see it as it is.

Date posted: 2004-02-07