The magic of shonky old cameras

Most of the time you want a camera that gives consistently good results, right?

Except when you don't.

Sometimes what you want is to take a shot and have very little idea how it will come out. You want a weird, wild mess of lens distortion, blurring, burned out areas, bizarre spikes of shadow, ghosting. You want a camera that defies you, frustrates you and, sometimes, surprises you with magic.

And you can buy such cameras for a few pounds on eBay or at car boot sales - clunky old things, mass-produced and cheap even when they were brand new. I've somehow ended up with 12 of the things and I'm always on the look out for more.

Most of these beasts from the 1940s and '50s were made to take 620 film which isn't made any more. But they'll work perfectly well with 120 film, though sometimes you have to cut away the rims on the bases of the roll. 120 film is quite unlike 35mm film. It's medium format so it's a lot bigger and you only get 12 shots to a roll. And instead of coming in a neat little cannister, it's paper-backed.

So you load your film. Now you have to master the camera itself and you'll soon learn that these cameras have their own "my way or the highway" attitude. There'll probably be a marvellous little widget giving you three aperture options: on the Duaflex, these are "hazy sun", "bright sun" and "bright sun on snow or sand" . The secret of these settings: they don't make a blind bit of difference. The Duaflex overexposes no matter what you do. In fact most of them overexpose because their shutter mechanisms are so clunky and slow.

The results are invariably "bad" photographs - dodgy composition, burned out, grainy, blotchy, blurry. They are absolutely not the sorts of picture most people seek to take when they get started in photography.

But I love them. They're atmospheric, haunted, mysterious. They make the most modern scene look ancient and otherworldy. They somehow historicise the present day.

Here are a few of my favourites:

Ensign Ful-Vue (1946-49)

Kodak Duaflex II (1950-54)

Diana F (retro toy camera - not strictly "vintage")

Ensign Ful-Vue (1946-49)

Kodak Duaflex II (1950-54)

Tips for buying old cameras:

• Make sure the shutter mechanism is working.
• Check the mirror isn't broken or loose. Grungy is okay - grungy shots are good :)
• Bellows cameras - check the condition of the bellows. If they're degraded, you'll get light leaks. Some minor light leaking can produce interesting images but too much will ruin them. Light leaks can be repaired using electricians tape or black silicon rubber.
• Bellows cameras - make sure the fixings hold the extended lens in place on the runners.